Novels (n = 158) by lesbian authors showed minor signs of psycholinguistic masculinisation; novels (n = 167) by homosexual men had a female-typical psycholinguistic pattern

Sexual Dimorphism in Language, and the Gender Shift Hypothesis of Homosexuality. Severi Luoto. Front. Psychol., May 31 2021. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.639887

Abstract: Psychological sex differences have been studied scientifically for more than a century, yet linguists still debate about the existence, magnitude, and causes of such differences in language use. Advances in psychology and cognitive neuroscience have shown the importance of sex and sexual orientation for various psychobehavioural traits, but the extent to which such differences manifest in language use is largely unexplored. Using computerised text analysis (Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count: LIWC 2015), this study found substantial psycholinguistic sexual dimorphism in a large corpus of English-language novels (n = 304) by heterosexual authors. The psycholinguistic sex differences largely aligned with known psychological sex differences, such as empathising–systemising, people–things orientation, and men’s more pronounced spatial cognitive styles and abilities. Furthermore, consistent with predictions from cognitive neuroscience, novels (n = 158) by lesbian authors showed minor signs of psycholinguistic masculinisation, while novels (n = 167) by homosexual men had a female-typical psycholinguistic pattern, supporting the gender shift hypothesis of homosexuality. The findings on this large corpus of 66.9 million words indicate how psychological group differences based on sex and sexual orientation manifest in language use in two centuries of literary art.

Discussion

A corpus of 694 novels comprising 66.9 million words spanning more than two centuries of literary art was compiled to determine the extent to which heterosexual male and female authors, and homosexual male and female authors as well as a small sample of bisexual female authors, produced psycholinguistic outputs that differed in predictable ways. The results indicated significant sexual dimorphism6 in the language used in literary fiction written by heterosexual male and female authors, consistent with predictions based on cognitive neuroscience, psychology, and evolutionary science, while also providing support for the gender shift hypothesis of homosexuality (Abé et al., 2021; Luoto et al., 2019a; Luoto, 2020a). The gender shift hypothesis of homosexuality was strongly supported in homosexual males—who produced female-typical psycholinguistic outputs—whereas the evidence among homosexual female authors was substantially weaker, as they showed only a minor psycholinguistic shift in the heterosexual male direction.

While writers and readers, and speakers and listeners, have long been interested in how men and women may use language in slightly-to-vastly different ways, this study helps to clarify the existence, magnitude, and possible psychological underpinnings of sex differences in language use, which appear in areas over which writers would not be exercising sex-conscious psycholinguistic control. It would be difficult to conceive, for instance, how male authors might consciously increase the frequency with which they use articles (‘a,’ ‘an,’ and ‘the’) because they associate such language use with some nebulously “desirable” characteristics related to their ideas of “masculinity.” It is difficult, in other words, to explain the findings with the social role theory of gender roles, which would further struggle to provide a plausible explanation for homosexual male authors’ female-typical language use. If homosexual males were socialised into the male gender role, why do they use language in a way that resembles heterosexual women’s language use? To the extent that these findings represent non-conscious, natural ways of using language, they also suggest that homosexuality is not a conscious choice (Luoto et al., 2019a; Swift-Gallant et al., 2019; Bogaert and Skorska, 2020). It is highly unlikely, after all, that homosexual male authors have consciously chosen to write in a more female-typical way, of which they could have had limited notion at the level of psycholinguistic minutiae.

While some people argue that socialisation into gender roles underlies sex differences in humans, this hypothesis becomes implausible when considering the biological, developmental, neuroscientific, and cross-cultural evidence more broadly (Christov-Moore et al., 2014; Schmitt, 2015; Janicke et al., 2016; Archer, 2019; Del Giudice, 2019; Luoto et al., 2019a; Atari et al., 2020; Stoet and Geary, 2020; Luoto and Varella, 2021). Most sex differences in personality are of a higher magnitude in more gender-egalitarian countries than in less gender-egalitarian countries, which is the opposite of what the gender role hypothesis would predict (Schmitt et al., 2008; Falk and Hermle, 2018; Atari et al., 2020; Stoet and Geary, 2020). Furthermore, since evolutionary processes pre-date social conceptualisations of gender roles by millions of years, a full explanation of socialisation into gender roles and the effects it has on sexually differentiated traits and behaviours would need to account for how evolutionary processes act as precursors to gender roles (Janicke et al., 2016; Archer, 2019; Luoto and Varella, 2021; Luoto et al., 2021).

Ultimately, psychobehavioural sex differences arise from sexual selection, sexual differentiation of the mammalian brain, sexual division of labor, and their interactions (Figure 7) (Luoto and Varella, 2021). Sexual selection and sex differences in parental investment have exerted and currently exert selection pressures on status-striving and power-seeking among men more than in women (Luoto, 2019), contributing to men’s higher competition, aggression, risk-taking, sociosexuality, and men taking on more leadership positions than women, particularly at higher organisational and societal levels (Luoto and Varella, 2021). Sex differences in parental investment and mating competition coevolve with parental care specialisation, which can partially contribute to such psychobehavioural sex differences as found in empathising, people orientation, risk-taking, neuroticism, mate choice, sociosexuality, aggression, violence, leadership, and dominance (Archer, 2019; Henshaw et al., 2019; Luoto et al., 2019a; Luoto and Varella, 2021). Sexually dimorphic ultimate evolutionary functions exert an influence on psychobehavioural sex differences via various biological mechanisms, leading to sexually dimorphic language use which, further down the evolutionary–developmental trajectory, also reflects other known psychobehavioural sex differences (Figure 7).

Figure 7. The evolutionary–developmental origins and proximate mechanisms underlying psychobehavioural sex differences, including those in language use. Figure adapted from Luoto and Varella (2021).

Comparative research provides further evidence against social role theories of human sex differences. Evidence of sex-biassed treatment by others (equivalent to what proponents of social constructionist hypotheses think of as socialisation into gender roles in humans) is lacking in non-human animals. Behaviours of mothers toward female and male offspring show little to no difference in the few species that have been studied (Lonsdorf, 2017), yet such species show sex differences in behavioural, physical, and social development that resemble those found in infant humans (Christov-Moore et al., 2014; Lonsdorf, 2017; Archer, 2019). These include sex differences in species-typical behaviours such as grooming, playing, object manipulation, and extractive foraging (Lonsdorf, 2017). Immature chimpanzee males, for instance, engaged in more object-oriented play than females (Koops et al., 2015). Under 5-week-old newborn rhesus macaque females that were raised in a controlled postnatal environment looked more at computer-generated faces of other rhesus macaques and engaged in more affiliative behaviour with a human caregiver than newborn rhesus macaque males did (Simpson et al., 2016). Similar findings have been reported in humans: 12-month-old female infants showed a higher relative preference for a moving face over a moving car than males did (d = −0.64) (Lutchmaya and Baron-Cohen, 2002). In humans, vervet monkeys, and rhesus macaques, females have been observed playing longer with dolls and plush toys, while males play longer with wheeled toys (Christov-Moore et al., 2014). Asian elephant females have a tendency to be more social and gregarious than males (Seltmann et al., 2019). In humans and non-human primates, females engage in social grooming more often than males (Lonsdorf, 2017). In hamsters and humans, females find same-sex social interactions more rewarding than males do. Oxytocin plays a similar mechanistic role in social reward processing in a number of species, suggesting that sociality and sex differences in sociality may arise from a common evolutionary origin (Feng et al., 2015; Hung et al., 2017; Borland et al., 2018).

Furthermore, evolutionarily conserved hormonal mechanisms, such as testosterone, are associated with language use and other sexually dimorphic phenotypes (Hoskin and Meldrum, 2018; Mascaro et al., 2018; Archer, 2019; Luoto et al., 2019a), providing a biological basis for the emergence of sexually differentiated traits. Many lines of research, including longitudinal research in humans, support this theory. While hormone exposure significantly predicted gender development in girls, mothers’ socialisation to feminise the daughters had negligible effects: women exposed to more testosterone in prenatal development showed masculinised behaviours in adulthood despite parents’ socialisation efforts to have the daughters behave in a more feminine way (Udry, 2000).

Evidence for the relationship between testosterone and many sexually dimorphic phenotypes spans several different areas of research (Björkqvist, 2018; Hoskin and Meldrum, 2018; Luoto et al., 2019a; Muñoz-Reyes et al., 2020). It is noteworthy that psychological research has not found reliably occurring differences in anger frequency; instead, sex differences have been found in verbal and physical aggression, both being higher in men (Archer, 2019). Thus, the slightly higher frequency of anger-related words in male authors’ novels (d = 0.32, Figure 1) does have some equivalents in psychological research. The use of anger-related words is positively correlated with circulating testosterone levels and with polymorphisms in the androgen receptor gene (Mascaro et al., 2018), which make cells more susceptible to the masculinising influence of testosterone. These findings indicate the existence of a plausible biological mechanism (Geniole et al., 2019; Luoto et al., 2019a) which creates sex differences in anger-related language use as well as other psychobehavioural sex differences, including people–things orientation, risk-taking, and theory of mind (Khorashad et al., 2018; Luoto, 2020b; Vaskinn et al., 2020; Luoto and Varella, 2021). Furthermore, the finding of higher anger-related words and sexual words in lesbian authors relative to heterosexual women is consistent with existing findings on psychobehavioural masculinisation in non-heterosexual women, including higher sociosexuality, sensation-seeking, psychopathy, and incarceration rates compared with heterosexual women (Luoto et al., 2019a,b) (though see Gil-Llario et al., 2015 who reported lower sexual sensation seeking in self-identified lesbians than in heterosexual women).

An important contribution of this study was the ability to predict and explain sexual dimorphism in language using psychology and cognitive neuroscience. A related major result is that prior research on sex differences and sexual orientation differences in these fields have clear equivalents in the psycholinguistic outputs of authors writing literary fiction decades and centuries ago, suggesting that psychological sex differences may be relatively stable across time and across different domains—that is, they manifest not only via questionnaires, psychological tests, and behavioural measures, but also in the artistic and linguistic forms of imaginary self-expression enabled by literary fiction; and they manifest not only in contemporary population-based samples, but also in the highly specialised sample of writers of canonical literary fiction from decades and centuries ago. This coherence across different areas of research and across different time periods allays concerns that could be raised about the generalisability of the current findings.

Limitations

A clear limitation of this study was that the analyses were conducted only on English-language material. Future studies are therefore encouraged in other languages to provide an estimate of the generalisability of these findings across other languages. Corresponding results have, however, been reported in a number of languages using various literary and non-literary sources, though few studies have distinguished between writers of different sexual orientations (cf. Argamon et al., 2009; Johannsen et al., 2015; Chen et al., 2018; Koolen, 2018).

Another potential limitation of this study is that effect sizes can become biassed because of range restriction, which refers to a process in which the participants of a study are, directly or indirectly, selected from the original population on the basis of their personal characteristics (Del Giudice, 2019). In the current case, all samples of novels are likely to suffer from range restrictions as the novels were not sampled at random from all novels ever written by heterosexual or homosexual men and women; rather, canonical and prizewinning novels were mostly used, although the non-heterosexual samples also included less well-known novels because of the necessity to reach a large enough sample size. What is more, it may not be possible to directly extrapolate these findings on novelists to the respective groups of all lesbian women or all gay men or all heterosexual women and men. That is because only a small subset of each of these groups is likely to write and publish novels, particularly novels that reach a canonical status; thus, the sampling of such individuals may not be generalisable to the full sample of non-novelists in each group. This limitation can be addressed by comparing the present findings with existing findings on similar group differences that have been acquired using other kinds of methodologies and sampling protocols on non-novelists. Thus, to the extent that the current findings are consistent with the findings of other sex difference and sexual orientation difference studies (which they generally tended to be), the sampling problem of focussing only on novelists is mitigated.

This study was also limited in the sense that the heterosexual sample was drawn from canonical and prize-winning authors’ works: these culturally esteemed works may not generalise to the other 99% of literature ever written (Moretti, 2005, 2013). Furthermore, as most of the non-heterosexual sample comprised works that were not canonical nor prize-winning (necessarily so because of the difficulty of obtaining such samples that would have been large enough for adequate statistical power), I cannot rule out the possibility that the psycholinguistic differences observed in this study between authors of different sexual orientation could have been partially driven by the differences in canonicity and/or literary prestige between the samples. Nevertheless, the likelihood of this possibility is somewhat attenuated as the findings largely aligned with predictions which arose from existing psychological and linguistic research as well as theory from evolutionary human science. To explain the findings as resulting from differences in canonicity, it would be necessary to posit how the sampling strategy used for homosexual male and female authors biassed language use in opposite directions in each sample in a manner which is consistent with the theoretical hypotheses and predictions. Although the non-heterosexual samples comprised novels that were published much more recently than the novels in the heterosexual samples, those differences in publication year were controlled for in all analyses. Correlations between publication year and all psycholinguistic outcome variables are available in the Supplementary Materials, as are correlations between authors’ age at publication and all the psycholinguistic outcome variables (Supplementary Tables 8, 10, 11).

The group differences reported in the study could be somewhat attenuated because of the diversity of author demographics included in the samples of novelists. For example, authors were sampled from more than five countries. Authors’ age in the heterosexual sample of 304 novels varied from 24 to 68, while year of publication varied from 1801 to 2017 (Luoto and van Cranenburgh, 2021). Likewise, although the sample comprised mainly Caucasian authors, the full sample included authors whose racial backgrounds were Latino, African–American, Asian, Native American, and mixed (see Supplementary Tables 2–6 for details). Though making the sample more representative of the respective authors’ populations, this sample diversity may have caused more variation in the psycholinguistic outcome variables than studying more homogenous author populations, and this higher variation could have resulted in smaller effect sizes (as in Newman et al., 2008). Thus, the effect sizes reported in this study could be underestimates, and having less variation in publication year, age, race, ethnicity, and nationality can lead to detecting larger effect sizes.

The authors’ sexual orientation was determined based on biographical information, including information on the sex of any partners (married or otherwise) that the authors had or any self-identification related to sexual orientation that the authors may have made publicly known (Luoto and van Cranenburgh, 2021). The authors’ sexual orientation for the purposes of this study is therefore based on both manifest sexual behaviour as well as self-identification; however, both sexual behaviour and sexual orientation may undergo various changes over time, especially in non-heterosexual women (Luoto et al., 2019a,b), which is why the use of an aggregate measure of lifetime sexual behaviour and sexual orientation may not accurately track a person’s sexual behaviour or sexual orientation at any single point in time. Sexual orientation is used in this study as an instructive overall indicator of an author’s sexual behaviour and attractions over their lifetimes, and as such may be limited by the availability of such information in biographical material (Luoto and van Cranenburgh, 2021).

One reason why the gender shift hypothesis was not strongly supported in homosexual female authors could have been because it was not possible to control for butch/femme differences in the sampled authors. This would have been an important addition to the study. After all, there can be significant variation in the masculinity/femininity of non-heterosexual women, and research on non-heterosexual women should take this variation, conceptualised, e.g., via butch/femme categories, into account by analysing different groups of non-heterosexual women separately (Luoto et al., 2019a,b). However, in this research on literary fiction, it would have been difficult (if not impossible) to study women’s self-identification as masculine butches or feminine femmes because many of the authors had passed away.

Attitudes toward life extension: Men indicated a higher level of willingness to use the life extension treatment; younger-old and older-old adults indicated that they would prefer to live permanently at an older age

Who wants to live forever? Age cohort differences in attitudes toward life extension. Michael D. Barnett, Jessica H. Helphrey. Journal of Aging Studies, Volume 57, June 2021, 100931. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jaging.2021.100931

Highlights

• Investigated attitudes toward life extension about young adults, younger-old adults, and older-old adults.

• Age cohorts did not vary in their willingness to use life extension; however, in all three age cohorts, a plurality indicated that they would not use it.

• Men indicated a higher level of willingness to use the life extension treatment than women.

• Younger-old and older-old adults indicated that they would prefer to live permanently at an older age than young adults.

Abstract

Introduction: Biomedical technology holds the promise of extending human life spans; however, little research has explored attitudes toward life extension.

Methods: This survey asked young adults (n = 593), younger-old adults (n = 272), and older-old adults (n = 46) whether they would take a hypothetical life extension treatment as well as the youngest and oldest age at which they would wish to live forever.

Results: Age cohorts did not vary in their willingness to use life extension; however, in all three age cohorts, a plurality indicated that they would not use it. Men indicated a higher level of willingness to use the life extension treatment than women. Younger-old and older-old adults indicated that they would prefer to live permanently at an older age than younger adults.

Discussion: If a life extension treatment were to become available that effectively stopped aging, young adults may be likely to use such a treatment to avoid reaching the ages at which older cohorts say they would prefer to live forever.

Keywords: Aging attitudesTechnologyImmortality

Intelligence can be detected but is not found attractive in videos and live interactions; more intelligent people were perceived as more intelligent, but not as funnier

Intelligence can be detected but is not found attractive in videos and live interactions. Julie C. Driebe et al. Evolution and Human Behavior, May 31 2021. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2021.05.002

Abstract: Self-reported mate preferences suggest intelligence is valued across cultures, consistent with the idea that human intelligence evolved as a sexually selected trait. The validity of self-reports has been questioned though, so it remains unclear whether objectively assessed intelligence is indeed attractive. In Study 1, 88 target men had their intelligence measured and based on short video clips were rated on intelligence, funniness, physical attractiveness and mate appeal by 179 women. In Study 2 (N = 763), participants took part in 2 to 5 speed-dating sessions in which their intelligence was measured and they rated each other's intelligence, funniness, and mate appeal. Measured intelligence did not predict increased mate appeal in either study, whereas perceived intelligence and funniness did. More intelligent people were perceived as more intelligent, but not as funnier. Results suggest that intelligence is not important for initial attraction, which raises doubts concerning the sexual selection theory of intelligence.

Keywords: IntelligenceMate choiceSexual selection

What Makes It Difficult to Start an Intimate Relationship: Poor flirting skills, shyness, low confidence coming from worries about looks, not meeting available mates, being too conservative & worrying that they would get hurt

What Makes It Difficult to Start an Intimate Relationship: A Taxonomy of the Reasons. Menelaos Apostolou. Europe's Journal of Psychology, Vol. 17 No. 2 (2021), May 31 2021. https://doi.org/10.5964/ejop.1852

Abstract: Within the context of an evolutionary theoretical framework, the current research attempted to study the reasons that cause difficulties in starting an intimate relationship in the Greek cultural context. In particular, using qualitative research methods (interviews and open-ended questionnaires), Study 1 (N = 205) identified 58 reasons that make it difficult for people to start an intimate relationship. Using an online sample of 1,095 Greek-speaking participants (N = 1,095), Study 2 classified these reasons in 12 factors. More than 80% of the participants indicated that they faced above moderate or severe difficulties in at least one factor, while about 40% faced difficulties in three or more factors. Significant gender and age effects were found across the different factors. Using second order principal components analysis, the 12 factors were classified in three broader domains of difficulties in starting a relationship.

Discussion

In the current research, we identified 58 reasons, which clustered in 12 factors that caused difficulties to individuals in starting an intimate relationship. More than 80% of participants indicated that they faced above moderate or severe difficulties in at least one factor, while about 40% faced difficulties in three or more factors. Significant gender and age effects were also found across the different factors. Using second order principal components analysis, the 12 factors were classified in three broader domains of difficulties in starting a relationship. The low capacity for flirting was the domain in which participants exhibited the most difficulties.

Starting from the latter finding, it appears that the primary difficulty that prevented people in our sample to initiate a relationship, was a limited capacity to approach prospective mates and initiate flirting. This capacity was compromised by poor flirting skills, shyness, low confidence coming from worries about looks, not meeting available mates, but also by being too conservative and worrying that they would get hurt. We argue that the high prevalence of this difficulty is predominantly due to the mismatch problem: Until very recently, in ancestral pre-industrial societies, individuals would get access to mates through force or through arranged marriage, and they would not have to gain such access through initiating flirting. As a consequence, many people did not inherit from their ancestors a good flirting capacity, which is required for getting access to mates in a contemporary context, where mating is not regulated or forced.

With respect to poor flirting skills, a gender difference was found, which was the largest one across the 12 factors, with men indicating more severe difficulty than women. One possible reason is that due to the asymmetry in parental investment, it is usually men who take the initiative to approach women (Buss, 1989, 2017; Trivers, 1972). Thus, flirting skills are more important to men, and so lacking such skills may cause them more severe difficulties. Another reason can be that, in ancestral societies men gained access to women through force (Ghiglieri, 1999; Tooby & Cosmides, 1988), and they have evolved to be aggressive and rough, which would facilitate them to do so. Yet, such traits are impairing when a man tries to initiate flirting.

Moving on, finding an intimate partner involves adjusting mating standards to realistic levels and use resources such as time and effort effectively. In the ancestral pre-industrial context, a great part of the choosing was made by parents, so mechanisms involved in mating effort and selection of mates may not have been properly adjusted to work well in a context where individuals have to find mates on their own. As a consequence, several people today may have unreasonably high standards, which drive them toward mates they can never get, rejecting mates that they could get. In addition, they may devote their energy in endeavors, such as making money, leaving little time for seeking mates.

This domain does not reflect only the mismatch problem, but also the optimal functioning of mechanisms that have evolved to facilitate mate choice. To begin with, being choosy may lead to people rejecting several mates before settling with one, having to stay single for some time. Nevertheless, because settling with the first mate that comes in someone’s way, is unlikely to be optimal—such a mate may lack desirable traits—being choosy constitutes an effective mechanism that can lead to better and more long-lasting intimate relationships. Thus, many people may tend to interpret being picky as a constraint from starting a relationship, which actually constrains them from starting a relationship with no prospects, giving them time to look for one which has prospects.

Similarly, because people are choosy, it would pay for mate-seekers to develop the qualities which are considered desirable before entering in the mating market. For instance, being educated, having a good job, and being financially independent, are highly desirable in the mating market (Buss, 2017; Buss et al., 1990), but require considerable resources, such as money and time, in order to be developed. Accordingly, one possible beneficial strategy would be to allocate these resources in developing these qualities instead of seeking mates, and to enter in the mating market at a later time, having better chances of success. In the meantime, people may not have sufficient time, money or willingness to start a relationship, which albeit constraining in starting a relationship now, may be enabling in starting one at a future time.

This argument can be seen also in the significant gender difference in the “Too picky” factor which loads in this domain. Women gave significantly higher scores than men, suggesting that pickiness made it more difficult for them to start a relationship. Yet, due to the risk of pregnancy, a sexual encounter can commit a woman’s parental investment to a man who is unwilling to invest to her and to her children, a risk that men do not face. Women have evolved to be choosier than men as a way to protect them from such a risk (Buss, 2017). Consequently, women are likely to reject more potential mates than men before settling with one, resulting in more time being single, and so to be more likely to report pickiness as a reason that keeps them back from starting a relationship.

The “Constraints” domain appeared to be the least important one, preventing individuals from starting a relationship. This is expected, as severe health problems and handicaps are rare. In addition, health problems in particular arise usually at an older age, where individuals are not active mate-seekers. Moreover, being homosexual was another constraining factor. In Study 1, individuals indicated that being homosexual prevented them from starting a relationship because they were in the closet, or had difficulties in meeting other homosexual individuals. Yet, the prevalence of homosexuality is the population is about 5% (LeVay, 2010), which can explain why this was not a frequent reason in our sample.

The current research is not without limitations. To begin with, our sample is not representative of the population; for instance, single individuals are overrepresented. One possible reason is that those who were single would be more interested in participating in our study. In addition, our research was based on self-report data, and participants may not have had an adequate understanding of the reasons that caused them difficulties in starting a relationship. Furthermore, to our knowledge, this is the first study that has attempted to study the reasons that cause difficulties in starting a relationship. From the results of a single study, we cannot be certain neither that the factor structure we have derived here is the true one nor that we have identified all the reasons that cause difficulties in starting a relationship. Considerable replication and extension of the current work is required, in order to understand the reasons which prevent people from staring a relationship.

Replication in different cultural contexts is also necessary, because our findings are based on the Greek culture, and may not readily apply to other cultures. In particular, the factor structure and the importance assigned to each factor may differ across cultural settings. For instance, in cultural settings where marriages are arranged, the flirting capacity is unlikely to be the most important factor preventing people from starting an intimate relationship. On the other hand, in cultural settings where people find their own partners, the flirting capacity would an important factor preventing people from staring an intimate relationship.

In sum, the current study identified several reasons which constrained people from starting an intimate relationship. These reasons were classified in broader factors and domains, and sex and age effects were also found. Considerable more work is necessary however, in order to fully understand this complex phenomenon.

Rolf Degen summarizing... Mask wearers surrounded by mask wearers had the impression that the mask made others "stranger" than themselves

About the Acceptance of Wearing Face Masks in Times of a Pandemic. Claus-Christian Carbon. i-Perception, May 30, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1177/20416695211021114

Abstract: Wearing face masks in times of COVID-19 is one of the essential keystones for effectively decreasing the rate of new infections and thus for mitigating the negative consequences for individuals as well as for society. Acceptance of wearing masks is still low in many countries, making it extremely difficult to keep the pandemic at bay. In an experimental study, participants (N = 88) had to assess how strange they felt when wearing a face mask while being exposed to displays of groups of varying numbers of mask wearers. Three different types of face masks were shown: simple homemade masks, FFP2 masks, and loop scarfs. The higher the frequency of people wearing masks in the displayed social group, the less strange the participants felt about themselves, an essential precondition for accepting wearing masks. This effect of a descriptive social norm was particularly effective when people saw others wearing less intrusive masks, here, simple homemade masks.

Keywords: perceived strangeness, social acceptance, COVID-19, virus, face masks, psychology, pandemic

Discussion

Wearing face masks in times of COVID-19 is one of the essential keystones for effectively decreasing the rate of new infections and for mitigating the negative consequences for individuals as well as for society. Wearing masks does not belong to natural human’s habits and is still not easily acceptable for many people (Wong, 2020) and has been emerged as a political issue (Rabinovitch-Fox, 2020)—many people just feel strange when wearing masks (Robb, 2021) and therefore will not follow recommendations to put on masks in public. Here, we tested how the mere exposure to people in the social environment who do or do not wear masks can dramatically change the feeling of strangeness when wearing a mask oneself.

It is of particular interest that the number of mask wearers had dissociative effects on both dependent variables employed in the present study: The participants experienced the idea of wearing masks themselves as less and less strange when more people in the shown social group wore face masks as well. At the same time, however, they kept perceiving the other mask wearers in the displayed social group as strange, especially when they wore loop scarfs, in this case, black, loop scarfs. We suggest that this dissociation of effects is the outcome of two different mechanisms that are at work here: A more perceptual one and a more cognitive (normative) one. To illustrate this, we would like to give an example: Imagine you are invited by a good friend who grew up in Venice to visit his/her beautiful hometown to which you have never been. You travel to Venice, and upon arriving there in a small taxi boat, you realise that the world-famous Carnival of Venice is well underway. People all around you, including your friend who is welcoming you at the landing stage, are wearing the typical, highly elaborate masks. You were not prepared for the festival, so you do not have a mask. You will, most probably, experience the following: The people around you will appear somewhat strange to you—this mainly perceptual effect is based on an insufficient familiarity with the specific disguise. Furthermore, with such masks on, we cannot rely anymore on typical processes which we effortlessly use in normal, everyday life without any masks, for example, reading the emotional state (Carbon, 2020) and further mental states (Schmidtmann et al., 2020) of others by merely processing the holistic facial information. Yet, you will probably feel less strange about yourself as soon as you put on a mask as well—this effect traces back to the descriptive social norm that is established by the outward appearance (the shared dress code) of the majority of people around you in this specific situation. This effect of taking social norms into account is a cognitively based effect. It is important to understand this perceptuo-cognitive dissociation because it is not limited to wearing masks: We often adopt descriptive social norms that are signalled by the empirical conditions of present situations, and we try to behave like the others around us, but this does not necessarily mean that we like or would principally endorse this behaviour as well. In the present experiment, the perception of others as being strange was particularly strong for loop scarfs and FFP2 masks. The loop scarfs resemble so-called bandanas—may be because of negative connotations triggered by the resemblance with the cliché masking of bank robbers in movies or cartoons. The FFP2 masks, at least at the early phase of the pandemic when this study was conducted, were obviously also seen as being strange—but probably due to another phenomenon: Most people were unfamiliar with this kind of mask which should have fundamentally changed meanwhile due to the everyday usage of such masks.

So, which masks seem to be optimal for everyday usage? From a physical (Verma et al., 2020), mathematical (Mittal et al., 2020) as well as a medical (Chu et al., 2020) perspective, there are clear answers to this question: The mask should be capable of filtering a maximum of airborne particles, so the certified face masks with FFP2 (N95; filtering at least 95% of airborne particles, if they show a diameter of at least 100 nm; O'Dowd et al., 2020) and FFP3 (N99; 99%) filtering levels seem to be the best (O'Dowd et al., 2020). From a psychological perspective, the answer might differ. In the present study, we observed least perceived strangeness when observing other people wearing less intrusive masks, concretely simple self-made masks, while loop scarfs and FFP2 masks showed higher levels of perceived strangeness in this respect. Meanwhile, participants did not feel particularly strange themselves, actually even a bit less strange than the others shown as a social group. Such simple face masks offer a series of other advantages: First, they are relatively easy and comfortable to use (Yao et al., 2019), they can be easily and privately produced by simple means, and they are cheap enough to equip many people around the globe in high quantity and fresh quality. Second, as the suggestions for wearing masks for private persons refer to the protection of others and because there is no clear evidence of a difference in protecting others between simple masks and FFP2/N95 masks (Jefferson et al., 2020), simple masks prevent a shortage of professional medical masks that should be primarily reserved for medical workers. Third, in our study, the simple masks showed the highest acceptance rate in terms of feeling least odd when imaging wearing such a mask. This is an important precondition to face masks actually being worn in different situations and over a longer period (see MacIntyre et al., 2009; MacIntyre & Chughtai, 2015), especially by non-medical workers (Matusiak et al., 2020). Furthermore, they do not emit large amounts of microplastic fibres as one-way masks might do (Fadare & Okoffo, 2020). Of course, such general ideas should be adjusted for specific contexts and fields of applications, for example, it was shown that wearing masks has race-specific effects on other perceivers (Christiani et al., in press). This last point also calls for extensions of such studies as we only tested a relatively narrow sample employing White European faces only wearing three different types of face masks that were popular and available in April 2020. For instance, there are reports and societally meaningful discussions on interactive effects between wearing specific masks and ethnic background and the morphological group of the wearer, for example, black bandanas worn by people of colour which triggered racial stereotypes (Ray, 2020). This should be systematically analysed to understand and to counteract against such mechanisms.

In general, our results will also assist policymakers in predicting the future acceptance of wearing masks in which generally more people comply with these new hygienic practices, following role models wearing masks and propagating them instead of denying and problematising them (Hornsey et al., 2020).

Women with higher creativity (ideational fluency) had higher mate appeal; intelligence and emotional competence did not significantly predict appeal; perceived abilities seem more relevant for attraction than measured ones

What you see is what you want to get: Perceived abilities outperform objective test performance in predicting mate appeal in speed dating. Gabriela Hofer et al. Journal of Research in Personality, May 30 2021, 104113. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2021.104113

Highlights

• Women with higher creativity (ideational fluency) had higher mate appeal.

• Intelligence and emotional competence did not significantly predict mate appeal.

• More substantial effects were found for speed-dating ratings of the same abilities.

• Controlling for physical attractiveness further reduced effects of abilities.

• Perceived abilities seem to be more relevant for attraction than measured ones.

Abstract: Are intelligent, creative, and emotionally competent people more desirable? Evolution-based theories and studies on the ideal partner suggest that they are. We aimed to assess whether verbal, numerical, and spatial intelligence, creativity, and intra- and interpersonal emotional competence are associated with higher real-life mate appeal. In speed dates, 87 women and 88 men met up to 14 members of the opposite sex (2188 observations). While only one measured ability—women’s creativity—was significantly associated with mate appeal, ability perceptions by speed-dating partners could broadly predict mate appeal. Effects of perceived and measured abilities were substantially reduced after controlling for physical attractiveness. These results suggest that the investigated abilities play a lesser role in initial attraction than proposed in the past.

Keywords: mate appealintelligencecreativityemotional competenceperceived abilitiesspeed datingperson perceptionsocial relations modeling

Individuals high in narcissism have “thin skins” and are prone to aggression when they are provoked; these results suggest that narcissism is an important risk factor for aggression and violence

Kjærvik, S. L., & Bushman, B. J. (2021). The link between narcissism and aggression: A meta-analytic review. Psychological Bulletin, May 2021. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000323

Abstract: This meta-analytic review examines the link between narcissism and aggression, and whether the link is stronger under provocation conditions. A total of 437 independent studies were located, which included 123,043 participants. Narcissism was related to both aggression (r = .26, [.24, .28]) and violence (r = .23, [.18, .27]). As expected, the narcissism-aggression link was stronger under provocation conditions (r = .29, [.23, .36]) than under no provocation conditions (r = .12, [.05, .18]), but was even significant in the absence of provocation. Both “normal” and “pathological” narcissism were related to aggression. All three dimensions of narcissism (i.e., entitlement, grandiose narcissism, vulnerable narcissism) were related to aggression. Narcissism was related to all forms of aggression (i.e., indirect, direct, displaced, physical, verbal, bullying), and to both functions of aggression (i.e., reactive, proactive). The relation between narcissism and aggression was significant for males and females, for people of all ages, for students and nonstudents, and for people from individualistic and collectivistic countries. Significant results were obtained in experimental, cross-sectional, and longitudinal studies, in published and unpublished studies, and in studies that assessed aggression using different types of measures (i.e., self-report, other-report, observation). Overall results were robust to publication bias and the presence of outliers. Theoretically, these results indicate that provocation is a key moderator of the link between narcissism and aggression. Individuals high in narcissism have “thin skins” and are prone to aggression when they are provoked. Practically, these results suggest that narcissism is an important risk factor for aggression and violence.

Gut reactions were harsher and behavioral intentions linked to action were stronger when the error was made by an algorithm compared to human error; irrespective of error severity or info about algorithm maturity

To err is human, not algorithmic – Robust reactions to erring algorithms. Laetitia A. Renier, Marianne Schmid, Mast Anely Bekbergenova. Computers in Human Behavior, May 30 2021, 106879. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2021.106879

Highlights

• Reactions toward erring algorithms go beyond algorithm aversion.

• Gut reactions were harsher and behavioral intentions linked to action were stronger when the error was made by an algorithm.

• Justice cognitions were weaker when the error was made by an algorithm.

• Observed effects were immune to the domain of use, the severity of the error, and information about algorithm maturity.

Abstract: When seeing algorithms err, we trust them less and decrease using them compared to after seeing humans err; this is called algorithm aversion. This paper builds on the algorithm aversion literature and the third-party reactions to mistreatment model to investigate a wider array of reactions to erring algorithms. Using an experimental design deployed with a vignette-based online study, we investigate gut reactions, justice cognitions, and behavioral intentions toward erring algorithms (compared to erring humans). Our results show that when the error was committed by an algorithm (vs. a human), gut reactions were harsher (i.e., less acceptance and more negative feelings), justice cognitions weaker (i.e., less blame, less forgiveness, and less accountability), and behavioral intentions stronger. These results remain independent of factors such as the maturity of the algorithms (better than or same as human performance), the severity of the error (high or low), and the domain of use (recruitment or finance). We discuss how these results complement the current literature thanks to a robust and more nuanced pattern of reactions to erring algorithms.

Keywords: Algorithm aversionArtificial intelligenceErrorReactionsPerceptionThird-party

An honesty oath leads to more truth telling; liars need more time to decide under oath

How the honesty oath works: Quick, intuitive truth telling under oath. Tobias Beck. Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, May 29 2021, 101728. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socec.2021.101728

Highlights

• An honesty oath leads to more truth telling

• The additional truth tellers under oath decide very fast

• Liars need more time to decide under oath

• The oath reduces the extent of strategic reasoning in the decision whether to tell the truth or not

• The honesty oath works by making the decision to tell the truth more intuitive and less deliberate

Abstract: This study analyzes the workings of oath-taking when the decision about lying requires strategic thinking. In a laboratory experiment, the oath leads to more truth telling, but it does not make liars reduce the sizes of their lies. While truth tellers decide faster due to the oath, liars need more time to decide under oath. By analyzing players’ beliefs about their co-players’ mistrust, I find that the oath reduces the extent of strategic reasoning in the decision whether to tell the truth or not. These findings are consistent with the conjecture that the honesty oath works by making the decision to tell the truth less deliberate and more intuitive.

Keywords: Honesty oathStrategic deceptionTruth tellingSize of the lieLaboratory experiment

People often overestimate their past mobility, strongly believe in their future one, & think that The American Dream is alive for them and their families more than it is for others or the country as a whole

The psychology of lay beliefs about economic mobility. Shai Davidai, Margaux N. A. Wienk. Social and Personality Psychology Compass, May 28 2021. https://doi.org/10.1111/spc3.12625

Abstract: Although economic mobility is an objectively defined term, lay beliefs about mobility—the configuration of ideas and attitudes about economic mobility that is not necessarily grounded in economic data—are often formed in a subjective manner. Drawing on research from the United States and beyond, we propose a novel framework for understanding how people construe, think about, and understand economic mobility. We highlight the importance of systematically examining the type, time frame, trajectory, and target of mobility that people have in mind for understanding when they most and least strongly believe in it. In addition, our framework offers a conceptual roadmap for examining the factors that influence lay beliefs about mobility, including individual differences in these lay beliefs and their important downstream consequences. Finally, we outline several important open questions that are highlighted by our framework as a guide for future research on lay beliefs about economic mobility.

Granddaughter’s intimacy with maternal grandmothers was significantly higher and with paternal grandfathers significantly lower than with other grandparents than with other grandparents

Which grandparent is more intimate? The effects of the gender of grandchildren. Mengjie Tu, Hongpo Zhang, Yafei Guo, Lin Zhang, Xinhui Wei & Quanlei Yu. Current Psychology, May 25 2021. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12144-021-01890-6

Abstract: Mothers have almost 100% certainty of their relationship with their offspring, but fathers face paternal uncertainty, which affects not only parental investment but also grandparents’ investment in grandchildren. However, due to Chinese patriarchal culture and preference for sons, grandparents may give their grandchildren different investments by gender. To explore the psychological and behavioral mechanisms of grandparents’ emotional investment in grandchildren from both cultural and evolutionary perspectives, this study collected data from 642 Chinese participants who had impressions of all four grandparents and measured their relationships with their grandparents and other demographic variables. After controlling for the number of grandchildren, participant’s age, region, etc., a significant interaction between the grandchild’s gender and grandparent categories was found. Simple effect analysis and post-hoc analysis showed significant differences in grandsons’ intimacy with maternal grandmothers and grandfathers, but no other grandparents, while granddaughter’s intimacy with maternal grandmothers was significantly higher and with paternal grandfathers significantly lower than with other grandparents, and there were no other significant differences. Those results support human psychology and behavior are jointly influenced by evolution and culture.

Millions of People's Location Data Revealed a 'Universal' Pattern In Study: The universal visitation law of human mobility

The universal visitation law of human mobility. Markus Schläpfer, Lei Dong, Kevin O’Keeffe, Paolo Santi, Michael Szell, Hadrien Salat, Samuel Anklesaria, Mohammad Vazifeh, Carlo Ratti & Geoffrey B. West. Nature, volume 593, pages522–527. May 26 2021. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-03480-9

Abstract: Human mobility impacts many aspects of a city, from its spatial structure1,2,3 to its response to an epidemic4,5,6,7. It is also ultimately key to social interactions8, innovation9,10 and productivity11. However, our quantitative understanding of the aggregate movements of individuals remains incomplete. Existing models—such as the gravity law12,13 or the radiation model14—concentrate on the purely spatial dependence of mobility flows and do not capture the varying frequencies of recurrent visits to the same locations. Here we reveal a simple and robust scaling law that captures the temporal and spatial spectrum of population movement on the basis of large-scale mobility data from diverse cities around the globe. According to this law, the number of visitors to any location decreases as the inverse square of the product of their visiting frequency and travel distance. We further show that the spatio-temporal flows to different locations give rise to prominent spatial clusters with an area distribution that follows Zipf’s law15. Finally, we build an individual mobility model based on exploration and preferential return to provide a mechanistic explanation for the discovered scaling law and the emerging spatial structure. Our findings corroborate long-standing conjectures in human geography (such as central place theory16 and Weber’s theory of emergent optimality10) and allow for predictions of recurrent flows, providing a basis for applications in urban planning, traffic engineering and the mitigation of epidemic diseases.

Popular version: Millions of People's Location Data Revealed a 'Universal' Pattern In Study https://www.vice.com/amp/en/article/epnzkm/millions-of-peoples-location-data-revealed-a-universal-pattern-in-study

Wisdom: When thinking about others, we often take a perspective of an impartial observer, a third person viewing the events from afar; it seems a good idea to work on our issues from a distant observer perspective

Grossmann, Igor. 2021. “Wisdom: Situational, Dispositional, or Both?.” PsyArXiv. May 28. doi:10.31234/osf.io/q2whm

Abstract: Some people think wisdom is a stable and invariable individual disposition. Others view wisdom as deeply embedded in culture, experiences, and situations, and treat these features as mutually making up wisdom. Who is right and what are the implications for measurement, training and the fundamental (essentialist vs. constructivist) nature of wisdom itself? In this chapter, we will review evidence concerning the dispositional versus situational approaches to study wisdom. Even though main features of wisdom show some stability, there is also a profound and systematic variability in response to situational demands. We will also learn about a novel theoretical framework, conceptualizing dispositions as a distribution of situation-specific responses, thereby resolving the dispositional versus situational debate on the nature of wisdom. Drawing on these insights, we will conclude by reflect on recommendations for best measurement practices and ways to boost and train wisdom in everyday life.

Boosting and training wisdom

One of the most exciting implications of cross-situational variability in wisdom is that we can possibly shape situations to our benefit. Here, the insight about wisdom being lower when dealing with personal issues appears troublesome: In many domains of our lives, we cannot always defer decisions to someone else. What to do? As we discussed earlier when introducing the idea of naïve realism in perception of reality, people tend to subjectively represent and construct the events they encounter ⁸. The notion of subjective construal can help shed possible light on the difference in wisdom when reflecting on person- and non-person-centric situations. Ethan Kross and I reasoned that the reason wisdom appeared heighted in reflection on non-personal challenges concerns a particular vantage point one adopts when construing other people’s problems compared to personal problems. When thinking about others, we often take a perspective of an impartial observer, a third person viewing the events from a far. In contrast, when we reflect on personal issues we typically do so from an immersed, first-person perspective. If this difference in the subjective vantage point is elemental for the self-other asymmetry in manifest wisdom, it may be possible to boost wisdom in reflection on personal issues by construing personal situations as an “impartial observer.”

We first sought to test this idea in the context of job prospects at the peak of "great recession" in the U.S., asking college seniors, none of whom had a secured job at this point, to consider their future career prospects ⁴³. Participants were randomly assigned to two conditions. In one condition, we instructed participants to reflect on their job prospects from a perspective of a "distant observer," envisioning the situation unfolding from a far. In the control condition, seniors envisioned the situation unfolding before their own eyes. What we found is that compared to the control group, the “distant observer” instructions prompted greater wisdom – greater recognition of limits of their knowledge and consideration of things may unfold and change. In follow-up set of experiments, we showed equivalent results when instructing participants to reflect on a polarized political issue at a peak of 2008 U.S. presidential election ⁴³, trust and infidelity conflicts ¹⁰, and personal autobiographical experiences – i.e., recent unresolved conflicts people experienced in their own lives ^44,45. In each case, linguistic and temporal prompts promoting a distant observer vantage point (e.g., by using a third-person language “he”/”she” or perspective of “one year from now”) fostered wisdom (recognition of the limits of one's knowledge and recognition of change) in reflections on hypothetical and autobiographical issues compared to prompts promoting an immersed vantage point (e.g., by using a first-person language “me”/”mine” or a perspective of “here and now”). Moreover, using this manipulation, we were able to attenuate the self-other asymmetry discussed above. That is, observer vantage point led to greater wisdom for both personal and a friend’s problems, reducing self-other asymmetry ^{10; Studies 2-3}. It appears that experimental instructions altered the perception of the situation—from exclusively self-focused to a situation considering viewpoints of other persons involved, in turn recreating wisdom-enhancing contexts in one's mind. Overall, it appears that a wide range of construal-altering instructions (see Figure 4) increases participants' ability for applied central features of wisdom in hypothetical and real-world situations, both in the context of interpersonal and intergroup conflicts.

fig 4

Can the distanced observer construal be trained to promote changes in wisdom over time? Building on the insights from the contextual view of wisdom, my colleagues and I decided to address this question ⁴⁶. Given that people experience a range of issues in their lives, we reasoned that an effective shift in subjective construal toward a vantage point of an impartial observer requires repeated practice of wisdom-enhancing strategies over time. In turn, practice-driven shifts in subjective construal should promote greater wisdom after the practice. We tested this idea in a set of randomized control trial (RCT) intervention. In each study, participants reflected on their interpersonal conflicts twice – before and after the intervention, and we analyzed their reflections for presence of wisdom-related themes. In-between these measurement points, participants were randomly assigned to the third-person intervention condition or the first-person control condition (in the second study we also added no instruction control condition). In each condition, participants were instructed to keep a diary, each day writing a short reflection on the most significant (positive or negative) issue of the day. Based on the earlier experimental work, in the intervention condition participants had to write the diary using third-person language, reflecting on the event from an observer perspective. In the control condition(s), participants wrote their diary in a first-person, as one would typically do. Figure 5 shows the results we saw in the first study, which demonstrate that this month-long intervention impacted a range of features of wisdom, resulting in post-intervention growth in wisdom in the third-person condition compared to the control condition. These results were statistically accounted by a shift toward more inclusive subjective construal of the interpersonal conflicts participants reflected on in the experimental conditions. In the spirit of humility, it is worth highlighting that these training results are preliminary and require further replications and extensions to other cultures. None the less, they are encouraging, for the first time providing empirical support from randomized control trials for training-based shifts in wisdom over time.

fig 5

Larger is not better: No mate preference by European Common Frog (Rana temporaria) males; plus large rate of failures to mate

Larger is not better: No mate preference by European Common Frog (Rana temporaria) males. Carolin Dittrich, Oliver Roumldel. bioRxiv, May 28 2021. https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.05.28.446140

Abstract: According to classical sexual selection theory, females are the choosy sex in most species. Choosiness is defined as the individual effort to invest energy and time to assess potential mates. In explosive breeding anurans, high intrasexual competition between males leads to a sexual coercion ruled mating system, where males could have evolved preferences for specific female traits. In the current study, we tested male mating preference in the explosive breeding European Common Frog without intrasexual competition. We hypothesized that males show preferences towards larger female body size in the absence of male competition. We conducted mate choice experiments, placing a male and two differently sized females in a box and recorded their mating behavior. Males did not show any preference considering female body size, neither in the attempt to grab a female nor during the formation of pairs. We witnessed a high failure rate of male mating attempts, which might make the evolution of mate choice too costly. However, small males are faster in attempting females, which could be an alternative strategy to get access to females, because their larger competitors have an advantage during scramble competition. Nonetheless, in successfully formed pairs, the females were on average larger than the males, an observation which deviated from our null-model where pairs should be of similar size if mating would be random. This indicates that selection takes place, independent from male mating preference or scramble competition.

26 Introduction

27 Research on sexual selection, exploring the mechanisms that lead to female/male mate choice and the evolution of 

28 different mating systems that facilitate non-random mating, has increased considerably in recent years (Janetos 1980; 

29 Ryan and Keddy-Hector 1992; Paul 2002; Edward and Chapman 2011). Studies addressing the theory of sexual 

30 selection revealed that females are the choosy sex in most species. This is mainly based on one assumption, the 

31 evolution of anisogamy, where males produce many small (cheap) gametes and females less but larger (expensive) 

32 gametes. Thus, females invest more energy in the production of eggs than males invest in the production of sperm 

33 (Trivers 1972). In consequence, reproduction is more costly to females and they should choose the 'fittest' male to 

34 mate with. This includes those with the best possible genes to improve her offspring’s fitness and/or those who can 

35 provide vital resources (e.g. territory, nesting place, food, parental care) to increase offspring survivability and 

36 attractiveness, thereby increasing the female´s personal fitness (Fisher 1958; Hedrick 1988; Møller and Alatalo 

37 1999). Here, choosiness is defined as an individual’s active effort to invest energy and time to assess potential mates, 

38 whereas preference is defined as an intrinsic, passive attractiveness towards specific traits of the opposite sex 

39 (Jennions and Petrie 1997; Cotton et al. 2006). However, female preferences can be overridden by dominant 

40 intrasexual competition (Qvarnström and Forsgren 1998; Härdling and Kokko 2005; Formica et al. 2016). 

41 Preferences can enhance the evolution of different mating strategies and tactics to increase reproductive output with 

42 behavioral plasticity; depending on sex, age, physiological state or operational sex ratio (Parker 1982; Gross 1996). 

43 Nevertheless, newer studies suggest that males can be choosy too, if mate availability is high and simultaneous 

44 sampling possible (Barry and Kokko 2010), if there is variation in female quality/fecundity (Krupa 1995; Johnstone 

45 et al. 1996), and if the benefits of choosing between females is higher then the costs associated with assessing 

46 females (Edward and Chapmann 2011, and references therein). Some prerequisites are the presence of males’ ability 

47 to detect differences and a preference for particular female traits. Body size can be such a trait, i.e. indicating 

48 longevity based on good genes which could be heritable (Kokko and Lindström 1996; Møller and Alatalo 1999). 

49 However, body size usually is based on a variety of genes and environmental processes, but might simply indicate 

50 higher fecundity (Peters 1986; Shine 1988; Nali et al. 2014). Mating with a larger female thus may increase a male’s 

51 individual fitness. A male’s choice however, should not only be based on such trivial correlation, it will be impacted 

52 by trade-offs concerning its mating chances, and thus individual males indeed may follow very different strategies to 

53 access females. Some examples of male tactics are satellite males, usually being smaller than their competitors (Arak 

54 1983; Halliday and Tejedo 1995), mate-guarding (Parker 1974), prudent mate choice (Fawcett and Johnstone 2003; 

55 Härdling and Kokko 2005), clutch piracy (Vieites et al. 2004) or even functional necrophilia (Izzo et al. 2012). 

56 Mating systems in amphibians are diverse, and apart from environmental parameters, mostly depend on female 

57 availability over time (Wells 2007). In frog and toad species (anurans) with long breeding periods (prolonged 

58 breeders) female mate choice seems to be the rule (Wells 1977). At any given time, a few females actively choose 

59 among many calling males, often based on call characteristics (Toledo et al. 2015; Ryan et al. 2019), the quality of 

60 defended territories, or the availability of other resources to judge the males (Howard 1978; Kirkpatrick and Ryan 

61 1991; Kokko and Jennions 2008; da Rocha et al. 2018). In lek-breeding anurans, the males aggregate in displaying 

62 arenas that do not contain any resources required by females. Females visiting these arenas 'sample' several males 

63 and choose a male to mate with (Bourne 1992). In lek-mating systems the operational sex ratio is highly skewed 

64 towards males and individual males are not able to monopolize females, leading to higher intrasexual competition 

65 (Emlen and Oring 1977). In contrast, in species with a short breeding period (explosive breeders) males are actively 

66 searching for mates and engage in direct male-male competition over the arriving females. Explosive breeding is 

67 characterized by an almost equal operational sex ratio, synchronized receptiveness of females and low sexual 

68 selection (Emlen and Oring 1977). In theory all males are able to mate and reproduce, but larger/more dominant 

69 males have an advantage to access and dominate receptive females during scramble competition leading to a 

70 variation in male mating success (Berven 1981; Olson et al. 1986; Höglund 1989; Vagi and Hettyey 2016). 

71 Therefore, some males are considered to sexually dominate the females in explosive breeding systems, leaving little 

72 room for male and female mate choice if the cost for mate sampling are too high (Dechaume-Moncharmont et al. 

73 2016). Nevertheless, male mate preferences could have evolved in explosive breeders, because female fecundity 

74 highly dependents on female body size in most anuran species (Krupa 1995; Nali et al. 2014). Simultaneous 

75 sampling of preferred females might be particular possible during the peak mating time because female availability 

76 should then be highest (Arntzen 1999; Barry and Kokko 2006). All males should prefer larger females to increase 

77 their own fitness according to adaptation theory, although preferences could be obscured by high intrasexual 

78 competition. On the other hand, costs associated with mate choice depend on male density and the frequency of 

79 different mating tactics within a breeding aggregation (Arak 1983; Höglund and Robertson 1988), as well as for 

80 instance male’s individual predation risk (Magnhagen 1991; Bernal et al. 2007), all factors which may vary already 

81 during a short breeding season (Olson et al. 1986; Vojar et al. 2015). 

82 In this study, we investigate the mating preference of the European Common Frog (Rana temporaria) because it is an 

83 excellent example of an explosive breeder with male-male competition. Although former studies suggest a lack of 

84 male mate preferences in this species (Elmberg 1991), we observed non-random mating by body size and found 

85 indications of male mate preference and different mating tactics in former experiments (Dittrich et al. 2018). Larger 

86 females were paired more frequently than smaller ones and smaller sized males showed a different mating tactic to 

87 get access to females (Dittrich et al. 2018). Here, we hypothesize that all males will prefer larger females 

88 independent of their own body size, when intrasexual competition is absent and males are presented to differently 

89 sized females. Additionally, we predict small males to be faster in attempting a female to increase their chances to 

90 keep an exclusive access to the female during scramble competition

The Cartesian Folk Theater: People believe that consciousness happens in a single, confined area (vs. multiple dispersed areas) in the human brain, and that it (partly) happens after the brain finished analyzing all available information(partly) happens after the brain finished analyzing all available information

Forstmann, Matthias, and Pascal Burgmer. 2021. “The Cartesian Folk Theater: People Conceptualize Consciousness as a Spatio-temporally Localized Process in the Human Brain.” PsyArXiv. May 28. doi:10.31234/osf.io/9txzd

Abstract: The present research (total N = 2,057) tested whether people’s folk conception of consciousness aligns with the notion of a “Cartesian Theater” (Dennett, 1991). More precisely, we tested the hypotheses that people believe that consciousness happens in a single, confined area (vs. multiple dispersed areas) in the human brain, and that it (partly) happens after the brain finished analyzing all available information. Further, we investigated how these beliefs are related to participants’ neuroscientific knowledge as well as their reliance on intuition, and which rationale they use to explain their responses. Using a computer-administered drawing task, we found that participants located consciousness, but not unrelated neurological processes (Studies 1a & 1b) or unconscious thinking (Study 2) in a single, confined area in the prefrontal cortex, and that they considered most of the brain not involved in consciousness. Participants mostly relied on their intuitions when responding, and they were not affected by prior knowledge about the brain. Additionally, they considered the conscious experience of sensory stimuli to happen in a spatially more confined area than the corresponding computational analysis of these stimuli (Study 3). Furthermore, participants’ explicit beliefs about spatial and temporal localization of consciousness (i.e., consciousness happening after the computational analysis of sensory information is completed) are independent, yet positively correlated beliefs (Study 4). Using a more elaborate measure for temporal localization of conscious experience, our final study confirmed that people believe consciousness to partly happen even after information processing is done (Study 5).

Increasing Population Densities Predict Decreasing Fertility Rates over Time: A 174-nation Investigation

Rotella, Amanda M., Michael E. W. Varnum, PhD, Oliver Sng, and Igor Grossmann. 2020. “Increasing Population Densities Predict Decreasing Fertility Rates over Time: A 174-nation Investigation.” PsyArXiv. August 5. doi:10.31234/osf.io/zpc7t

Abstract: Fertility rates have been declining worldwide over the past fifty years, part of a phenomenon known as “the demographic transition.” Prior work suggests that this decline is related to population density. In the present study, we draw on life history theory to examine the relationship between population density and fertility across 174 countries over 69 years (1950 to 2019). We find a robust association between density and fertility over time, both within- and between-countries. That is, increases in population density are associated with declines in fertility rates, controlling for a variety of socioeconomic, socioecological, geographic, population-based, and female empowerment variables. We also tested predictions about environmental boundary conditions. In harsher living conditions (e.g., higher homicide or pathogen rates), the effect of increased population density on fertility rates was attenuated. The density-fertility association was also moderated by religiousness and strength of social norms, where the relationship between density and fertility was attenuated in countries with high religiosity and strong social norms. We discuss why and when changes in population density may influence fertility rates and the broader implications of this work.