A reduction in state, due to a negative stimulus, reduces fitness more than a positive stimulus of equal objective magnitude increases it, producing a negativity bias due to the difference in subjective stimulus potency

Negativity bias: An evolutionary hypothesis and an empirical programme. John Lazarus. Learning and Motivation, Volume 75, August 2021, 101731. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.lmot.2021.101731

Highlights

• Hypothesis: negativity bias evolves when fitness is a concave function of state.

• Threat explanation of negativity bias unsound if based on incommensurate stimuli.

• Incommensurate stimuli can be studied for bias using the loss aversion paradigm.

• The ‘potency equivalence function’ measures equipotency of incommensurate stimuli.

Abstract: Across many psychological domains there is evidence of negativity bias: the greater subjective potency of negative events when compared with positive events of the same objective magnitude. Here I propose a general evolutionary explanation for the phenomenon: the concave fitness-state (CFS) hypothesis. The CFS hypothesis proposes, with evidence from feeding, drinking and economic domains, that various motivational, emotional and cognitive states – through which stimuli activate responses – have a concave downwards (diminishing returns) relationship with fitness. Where this is the case it follows that <. In discussing other approaches to understanding the phenomenon I critique the proposal that negativity bias can be explained as an adaptive response to the particular importance and urgency of dealing with threat, by arguing that: (1) where negative stimuli interpretable as threat, and contrasting positive stimuli, cannot be measured in a commensurate manner they cannot be validly tested for negativity bias; and (2) since threat stimuli and positive stimuli generally impact different states a greater potency for threat stimuli should generally be interpreted in terms of motivational competition rather than negativity bias. I suggest two ways of circumventing the problem of incommensurate stimuli when studying stimulus bias. The first is to use the loss aversion paradigm: rating the value of the same stimulus when presented as either a gain or a loss in relation to a reference value. Second, understanding the relative subjective potencies of positive and negative stimuli across a range of objective stimulus magnitudes, even when incommensurate, can be achieved experimentally by finding pairs of positive and negative stimuli which, though measured on different scales of magnitude, are equipotent. That is, they have equal and opposite effects on fitness, well-being or stimulus evaluation. These stimulus pairs constitute a potency equivalence function, which describes the shape of the relationship between equipotent positive and negative stimulus magnitudes.

2. Current evolutionary explanations for negativity bias

2.1. Threat

While a number of causal mechanisms have been proposed for the negativity bias phenomenon (Cacioppo, Gardner, & Berntson, 1997; Baumeister et al., 2001; Cacioppo & Berntson, 1994; Kellermann, 1984; Park & Van Leeuwen, 2014; Rozin & Royzman, 2001; Taylor, 1991) there are rather few evolutionary explanations, the dominant idea focussing on threat:

‘To the extent that it is more difficult to reverse the consequences of an injurious or fatal assault than an opportunity unpursued, a propensity to react more strongly to negative than positive stimuli may have developed through the process of natural selection’ (Cacioppo & Berntson, 1994: 413, emphasis added).

‘From our perspective, it is evolutionarily adaptive for bad to be stronger than good. We believe that throughout our evolutionary history, organisms that were better attuned to bad things would have been more likely to survive threats and, consequently, would have increased probability of passing along their genes. As an example, consider the implications of foregoing options or ignoring certain possible outcomes. A person who ignores the possibility of a positive outcome may later experience significant regret at having missed an opportunity for pleasure or advancement, but nothing directly terrible is likely to result. In contrast, a person who ignores danger (the possibility of a bad outcome) even once may end up maimed or dead. Survival requires urgent attention to possible bad outcomes, but it is less urgent with regard to good ones. Hence, it would be adaptive to be psychologically designed to respond to bad more strongly than good.. . . At the broadest level, we argue that bad is stronger than good because responding to the world in this way is adaptive.. . . This argument is admittedly speculative.’ (Baumeister et al., 2001: 325, 357, emphasis added).

‘In the extreme, negative events are more threatening than are positive events beneficial. The clear example here is death, a final, irreversible event. Avoiding risks of death must be a matter of the highest priority in the evolutionary scheme; the peak of vigilance and investment would well be oriented to escape death. It is true that reproduction is the final measure of evolutionary success, but there are usually multiple opportunities to reproduce, and death terminates these options.. . . Negative events often develop more rapidly and require a rapid response. The model, of course, is predator threat.. . . Negative events. . . require a more sophisticated appraisal, because the options for action [related to threat] are more varied [than for]. . . positive entities’ (Rozin & Royzman, 2001: 314).

‘When directly compared or weighted against each other, losses loom larger than gains. This asymmetry between the power of positive and negative expectations or experiences has an evolutionary history. Organisms that treat threats as more urgent than opportunities have a better chance to survive and reproduce’ (Kahneman, 2012: 282).

Others have expressed the same view, including the need for an urgent response to threat stimuli (Norris, 2019: 3; Peeters & Czapinski, 1990: 55; Pratto & John, 1991: 380; Taylor, 1991: 78).

Considered broadly, the impact of threat can be overestimated. In particular, prey animals maintain a level of vigilance to pre-empt the risk of undetected attack and adjust this level in response to changes in predation risk and competing demands (Beauchamp, 2015). Responses to a change in threat level can therefore be subtle and involve little cost. For example, risk increases as group size declines and birds adjust vigilance level accordingly, increasing and decreasing it in response to the stimulus of individuals leaving the group and joining it, respectively (Roberts, 1995). (This also exemplifies the broader point that a response to one stimulus has to be understood in the context of conflicting stimuli and internal states: section 4.2.) Further, the need for urgency emphasised in the above quotes is also crucial for a successful response to some positive events, such as a prey item that needs to be chased and captured, a potential mate that must be courted, or any rewarding stimulus subject to competition with others, and Kahneman (2012: 301) makes a similar point. All this being said, however, and as the emphases in the first two quotes above argue, threat does have a particular potency in that failure to respond efficiently to an imminent attack can reduce fitness greatly and irrecoverably, or be fatal.

But how relevant for the concept of negativity bias is this contrast between threat and the qualitatively different positive events and opportunities of the above quotes that represent what I will call the ‘threat hypothesis’? The positive and negative events here – an opportunity to mate or obtain a resource versus the risk of assault, say – are, it seems, largely both stimulus-incommensurate and, more importantly, state-incompatible. And if the relevant stimuli are stimulus-incommensurate it is difficult to see how their magnitudes can be validly compared using existing methods in order to test for negativity bias (see section 1.2) and thus to test the threat hypothesis itself; in sections 5.2 and 5.3 I suggest techniques that can overcome this problem. In addition, there is a particular problem with the threat hypothesis if used to explain the evolution of choices between actions when state-incompatible positive and negative stimuli are present simultaneously. In this case it seems more valid to explain the outcome in terms of competition between different states for the control of stimulus evaluation and behaviour rather than in terms of stimulus bias and without reference to state (and I use ‘competition’ informally here, rather than in any technical motivational sense; e.g. McFarland, 1974).

This argument holds most clearly for apparently natural behaviours in the real world, the kinds of behaviour imagined in the above quotes arguing for an evolutionary role for threat in the negativity bias phenomenon. But what happens, conceptually, when we bring participants from the real world into the lab and linguistic and visual stimuli carry negative meanings which are measurable in ways that can be shared with positive stimuli? Since this does not in itself make the positive and negative stimuli state-compatible, I would argue that it is not sufficient to validate a negativity bias analysis. Again, the relative potency of different states, rather than of stimuli acting on the same state, is at issue.

And what if the negative attributions in such a lab study were processed by neural systems evolved to deal with threats to the person? Does this change the argument and how far might the threat hypothesis go then in explaining negativity bias across the very disparate domains in which it has been suggested to have a role? Although many negativity bias experiments employ negative stimuli that are not obviously physically threatening some studies seem to suggest that neural processes classify such stimuli as fear inducing. The speed of processing of disagreeable ethical statements (Van Berkum, Holleman, Nieuwland, Otten, & Murre, 2009) is one example. Another is activation of the amygdala, which is associated with the processing of negative emotional stimuli, including threat, but also with positive stimuli (Adolphs, Tranel, Damasio, & Damasio, 1995; Toates, 2007: 318–320). Although amygdala activation occurs during loss aversion – a stronger evaluation against a loss than for an equivalent gain (section 3.3) – I have found evidence for this only for gambles rather than the riskless evaluation typical of the negativity bias literature (De Martino, Camerer, & Adolphs, 2010; Kahn et al., 2002; Sokol-Hessner, Camerer, & Phelps, 2013). Since the amygdala is also responsive to uncertainty without biological relevance (Herry et al., 2007; Hsu, Bhatt, Adolphs, Tranel, & Camerer, 2005) these neural responses to loss aversion in a gambling context may represent heightened vigilance in response to uncertainty (Whalen, 2007) rather than a reaction to threat. And importantly it would be good to know more about neural processing in riskless evaluation more relevant to negativity bias; Garavan, Pendergrass, Ross, Stein, and Risinger (2001) found equal amygdala activation for positive and negative stimuli of roughly matched magnitude.

All this being said, if it turns out that physically innocuous negative stimuli are routinely processed in the same way as threats to the person this still seems to leave these negative stimuli in a qualitatively different and state-incompatible condition to most positive stimuli. And this state-incompatibility is an even stronger reason for concern about the potential over-generalization of the negativity bias phenomenon than that based on stimulus-incommensurateness and pointed out by others (Norris, 2019; Rozin & Royzman, 2001: 300; Taylor, 1991: 68). To repeat, competition seems to be the correct concept when considering the interaction between incompatible states and it would be conceptually preferable to reserve the notion of negativity bias for the phenomenon of bias based on the unequal potency of stimuli of equal objective magnitude.

2.2. Other evolutionary accounts

Park & Van Leeuwen’s (2014: 89–90) asymmetric behavioural homeostasis hypothesis ‘conceptualizes many motivational processes as 1-sided homeostatic mechanisms and. . . predicts that motivational responses. . . amplified by certain cues will not be reversed simply by reversing the input cues. . . [so] that many evolutionarily adaptive. . . responses to fitness threats (e.g., fears, aversions) are more easily inflamed than dampened’.

Rozin and Royzman (2001: 314) point to a class of negative contagious events, ‘[t]he basic model [being] the germ, for which there is not an obvious positive parallel’ and which has ‘by a process of preadaptation, spread through other domains of life (such as morality)’.

Finally, when there is uncertainty about the nature or existence of events, adaptive decisions will take account not only of their likely consequence, good or bad, but also of their likelihood of occurrence. Signal detection theory and error management theory then provide the methods for calculating the potency of stimuli and any cognitive biases that emerge from best responses. Negativity bias may then be predicted for events including threatening stimuli, contaminants and biases in interpersonal perception (Haselton & Nettle, 2006).

2.3. Conclusion

A number of evolutionary accounts of negativity bias, of varying degrees of potential generality, have been provided.

In the following section I propose an evolutionary hypothesis to explain negativity bias which is potentially of wide generality, and in section 3.3 I consider the relationship between this hypothesis and some other accounts of negativity bias, evolutionary, psychological and economic. 

Consumers' ratings for restaurants are lower when they went to the restaurants on special occasions, which can be explained by one theory of attribution bias (disappointment of high expectations)

Huang, Ying-Kai, Hope Hurts: Attribution Bias in Yelp Reviews (July 22, 2021). SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3891195

Abstract: This paper incorporates applied econometrics, causal machine learning and theories of reference-dependent preferences to test whether consuming in a restaurant on special occasions, such as one's birthday, anniversary, commencement, etc., would increase people's expectations and would make consumers rate their consumption experiences lower. Furthermore, our study is closely linked to the emerging literature of attribution bias in economics and psychology and provides a scenario where we can test two leading theories of attribution bias empirically. In our paper, we analyzed reviews from Yelp and combined the text analyses with regressions, matching techniques and causal machine learning. Through a series of models, we found evidence that consumers' ratings for restaurants are lower when they went to the restaurants on special occasions. This result can be explained by one theory of attribution bias where people have higher expectations about restaurants on special occasions and then misattribute their disappointment to the quality of the restaurants. From the connection between our empirical analysis and theories of attribution bias, this paper provides another piece of evidence of how attribution bias influences people's perceptions and behaviors.

Keywords: Attribution Bias, Reference Dependence, Online Reviews, Causal Machine Learning

JEL Classification: D91, D83, D12

Great apes exchange signals and gaze before entering and exiting joint actions, actions that resemble those of humans; it seems that joint commitment as process was already present in our last common ancestor with Pan

Assessing joint commitment as a process in great apes. Raphaela Heesen et al. , August 11, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.isci.2021.102872

Highlights

• Great apes exchange signals and gaze before entering and exiting joint actions

• Joint action structure of both ape species resembles that of humans

• Coordinated joint action phases indicate an underlying joint commitment

• Social bonds affect joint action structure more in bonobos than in chimpanzees

Summary: Many social animals interact jointly, but only humans experience a specific sense of obligation toward their co-participants, a joint commitment. However, joint commitment is not only a mental state but also a process that reveals itself in the coordination efforts deployed during entry and exit phases of joint action. Here, we investigated the presence and duration of such phases in N = 1,242 natural play and grooming interactions of captive chimpanzees and bonobos. The apes frequently exchanged mutual gaze and communicative signals prior to and after engaging in joint activities with conspecifics, demonstrating entry and exit phases comparable to those of human joint activities. Although rank effects were less clear, phases in bonobos were more moderated by friendship compared to phases in chimpanzees, suggesting bonobos were more likely to reflect patterns analogous to human “face management”. This suggests that joint commitment as process was already present in our last common ancestor with Pan.

A Covid outbreak that has partially shut one of the world’s busiest container ports (Ningbo-Zhoushan) is heightening concerns that the rapid spread of the delta variant will lead to a repeat of last year’s shipping nightmares

China Port Shutdown Raises Concerns for Global Shipping. Joe Deaux, Yvonne Yue Li, and Ann Koh. Bloomberg. Aug 12 2021. https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2021-08-12/massive-china-port-shutdown-raises-fears-of-closures-worldwide

Port of Los Angeles anticipates disruptions from China’s move

Some shipping companies are diverting vessels from China port

A Covid outbreak that has partially shut one of the world’s busiest container ports is heightening concerns that the rapid spread of the delta variant will lead to a repeat of last year’s shipping nightmares.

The Port of Los Angeles, which saw its volumes dip because of a June Covid outbreak at the Yantian port in China, is bracing for another potential decline because of the latest shutdown at the Ningbo-Zhoushan port in China, a spokesman said. Anton Posner, chief executive officer of supply-chain management company Mercury Resources, said that many companies chartering ships are already adding Covid contract clauses as insurance so they won’t have to pay for stranded ships.

It seemed as if things were just starting to calm down, “and we’re now into delta delays,” Emmanouil Xidias, partner at Ifchor North America LLC, said in a phone interview. “You’re going to have a secondary hit.”

The shutdown at Ningbo-Zhoushan is raising fears that ports around the world will soon face the same kind of outbreaks and Covid restrictions that slowed the flows of everything from perishable food to electronics last year as the pandemic took hold. Infections are threatening to spread at docks just as the world’s shipping system is already struggling to handle unprecedented demand with economies reopening and manufacturing picking up.

Ningbo-Zhoushan Port said in a statement late Thursday that all other terminals aside from Meishan have been operating normally. The port is actively negotiating with shipping companies, directing them to other terminals, and releasing information on a real-time data platform, it said.

To minimize the impact, it’s also adjusting the operating time of other terminals to make sure clients can clear their shipments. A spokesman for the port said there were no further updates when contacted Friday.

About 28 container ships were anchored outside the Ningbo-Zhoushan port area as of Aug. 12 and were waiting for berth space, according to a note from supply-chain intelligence firm project44. Port calls to Ningbo have plummeted to less than 60 ships this week, down 70% from about 200 container vessels last week, the data showed.

Already, Peru is experiencing delays in some crops trade with China, one of its largest trading partners.

“That whole circuit is disrupted when ports are closed due to the pandemic,” said Gabriel Amaro, head of Peru’s agriculture industry group Agap. “What happened at the beginning of the pandemic is repeating.”

The China port shutdown may fuel further increases in freight rates, which have been rising as the shipping industry grapples with bottlenecks during the virus pandemic.

Freight Rates

Diverting ships to other terminals “creates port congestion, which we’ve all been dealing with during Covid,” John Wobensmith, chief executive officer of Genco Shipping & Trading, said in an interview with Bloomberg TV. “And I do see that increasing, which will have the effect of pushing freight rates higher, whether it’s in dry bulks and or the container side.”

The benchmark cost of shipping a container from Shanghai to Los Angeles has tripled over the past year. The Baltic Dry Index of bulk shipping prices has risen more than 10% since mid July.

Some ships that docked at the Meishan terminal before the closure are suspending cargo operations until the terminal re-opens, according to a notice sent by shipping line CMA CGM SA to shippers.

Other vessels which usually call at the Meishan terminal will stop at the Beilun terminal instead, according to a statement Thursday from A.P. Moller-Maersk A/S. One of the company’s ships will skip Ningbo next week, it said.

“We are working on contingency plans in order to mitigate the likely impact on our vessel schedules and cargo operations,” Orient Overseas Container Line, a subsidiary of Orient Overseas International Ltd. container subsidiary said via email.

Uncontained Price Rises

Ningbo city is still considered a low risk virus area, according to the city’s health commission, although flights to and from the capital Beijing have been canceled.

Authorities in Ningbo said the port worker was fully vaccinated with an inactivated vaccine and had the second dose on March 17. The worker was asymptomatic as of Thursday afternoon. He was infected with the delta strain, genetic sequencing showed, and epidemiological investigation shows the worker had come into close contact with sailors of foreign cargo ships.

— With assistance by Yujing Liu, Dong Lyu, Kyunghee Park, Christian Wienberg, Robert Tuttle, Kailey Leinz, Guy Johnson, Maria Cervantes, and James Attwood

Confucian clans enabled pre-industrial China to sustain explosive population growth: Prefectures with stronger clans had significantly higher population density due to better resilience during natural disasters & fewer premature deaths of children

Chen, Zhiwu and Ma, Chicheng, The Confucian Clan as a Risk-Sharing Institution: How Pre-Industrial China Became the Most Populous Nation (June 4, 2021). SSRN: http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3859796

Abstract: We hypothesize that besides technology and resource expansion, risk-mitigation improvements pushed the Malthusian limits to population growth in pre-industrial societies. During 976-1850 CE, China’s population increased by elevenfold while the Confucian clan emerged as the key risk-sharing institution for members. To test our hypothesis using historical data from 269 prefectures, we measure each region’s clan strength by its number of genealogy books compiled. Our results show that prefectures with stronger clans had significantly higher population density due to better resilience during natural disasters and fewer premature deaths of children. Confucian clans enabled pre-industrial China to sustain explosive population growth.

Keywords: Confucianism, clan, population growth, risk-sharing institution, China

JEL Classification: N35, O43, Z12

Deceptive Affection (like faking sexual pleasure, expressing affection when feeling negatively) Is Strategically Expressed Under Relational Threat—but Not Towards Partners with Low Mate Value

Caton, Neil R., and Sean M. Horan. 2021. “Deceptive Affection Is Strategically Expressed Under Relational Threat—but Not Towards Partners with Low Mate Value.” PsyArXiv. August 14. doi:10.31234/osf.io/8wm9j

Abstract: Drawing on data from 1,993 participants, we demonstrated that deceptive affectionate messages (DAMs; e.g., faking sexual pleasure, expressing affection when feeling negatively) are the behavioral output of an evolved psychological system that strategically operates to maintain significant pair bonds (i.e., high mate value partners)—but not non-significant pair bonds (i.e., low mate value partners)—and regulates the expression of this behavioral output depending on an underlying cost-benefit ratio. This system is uniquely and nonrandomly designed to increasingly generate DAMs when the target individual’s highly-valued partnership is under relational threat and increasingly withdraw DAMs when the highly-valued partnership is not under threat—but neither increasingly generate nor withdraw DAMs for non-valuable partnerships—to maximize the benefits afforded by valuable romantic partnerships.

Men were more accurate than women in detecting attraction when they were not interested in their partner compared to when they were interested

The Role of Emotion Projection, Sexual Desire, and Self-Rated Attractiveness in the Sexual Overperception Bias. Iliana Samara, Tom S. Roth & Mariska E. Kret. Archives of Sexual Behavior, Aug 13, 2021. https://rd.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-021-02017-5

Abstract: A consistent finding in the literature is that men overperceive sexual interest in women (i.e., sexual overperception bias). Several potential mechanisms have been proposed for this bias, including projecting one’s own interest onto a given partner, sexual desire, and self-rated attractiveness. Here, we examined the influence of these factors in attraction detection accuracy during speed-dates. Sixty-seven participants (34 women) split in four groups went on a total of 10 speed-dates with all opposite-sex members of their group, resulting in 277 dates. The results showed that attraction detection accuracy was reliably predicted by projection of own interest in combination with participant sex. Specifically, men were more accurate than women in detecting attraction when they were not interested in their partner compared to when they were interested. These results are discussed in the wider context of arousal influencing detection of partner attraction.

Discussion

The present study explored the effects of sex, own interest, sexual desire, and self-rated attractiveness in the overperception bias using a naturalistic speed-dating paradigm. Overall, we found that men were more willing to go out with their partner as compared to women. Importantly, our findings illustrate that projection of own interest influences attraction detection, particularly in men. Specifically, men were more accurate in detecting attraction if they were not interested in their partner compared to when they were. Furthermore, when men were interested in their partner, they overperceived interest more than women. However, there was no difference between sexes when participants were not interested in their partner. Women were approximately 50% accurate in detecting attraction, independent of whether they were interested in their partner or not. Sexual desire and self-rated attractiveness did not influence accuracy in detecting attraction. In the section below, we discuss these results in more detail.

First, we found that men were more likely to indicate that they were interested in going out with their partner again compared to women. This is in line with previous literature across different countries and target samples (i.e., university students and general population) showing a consistent pattern in terms of reduced male selectivity (e.g., Asendorpf et al., 2011; Fisman et al., 2006; Kurzban & Weeden, 2005; Lenton & Francesconi, 2010; McClure et al., 2010; Overbeek et al., 2013; Todd et al., 2007). An explanation could be that men wanted to maximize the number of dates that they could get, consistent with EMT (Haselton & Buss, 2000) which suggests that missing a dating opportunity could be more costly for men than for women. Also, the low likelihood of women indicating that they would like to meet their partner again supports previous findings showing that women are typically choosier than men (Todd et al., 2007; Trivers, 1972). In conclusion, we show that men were more likely than women to decide that they would like to go on another date with their partner supporting the notion that men are slightly less picky regarding dating.

It might be argued that the increased tendency of men to respond positively after a date can be explained by the fact that only men had to rotate between partners in our study. This effect was described by Finkel and Eastwick (2009), who showed that the reduced selectivity is nullified when female participants also rotate between partners. However, a recent meta-analysis showed that the female choosiness effect is robust across studies, and that the rotation effect did not moderate female choosiness (Fletcher et al., 2014), nor has been replicated (e.g., Overbeek et al., 2013). It is therefore unlikely that the partner-rotation effect can explain our findings. Nonetheless, future research should examine whether the sex-rotation-setup modulates the relationship between sex and the sexual overperception bias.

Interestingly, we found that men were more accurate when they were not interested in their partner compared to when they were, whereas women were approximately at 50% independent of their interest in their partner. An explanation for this interaction between sex and projection of own interest might be because of a link between choice biases and physiological arousal. Previous research has shown that men can detect changes in genital arousal that indicate sexual arousal within five minutes, and importantly, the correlation between genital arousal and subjective sexual arousal is reliable for men, but not for women (Kukkonen et al., 2007; see also Dekker & Everaerd, 1988). Physiological arousal influences our affective state, which can in turn bias our decisions (Damasio, 1996; see also Storbeck & Clore, 2008). For example, men that were shown sexually arousing stimuli were more likely to indicate that attractive women were sexually aroused than not (Maner et al., 2005) and sexually aroused participants are more likely to engage in risky sexual practices (Ariely & Lowenstein, 2006; Skakoon-Sparling & Cramer, 2021; Skakoon-Sparling et al., 2015). Thus, our findings might suggest that in situations where men were not interested in their partner, this biasing emotional state was not present, thus allowing them to accurately detect that their partner is not interested in them. Indeed, previous research has suggested that cues signaling disinterest might be easier to detect than cues signaling interest, especially in zero-order acquaintance settings (Hall et al., 2015). Given that the concordance between bodily and subjective arousal is not as robust in women, it is not surprising that women were not necessarily biased as much as men in terms of detecting attraction. In conclusion, our findings extend previous evidence showing that accuracy does not only depend on sex or projecting one’s own emotion on a partner, but accuracy is in fact dependent on an interplay between these two factors.

The estimation model complemented the results of the accuracy models. Interestingly, we found that both men and women were likely to overperceive attraction when they were interested in their partner compared to when they were not. Crucially, when men were interested in a partner, they overperceived interest more than women, which likely explains the decreased accuracy exhibited in men. These findings are partially consistent with EMT (Haselton & Buss, 2000). EMT predicts that men would be more likely to overperceive attraction than women. However, our findings highlight that perhaps the effect of being attracted to a given partner should be incorporated as an additional parameter in EMT (Lee et al., 2020), because if men are not interested, they are in fact very likely to be accurate regarding attraction. Thus, our findings support and further extend the EMT framework by showing that the addition of interest in a given partner might be crucial in predicting overperception.

Curiously, we found no effect of sexual desire on attraction detection accuracy. Our results are inconsistent with previous findings (Lee et al., 2020; Perilloux et al., 2012). One reason for this discrepancy could be that previous studies focused on short-term mating strategies, whereas we examined overall sexual desire. It is well known that sociosexuality—the inclination to form short-term relationships (Kinsey et al., 1948)—differs between men and women (Clark & Hatfield, 1989). Importantly, given that sexual desire and sociosexuality are highly correlated (O’Connor et al., 2014), we expected to observe similar findings as Lee et al. (2020). However, in our dataset we found no difference in sexual desire between sexes, whereas in Lee et al. (2020) sociosexuality was significantly higher for men than women (see also Roth et al., 2021). Either due to the differences in instruments or the differences in sample characteristics, we did not find an effect of sexual desire on attraction detection accuracy. Future research should investigate the effect of sexual desire and its association with sociosexuality and sex on attraction detection accuracy.

In addition, we found no effect of self-rated attractiveness on accuracy, in contrast with previous research (Lee et al., 2020; Perilloux et al., 2012). A potential explanation for this finding could be that in the present study, we examined physical attractiveness exclusively. We could therefore only speculate that our sample was similar to previous research in terms of other factors that can constitute attractiveness (e.g., personality). Nevertheless, previous research has shown that personality has negligible effects on both men and women’s desirability (Kurzban & Weeden, 2005). Furthermore, self-rated attractiveness has been found to play a role in overperception together with short-term mating styles (Howell et al., 2012; see also Lee et al., 2020; Perilloux et al., 2012). However, in our sample, most participants indicated they were searching for a long-term relationship. Thus, this pronounced long-term relationship focus might have prevented the interplay between self-attractiveness and mating strategy to emerge.

One crucial point that cannot be disentangled in the context of the present study is whether women and men interpreted the question regarding the wish to go on another date with their partner similarly. Specifically, in previous studies, participants were asked to indicate how sexually interested they were in their partner (Lee et al., 2020; Perilloux et al., 2012). However, in the present study, participants were asked to indicate whether they would like to go on another date with their partner (see also Asendorpf et al., 2011; Overbeek et al., 2013; Todd et al., 2007 for similar setups). It could be argued that this question led female participants to respond to the perceived question of “Are you romantically interested in your partner?” and male participants to respond to the question of “Are you sexually interested in your partner?” Even though this cannot be tested in the present study, it is quite likely that the response pattern would have remained the same. Previous research has shown that romantic interest and sexual interest follow the same sex differences, where women are choosier than men (Fletcher et al., 2014). Crucially, asking about the wish to go on another date rather than sexual interest is a strength of the current study, as it increases its ecological validity, given that it resembles real-life situations more closely (e.g., online dating sites; see Kurzban & Weeden, 2005).

It should be noted that in the present study, we examined only heterosexual participants; therefore, our findings cannot be directly generalizable to non-heterosexual populations. Furthermore, our sample consisted predominantly of university students. University students offer a prime target sample for sexuality research given the greater interaction frequency with opposite-sex partners and the increased necessity to infer sexual interest (Perilloux et al., 2012) and are commonly the primary target for such studies (e.g., Lee et al., 2020). Importantly, most participants in our study were interested in a committed relationship (only 2 participants were not), which limited our ability to investigate whether different mating strategies might influence attraction detection accuracy (e.g., Lee et al., 2020; Perilloux et al., 2012). Crucially, a limitation that stems from the use of a speed-dating setup is that we cannot assess whether the personality characteristics and social skills of our sample are representative of a wider population (Finkel & Eastwick, 2008). Future research should investigate more heterogeneous samples in terms of educational background and age.

The current study shed light on several factors that underlie the sexual overperception bias. Given that this bias is linked to the likelihood of assault (Abbey et al., 1998), the study’s findings are crucial in elucidating and reducing miscommunication between the sexes in dating contexts (Perilloux et al., 2012). Crucially, we showed that sex and projection of own interest are intertwined and should not be seen as competing, but rather as complementary explanations. Importantly, our findings cast doubt on previous research suggesting that one’s own interest, sexual desire, and self-rated attractiveness might fully explain the sexual overperception bias (Lee et al., 2020; see also Roth et al., 2021). Therefore, our results not only support the EMT framework, but further suggest that the incorporation of sex differences in projection of own interest might be a useful addition to the EMT framework.

It is misleading to think that psychedelic God experiences tend to dissolve atheist convictions, & that atheist convictions, once dissolved, are replaced with traditional monotheist beliefs

Psychedelic Drugs and Atheism: Debunking the Myths. Wayne Glausser. Religions  Volume 12  Issue 8, 614, August 8 2021. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel12080614

Abstract: Two recent surveys of people who took psychedelic drugs and reported “God experience encounters”, along with successful clinical trials using psychedelic therapy for depression, have given rise to public misconceptions about psychedelics and atheism. Specifically, three inferences have been drawn: (1) that the psychedelic experience tends to dissolve atheist convictions; (2) that atheist convictions, once dissolved, are replaced with traditional monotheist beliefs; and (3) that atheism and depression somehow correlate as afflictions for which psychedelic drugs offer relief. This paper argues, based on analysis of the studies and trials along with relevant supplemental evidence, that each of these popular inferences is substantially misleading. Survey data do not indicate that most psychedelic atheists have cleanly cut ties with their former convictions, and there is strong evidence that they have not traded atheism for traditional monotheism. Both personal testimony and the effectiveness of microdose clinical trials serve to complicate any notion that a psychedelic drug alleviates symptoms of depression by “curing” atheism. The paper then extends its focus to argue that the broader field of neurotheology includes elements that contribute to these popular misconceptions.

Keywords: psychedelic drugs; atheism; monotheism; pantheism; depression; neurotheology

To encourage social distancing during COVID-19, Delta Air Lines did not sell the middle seat on its flights that had them & raised its fares by 15%; therefore, passengers paid $23 to prevent a stranger from sitting next to them

The value of space during a pandemic. Max J. HymanaIan Savage. Economics Letters, August 11 2021, 110039. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econlet.2021.110039

Highlights

• Delta Air Lines did not sell the middle seat in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic.

• Its principal rivals sold all seats starting in July 2020.

• Delta raised its fares by 15%.

• Passengers paid $23 to prevent a stranger from sitting next to them.

• Delta had to operate more flights, so this was not a profit-enhancing strategy.

Abstract: To encourage social distancing during the COVID-19 pandemic, Delta Air Lines did not sell the middle seat on its flights that had them. In the second half of 2020 its principal rivals, American Airlines and United Airlines, continued to sell the middle seat. Analysis of U.S. Department of Transportation airline ticket data on 1,358 domestic routes finds that Delta raised its fares by 15%. Therefore, passengers paid $23 to prevent a stranger from sitting next to them.

Keywords: AviationPandemicPrice discrimination

Intelligence was the single strongest predictor of political tolerance, with larger effects than education, openness to experience, ideology, and threat

Cognitive ability is a powerful predictor of political tolerance. Stig Hebbelstrup Rye Rasmussen, Steven Ludeke. Journal of Personality, August 12 2021. https://doi.org/10.1111/jopy.12667

Abstract

Objectives: Despite the broad appeal of abstract notions of political tolerance, people vary in the degree to which they support the political rights of groups they dislike. Prior research highlighted the relevance of individual differences in the cognitive domain, claiming the application of general tolerance ideals to specific situations is a cognitively demanding task. Curiously, this work has overwhelmingly focused on differences in cognitive style, largely neglecting differences in cognitive ability, despite compelling conceptual linkages. We remedy this shortcoming.

Methods: We explore diverse predictors of tolerance using survey data in two large samples from Denmark (N = 805) and the United States (N=1603).

Results: Cognitive ability was the single strongest predictor of political tolerance, with larger effects than education, openness to experience, ideology, and threat. The cognitively-demanding nature of tolerance judgments was further supported by results showing cognitive ability predicted tolerance best when extending such tolerance was hardest. Additional small-sample panel results demonstrated substantial four-year stability of political tolerance, informing future work on the origins of political tolerance.

Conclusions: Our observation of a potent role for cognitive ability in tolerance supports cognitively-oriented accounts of tolerance judgments, and highlights the need for further exploration of cognitive ability within the political domain.

Rolf Degen summarizing... Even inaccurate gossip can discipline people to behave prosocially, by fueling worries about reputation

Direct and Indirect Reciprocity among Individuals and Groups. Angelo Romano, Ali Seyhun Saral, Junhui Wu. Current Opinion in Psychology, August 13 2021. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2021.08.003

• Behavioral experiments support the predictive power of direct and indirect reciprocity.

• Reciprocity helps explain the effects of group membership, gossip, and third-party punishment on prosocial behavior.

• Group membership serves as a heuristic for expected partner’s prosocial behavior and anticipated future interactions.

• Gossip promotes prosocial behavior via an increased concern for reputation and expected partner’s prosocial behavior.

• Costly third-party punishment serves to deter potential defectors and maintain a positive reputation.

Abstract: Direct and indirect reciprocity are two fundamental mechanisms that promote prosocial behavior within groups and across societies. Here, we review recent work that illustrates how a (direct and indirect) reciprocity framework can illuminate our understanding of several factors related to prosocial behavior—namely group membership, gossip, and third-party punishment. We propose that each of these factors can promote prosocial behavior via proximate psychological mechanisms related to direct and indirect reciprocity: reputational concern, expectations, and anticipation of future interaction. Finally, we discuss the implications of adopting such a framework and highlight a number of avenues for future research.

Keywords: Direct reciprocityIndirect reciprocityCooperationProsocial behaviorReview

4. Third-party punishment

Another factor promoting prosocial behavior in social interactions is third-party punishment (Figure 1B). While second-party punishment can be considered a clear instance of negative reciprocity under the anticipation of future interaction [37], third-party punishment represents a more interesting case as the importance for a direct and indirect reciprocity framework may not be clear at first glance. In fact, prominent studies have found that uninterested third parties often punish defectors by incurring a personal cost, and this in turn promotes prosocial behavior among defectors [38]. Thus, third-party punishment can also be conceptualized as a form of prosocial behavior that promotes prosocial behavior in others. However, whether third-party punishment is always prosocial in nature is still debated [39]. Theoretical accounts in line with a reciprocity framework hypothesize that third-party punishment is used as (a) a tool to manage reputation even in one-shot interactions (e.g., to signal trustworthiness to potential future partners) [40,41], and (b) a way to avoid the mistreatment by the defector whom the third party may encounter in the future [19].

Recent research supports the potential role of psychological mechanisms related to a reciprocity framework in explaining why people engage in third-party punishment. For example, previous research found robust evidence that participants who witness a distant stranger being insulted by another person only punish the insulter when observed by other bystanders and when they are concerned about their reputation [42]. By contrast, in anonymous situations people intervene less when a stranger is insulted, compared to a friend or a close other [42]. Moreover, in support of a reciprocity framework, recent research found that people report more moral outrage in response to defection when they cannot signal their trustworthiness through direct prosociality, again suggesting that third-party punishment can be used as a tool to upregulate the punisher’s own reputation [40]. In line with this, across 24 studies, researchers found that the opportunity to gain reputational and partner choice benefits explain why third-parties may prefer compensation over punishment [43]. Reciprocal interactions also seem to be important in the evolution of parochial third-party punishment (i.e., the tendency to punish more harshly outgroup members, compared to ingroup members) [44]. A recent longitudinal study documenting punishment responses to norm violations in daily life also suggests that people upregulate their punishment in situations where their reputation is at stake [45].

Conservative ideologies have been suggested to correlate with elevated sensitivity to threat, but we do not support such association; rather, elevated anxiety may increase concerns about social inequality & the environment

Clinical symptoms of anxiety disorders as predictors of political attitudes: A prospective cohort study. Vilja Helminen, Marko Elovainio, Markus Jokela. International Journal of Psychology, August 13 2021. https://doi.org/10.1002/ijop.12796

Abstract: Conservative political ideologies have been suggested to correlate with elevated sensitivity to threat. However, it is unclear whether the associations between threat sensitivity and political attitudes can be observed with clinical measures of mental health. We examined how anxiety disorders predicted attitudes on several political issues. Participants were 7253 individuals from the 1958 British Birth Cohort study. Symptoms of generalised anxiety disorder, phobia and panic were assessed in a clinical interview at age 44, and opinions about political issues were self-reported by the participants 6 years later. Anxiety symptoms were associated with higher concerns about economic inequality, preservation of the environment, distrust in politics and lower work ethic. No associations were observed with racist or authoritarian attitudes, or support for traditional family values. We also assessed how political attitudes at ages 33 and 42 predicted anxiety disorder symptoms at age 44, revealing a possible bidirectional association between concern for economic inequality and anxiety disorder symptoms. These findings do not support an association between conservative political attitudes and elevated threat sensitivity. Rather, elevated anxiety may increase concerns about social inequality and the environment.

DISCUSSION

We examined whether clinically assessed anxiety disorders (generalised anxiety disorder, phobia and panic disorder) were longitudinally related to political attitudes and vice versa. Higher scores on anxiety symptoms were associated with higher concerns about economic inequality, distrust in politics, environmental concern, as well as lower work ethic. These associations were observed particularly with symptoms of generalised anxiety disorder (GAD) and phobia, whereas symptoms of panic disorder did not have independent associations with political attitudes. Most of these associations were small in magnitude (B < 0.20). Higher concern about inequality assessed years before the clinical interview also predicted higher likelihood of GAD and phobia symptoms, suggesting a possible bidirectional association.

The findings suggest that the previously reported associations between threat sensitivity and political ideology (e.g., Jost et al., 2003; Onraet et al., 2013) may not generalise to clinical measures of anxiety disorders or may be limited to only some political and cultural contexts. In fact, the current associations between anxiety disorders and political attitudes were opposite to the hypothesis of conservatism and heightened threat sensitivity, because concerns about inequality and the environment tend to be associated with liberal and left-wing political ideology (e.g., Cheng et al., 2012; Poortinga et al., 2011), and these attitudes were associated with higher scores on anxiety disorders. Lower work ethic and distrust in politics were also associated with anxiety disorders. Lower work ethic would probably be related to more liberal than conservative attitudes, whereas distrust in politics is more ambiguous—insofar as it reflects a distrust towards governmental decision making, it might represent more conservative than liberal attitudes on the conservative–liberal axis.

Based on the theory of motivated cognition (Jost et al., 2003), we would have expected the anxiety symptoms to predict more racist attitudes, more authoritarian leanings and more support for traditional family values, but these attitudes were not associated with anxiety disorder symptoms. Our results are in contrast to the study by Hatemi et al. (2013) in which clinically assessed social phobia was associated with more negative out-group attitudes. Our lack of specific measure of social phobia, or differences in the measurement of racism and out-group attitudes, might explain the differing results. However, our findings are in line with the few studies that have concluded that anxiety might not lead to more conservative political attitudes (e.g., Huddy et al., 2005; Ray & Najman, 1987). At least two recent studies (Bakker et al., 2020; Osmundsen et al., 2019) also found no support for the link between conservatism and threat reactivity using psychophysiological measures, which casts further doubt on the motivated social cognition explanation of conservatism.

It is also worth noting that there is evidence indicating that the association between threat sensitivity and political orientation is a far more complex phenomenon than the theory of motivated cognition suggests. A recent cross-cultural study by Brandt et al. (2021) found that the way feelings of threat affect political orientation might depend on the type of threat and content of political beliefs under study, and there also seems to be significant variation between countries in how these associations manifest. In our study, the political attitudes at age 50 were measured in 2008–2009 when economic issues were very salient in the wake of the global financial crisis and economic recession in Great Britain. This might have amplified the relevance of perceived economic inequality and would be in line with the findings of Brandt et al. (2021) that economic threats are generally associated with more left-leaning attitudes in the economic domain.

Most notably, in the recent study by Brandt et al. (2021), the associations between different types of threats and different political beliefs were not consistent between countries, with the threat being associated with more right-wing beliefs in some countries and more left-wing beliefs in others. Especially in this light, our findings might indeed reflect a phenomenon constrained to a specific country, period of time, or political context, rather than more generalisable associations between threat sensitivity and political attitudes. This makes our sample the most pressing limitation of our study, as it included only a specific birth cohort from Great Britain.

Regarding study limitations, the CIS-R queried the participants about their anxiety symptoms experienced in the past week, which might have weighted the assessment of anxiety symptoms towards short-term symptoms and not long-term dispositions. However, many measures of mental health that assess symptoms in past weeks or months show considerable rank-order stability between individuals (e.g., GHQ), so clinical measures do not measure only transient psychological states but also more persistent trait-like dispositions. Fourth, the observational study design does not allow us to make causal conclusions. Indeed, our findings suggest that the associations between anxiety disorders and political attitudes may be bidirectional, and at least one previous study (Hatemi et al., 2013) found evidence of a genetic correlation. Thus, it is yet unclear whether anxiety disorders cause differences in political attitudes, or whether they represent the result of common causes.

Together the current findings do not provide evidence to support the theory of motivated social cognition (Jost et al., 2003; Jost et al., 2007) according to which more conservative attitudes would reflect heightened threat sensitivity. Clinically assessed symptoms of anxiety disorders were not associated with conservative political attitudes in the British cohort under examination. Rather, they were either unrelated to beliefs that correlate with conservative vs. liberal ideology (e.g., racist and authoritarian attitudes and traditional family values) or they predicted more liberal or left-leaning attitudes of concerns over economic inequality and preserving the environment, as well as lower work ethic and higher distrust in politics.

Our analysis emphasises the need for multiple clinical and non-clinical measures of threat sensitivity, and more detailed measures of political attitudes than the conservative–liberal axis, to better evaluate the psychological underpinnings of political attitudes and ideologies. Although the association between threat and political orientation has been examined in a significant number of studies, there are multiple aspects that have not been given enough attention. As there is recent evidence that the association depends on the type of threat as well as the type of political beliefs (Brandt et al., 2021), future studies could examine if there are differences in how susceptible individuals are to different types of threat, and how this in turn might affect their political leanings. As previously mentioned, there is also evidence suggesting that the way feelings of threat affect political orientation differs significantly across countries. As the majority of the previous studies regarding the association between threat and political orientation have been conducted in the United States or western Europe, little is yet known about how the cultural and political context might affect this phenomenon. Some studies have identified factors such as ideological constraint, the economic conditions and the ideological status quo as important determinants of how threat is associated with political orientation (e.g., Malka et al., 2014), but at least one large cross-cultural study failed to find significant support for any consistent effects of country characteristics (Brandt et al., 2021). This highlights the urgent need for both, studies using more diverse cross-cultural samples, as well as a larger and more diverse body of research examining this phenomenon in more detail while taking into account the specific political and cultural settings.

The 10 pct most active tweeters (based upon lifetime tweets) generate 81pct of all tweets

Using Administrative Records and Survey Data to Construct Samples of Tweeters and Tweets. Adam G Hughes, Stefan D McCabe, William R Hobbs, Emma Remy, Sono Shah, David M J Lazer. Public Opinion Quarterly, nfab020, August 5 2021. https://doi.org/10.1093/poq/nfab020

Abstract: Social media data can provide new insights into political phenomena, but users do not always represent people, posts and accounts are not typically linked to demographic variables for use as statistical controls or in subgroup comparisons, and activities on social media can be difficult to interpret. For data scientists, adding demographic variables and comparisons to closed-ended survey responses have the potential to improve interpretations of inferences drawn from social media—for example, through comparisons of online expressions and survey responses, and by assessing associations with offline outcomes like voting. For survey methodologists, adding social media data to surveys allows for rich behavioral measurements, including comparisons of public expressions with attitudes elicited in a structured survey. Here, we evaluate two popular forms of linkages—administrative and survey—focusing on two questions: How does the method of creating a sample of Twitter users affect its behavioral and demographic profile? What are the relative advantages of each of these methods? Our analyses illustrate where and to what extent the sample based on administrative data diverges in demographic and partisan composition from surveyed Twitter users who report being registered to vote. Despite demographic differences, each linkage method results in behaviorally similar samples, especially in activity levels; however, conventionally sized surveys are likely to lack the statistical power to study subgroups and heterogeneity (e.g., comparing conversations of Democrats and Republicans) within even highly salient political topics. We conclude by developing general recommendations for researchers looking to study social media by linking accounts with external benchmark data sources.