Thursday, January 20, 2022

Extent to which young people remove their pubic hair, by what means, how often, and reasons for such behavior; pubic hair removal by friends and sexual partners, as well as expectations of sexual partners was also explored

To Shave or Not to Shave: Exploring Pubic Hair Removal among College Students. Sandra L. Caron. American Journal of Sexuality Education, Jan 18 2022. https://doi.org/10.1080/15546128.2021.2025182

Abstract: This exploratory study investigated pubic hair removal behavior among 295 college men and women. Survey questions explored the extent to which young people remove their pubic hair, by what means, how often, and reasons for such behavior. Pubic hair removal by friends and sexual partners, as well as expectations of sexual partners was also explored. Commonalities and differences in responses between college men and women were examined. Results revealed that pubic hair removal is extremely common in both men and women and typically begins in early adolescence. Reasons for pubic hair removal most frequently cited include cleanliness, comfort and appearance. Implications for sexuality education and future research are discussed.


Are Sibship Characteristics Predictive of Same Sex Marriage? An Examination of Fraternal Birth Order and Female Fecundity Effects in Population-level Administrative Data from the Netherlands

Are Sibship Characteristics Predictive of Same Sex Marriage? An Examination of Fraternal Birth Order and Female Fecundity Effects in Population-level Administrative Data from the Netherlands. Christine Ablaza, Jan Kabátek & Francisco Perales. The Journal of Sex Research, Jan 18 2022. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2021.1974330

Abstract: Despite historical increases in the number of individuals engaging in same-sex relations and entering same-sex unions, the causes of sexual orientation remain an open question. Two biological processes that have received some degree of empirical validation are the fraternal birth-order effect (FBOE) and the female-fecundity effect (FFE). Respectively, these processes posit that having a greater number of older brothers and being part of larger sibships independently increase the odds of male homosexuality. Nevertheless, previous studies have relied on suboptimal data and methods, including underpowered and selected samples, and models that fail to fully disentangle the two processes. In addition, they have rarely analyzed samples of women. We address these limitations using high-quality, population-level linked register data from the Netherlands (n = 9,073,496). Applying a novel multivariable approach, we jointly examine the FBOE and FFE by comparing the sibship characteristics of men (n = 26,542) and women (n = 33,534) who entered a same-sex union against those who did not (n = 4,607,785 men and 4,405,635 women). Our analyses yield robust evidence of an FBOE on both male and female homosexuality, but no support for the FFE. Additionally, we find that individuals’ birth order affects the probability of entering a same-sex union, regardless of the sex of older siblings.



Wednesday, January 19, 2022

The Guardian reported Stonewall’s statistic that “almost half” of young transgenders “have attempted to kill themselves”; real suicidality is 0.03pct (too high, 5.5 times greater than the suicide rate of all adolescents)

Suicide by Clinic-Referred Transgender Adolescents in the United Kingdom. Michael Biggs. Archives of Sexual Behavior, Jan 18 2022. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-022-02287-7

Introduction: Surveys show that adolescents who identify as transgender are vulnerable to suicidal thoughts and self-harming behaviors (dickey & Budge, 2020; Hatchel et al., 2021; Mann et al., 2019). Little is known about death by suicide. This Letter presents data from the Gender Identity Development Service (GIDS), the publicly funded clinic for children and adolescents aged under 18 from England, Wales, and Northern Ireland. From 2010 to 2020, four patients were known or suspected to have died by suicide, out of about 15,000 patients (including those on the waiting list). To calculate the annual suicide rate, the total number of years spent by patients under the clinic’s care is estimated at about 30,000. This yields an annual suicide rate of 13 per 100,000 (95% confidence interval: 4–34). Compared to the United Kingdom population of similar age and sexual composition, the suicide rate for patients at the GIDS was 5.5 times higher. The proportion of patients dying by suicide was far lower than in the only pediatric gender clinic which has published data, in Belgium (Van Cauwenberg et al., 2021).

Suicidality in Transgender Adolescents

“About half of young trans people…attempt suicide,” declared the United Kingdom Parliament’s Women and Equalities Committee (2015). Similar figures are cited by news media and campaigning organizations. The Guardian reported Stonewall’s statistic that “almost half” of transgender young people “have attempted to kill themselves” (Weale, 2017). “Fifty percent of transgender youth attempt suicide before they are at age 21” stated the mother of the most famous transgender youth in the English-speaking world (Jennings & Jennings, 2016). As a transgender theologian has observed, “the statistic about suicide attempts has, in essence, developed a life of its own” (Tanis, 2016).

Representative surveys of students in high schools provide one source of evidence for this statistic. In New Zealand, 20% of transgender students reported attempting suicide in the past 12 months, compared to 4% of all students (Clark et al., 2014). In the United States, 15% of transgender students reported a suicide attempt requiring medical treatment in the last 12 months, compared to 3% of all students (Centers for Disease Control & Prevention, 2018; Jackman et al., 2021; Johns et al., 2019). In another American survey, 41% of transgender students reported having attempted suicide during their lifetime, compared to 14% of all students (Toomey et al., 2018).

To what extent are self-reported suicide attempts reflected in fatalities? The connection is not straightforward. Respondents who report suicide attempts are not necessarily indicating an intent to die. One survey of the American population found that almost half the respondents who reported attempting suicide subsequently stated that their action was a cry for help and not intended to be fatal (Nock & Kessler, 2006). In two small samples of non-heterosexual youth, half the respondents who initially reported attempting suicide subsequently clarified that they went no further than imagining or planning it; for the remainder who did actually attempt suicide, their actions were usually not life-threatening. To an extent, then, “the reports were attempts to communicate the hardships of lives or to identify with a gay community” (Savin-Williams, 2001). Although such elaborate survey methods have not been used to study transgender populations, there is anecdotal evidence for a similar disjuncture. The pediatric endocrinologist who established the first clinic for transgender children in the United States stated that “the majority of self-harmful actions that I see in my clinic are not real suicide attempts and are not usually life threatening” (Spack, 2009).

[...]

Discussion

How reliable are these estimates? The chief uncertainty about the numerator is whether the fourth death will be ruled as suicide when the inquest is eventually held. It could be speculated that there were further suicides unknown to the Tavistock and to the National Confidential Inquiry into Suicide and Safety in Mental Health. All that can be said is that the single suicide by a GIDS patient from 2014 to 2016 is not out of line with comprehensive mortality data on suicides by transgender adolescents in the United Kingdom which counted five suicides in a longer age range and wider geographical area. The denominator for the annual suicide rate, however, is pieced together from various series and so is inevitably approximate. Statistics from the early 2010s are less reliable, though they make only a small contribution to the grand total; the last three years contribute more than half of the total number of patient-years. The most significant limitation is the lack of information on the age and sex of all the patients who committed suicide.

Direct comparison can be made with the Belgian pediatric gender clinic (Van Cauwenberg et al., 2021). Its annual suicide rate was about 70 times greater than the rate at the GIDS. This is especially puzzling because patients at the Belgian clinic scored better, on average, than those at the GIDS on tests of psychological functioning (de Graaf et al., 2018). The explanation for the huge disparity in suicide is not clear. The Amsterdam’s clinic annual suicide rate was four times greater than the rate at the GIDS. The higher rate is not surprising, however, because the Dutch clinical population was dominated by older adults: the median age at first visit was 25 (Wiepjes et al., 2020). Suicide rates peak in middle age, and so a population of older adults would be at higher risk than a population of adolescents.

The suicide rate of the GIDS patients is not necessarily indicative of the rate among all adolescents who identify as transgender. On the one hand, individuals with more serious problems (and their families) would be particularly motivated to seek referral and more likely to obtain it, and so the clinical subset would be more prone to suicide. One study suggests that a child who frequently attempted suicide was more readily referred to the GIDS (Carlile et al., 2021). On the other hand, young people facing hostility from their families would be less able to seek referral, and this hostility could make them especially vulnerable to suicide.

Taking into account these limitations, the estimated suicide rate at the GIDS provides the strongest evidence yet published that transgender adolescents are more likely to commit suicide than the overall adolescent population. The higher risk could have various causes: gender dysphoria, accompanying psychological conditions, and ensuing social disadvantages such as bullying. Studies of young people referred to the GIDS in 2012 and 2015 found a high prevalence of eating disorders, depression, and autism spectrum conditions (ASC) (Holt et al., 2016; Morandini et al., 2021)—all known to increase the probability of suicide (Simon & VonKorff, 1998; Smith et al., 2018). Eating disorders and depression could be consequences of transgender identity and its ensuing social repercussions, but this is implausible for ASC insofar as it originates in genes or the prenatal environment. From a sample of over 700 referrals to the GIDS in 2012 and 2015, 14–15% were diagnosed with ASC (Morandini et al., 2021). This compared to 0.8–1.1% of students in England (Department for Education, 20122015). The association between autism and gender dysphoria is found in many populations (Socialstyrelsen, 2020; Warrier et al., 2020). Autism is known to increase the risk of suicide mortality, especially in females (Hirvikoski et al., 2016; Kirby et al., 2019; Socialstyrelsen, 2020). To some extent, therefore, the elevated suicide rate for transgender youth compared to their peers reflects the higher incidence of ASC. The same holds for other psychiatric disorders associated with gender dysphoria (Dhejne et al., 2016). Ideally, the suicide rate for patients of the GIDS would be compared to the suicide rate for patients in contact with other NHS mental health services, but the latter rate is not available.

One final caveat is that these data shed no light on the question of whether counseling or endocrinological interventions—gonadotropin-releasing hormone agonist or cross-sex hormones—affect the risk of suicide (Biggs, 2020; Turban et al., 2020). Although two out of the four suicides were of patients on the waiting list, and thus would not have obtained treatment, this is not disproportionate: the waiting list contributed nearly half of the total patient-years.

Hookups reflect extended sexual adolescence, an average of seven additional pre-marital years of youthful singlehood during which many young people are celibate while many others experiment with short-term pairings

Kettrey, HH and AD Johnson. “Hooking Up and Pairing Off: Correlates of College Students’ Interest in Subsequent Hookup and Romantic Relationships with Other-Sex and Same-Sex Hookup Partners,:” Journal of Sex Research (2021) 58:915. DOI: 10.1080/00224499.2020.1766403

Abstract: Contrary to popular media claims that college hookup culture has made romantic relationships obsolete, research indicates many college students see hookups as a pathway to relationships. However, relatively few college hookups actually produce relationships. This study used a sex market framework to explore correlates of college students’ interest in future hookups and relationships with hookup partners across other-sex and same-sex hookup markets. Using Online College Social Life Survey data (N = 10,141) we explored variables classified in the following contexts that may shape choices in a sex market: demographic characteristics, the hookup dyad, the hookup event, post-hookup reactions, attitudes toward hookup partners, and hookup opportunity structures. Logistic regression analyses indicated post-hookup reactions (e.g., satisfaction, emotional responses) explained the highest percentage of variance in interest in a subsequent hookup (56% to 61% across markets) and interest in a relationship (35% to 45% across markets). Although past research suggests there are different markets for other- and same-sex hookups, these findings suggest similarity in contexts that may shape interest in relationship formation among other-sex and same-sex hookup markets. Suggestions for fostering positive relationship development on campuses are discussed.

Popular version: New Insights Into Young Adult Casual Sex Hookups. Michael Castleman. Jan 15 2022. https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/all-about-sex/202201/new-insights-young-adult-casual-sex-hookups

Discussion

In this study, we explored correlates of college students’ interest in a subsequent hookup or romantic relationship with their most recent hookup partner. We paid particular attention to the sex composition of hookup dyads and broke down findings as they applied to four different hookup markets: women with other-sex hookup partners, men with other-sex hookup partners, women with same-sex hookup partners, and men with same-sex hookup partners. Findings from this study are especially important because most research on college hookups has (1) employed a risk framework with minimal attention to positive outcomes of hookups and (2) focused on hookups among other-sex dyads, with the few studies that do exist on same-sex hookups suggesting these encounters are part of a distinct hookup culture (Pham, 2017; Watson et al., 2017).

We employed a sex market framework (Ellingson et al., 2004), to theorize different markets, or hookup cultures, for other-sex and same-sex hookup dyads. More specifically, we examined correlations between contexts that can shape preferences for subsequent hookups or relationships with hookup partners in a given hookup market. We examined the relationship between the following contexts and interest in a subsequent hookup or relationship with hookup partners: demographic characteristics, the hookup dyad, the hookup event, post-hookup reactions, attitudes toward hookup partners, and hookup opportunity structures.

Through this study, we sought to answer two main research questions. First, we asked which contexts were the strongest predictors of interest in a subsequent hookup or relationship with hookup partners. Second, we sought to explore the similarities and differences in predictors of interest in a subsequent hookup or relationship with hookup partners across hookup markets (i.e., women with other-sex hookup partners, men with other-sex hookup partners, women with same-sex hookup partners, men with same-sex hookup partners).

Although previous research suggests there are separate sex markets, or hookup cultures, for women and men with other-sex or same-sex partners, our analysis suggests there is great similarity in the degree to which the contexts that compose those markets may facilitate relationship formation. Across all four hookup markets, we found post-hookup reactions to be most strongly correlated with the two outcomes in our study (i.e., interest in a subsequent hookup and interest in a relationship with hookup partners). The variables in this context collectively explained between 35% and 62% of the variance in the two outcomes across the four hookup markets. The second strongest context to correlate with the outcomes across the four contexts was the hookup dyad. The variables in this context collectively explained between 12% and 22% of the variance in the two outcomes across markets.

These findings point to the importance of how college students feel about their hookups – as well as their history and familiarity with hookup partners – in facilitating future hookups and romantic relationships. That is, our findings suggest that being familiar with a specific hookup partner and experiencing positive feelings after a hookup are the best predictors of subsequent interest in that partner. This is the case for both men and women with other-sex and same-sex partners. In other words, the same contexts matter across markets. However, this is not meant to diminish variation within contexts across markets. For example, hookup enjoyment was a significant predictor of subsequent interest in hookup partners across all four markets; however, women with same-sex hookup partners reported the highest level of hookup enjoyment.

Limitations and Directions for Future Research

Findings from this study should be interpreted within the confines of important limitations pertinent to its theoretical conceptualization and methodological implementation. Regarding the conceptualization of the study, as previously noted, the hookup market contexts that we examined represents a classification of variables that the larger body of research indicates can shape interest in a future hookup or relationship with one’s partner. These contexts are not meant to be exhaustive, as it is not possible to account for every variable that might be associated with college students’ post-hookup interest in partners. Rather, it is meant to provide a rough template for understanding interest in the formation of romantic relationships among college students across hookup markets.

Additionally, a number of methodological limitations are worth noting. First, the sample for this study was nonrandom and composed of college students enrolled in sociology classes. Thus, respondents’ hookup preferences and behaviors may not be representative of those among general college students. Second, OCSLS data were collected at a single point in time and, thus, findings from this study are correlational. It is not clear whether the predictor variables (i.e., variables corresponding to each of the contexts) influenced participants’ post-hookup interest in their partners or whether post-hookup interest influenced participants’ reporting of these variables.

Relatedly, although the OCSLS dataset is widely used in analyses of college hookup attitudes and behaviors, readers should be mindful of the fact that the survey was administered between 2005 and 2011. Thus, findings from this analysis may not accurately represent the dynamics of relationship formation among current college students.

Finally, the outcome variables in this study measured respondents’ interest in a subsequent hookup or romantic relationship with their most recent hookup partner. They do not indicate whether the hookups in question actually resulted in a subsequent hookup or relationship. The OCSLS did not measure the actual incidence of future commitment from hookup partners and, even if it did, the numbers would presumably produce a much smaller number of positive cases for analysis.

To address these limitations, future research should include qualitative investigations that capture narrative accounts of college students’ hookup experiences – as well as their longitudinal trajectories with particular hookup partners (e.g., how and under what conditions hookups yield relationships). This could involve recruiting a sample of college students who are asked to complete journals chronicling their hookup experiences across an academic year. Those who report hookups with serial partners could be invited to participate in follow-up interviews to discuss emerging interests in these partners. Ideally, some of these interviews should include participants’ partners, as the body of research would benefit from studies that use hookup partner dyads (instead of individual college students) as the unit of analysis.

Tuesday, January 18, 2022

Women, sexual minorities, and people 18–29 years old exhibited significantly higher rejection sensitivity levels than men, heterosexuals, and people 30–36 years old, respectively

Maiolatesi, A. J., Clark, K. A., & Pachankis, J. E. (2022). Rejection sensitivity across sex, sexual orientation, and age: Measurement invariance and latent mean differences. Psychological Assessment, Jan 2022. https://doi.org/10.1037/pas0001109

Abstract: Intergroup differences in personality might be determined by systematic variation in social status and social experiences across groups. Because of its close association with social experiences, rejection sensitivity (RS)—a tendency toward anxious expectations of, and hypersensitivity to, interpersonal rejection—represents one such personality disposition that might differ across social groups, with implications for understanding mental health disparities. After first evaluating measurement invariance of the Adult Rejection Sensitivity Questionnaire (A-RSQ), the present research sought to assess whether latent mean differences in RS emerged across sex, sexual orientation, and age in a population-based sample of Swedish young adults (age 18–36; N = 1,679). Analyses revealed that the scale achieved full configural, metric, and scalar invariance across sex and sexual orientation and partial scalar invariance across age. As expected, tests of latent mean differences indicated that women, sexual minorities, and people 18–29 years old exhibited significantly higher RS levels than men, heterosexuals, and people 30–36 years old, respectively. Findings from the present research highlight the utility of attending to group differences in maladaptive personality dispositions and information processing styles and their potential role in contributing to persistent mental health hardships uniquely affecting women, sexual minorities, and younger people. Implications for scale administration and future research into the social causes and consequences of RS are discussed.



We measure a spatial region of the face upon which gaze can elicit a sense of eye contact in the viewer; this ‘zone of eye contact’ tends to peak between the two eyes, and extend across the face further in height than in width

Is there a ‘zone of eye contact’ within the borders of the face? Colin J. Palmer et al. Cognition, Volume 220, March 2022, 104981. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2021.104981

Highlights

•We measure a spatial region of the face upon which gaze can elicit a sense of eye contact in the viewer

•This ‘zone of eye contact’ tends to peak between the two eyes, and extend across the face further in height than in width

•Eye contact judgements are more precise than the sense that one's face is being looked at

•These features are similar across Australian and Japanese university students

•Eye contact depends on recent experience: judgements about eye contact are influenced by adaptation and serial dependence

Abstract: Eye contact is a salient feature of everyday interactions, yet it is not obvious what the physical conditions are under which we feel that we have eye contact with another person. Here we measure the range of locations that gaze can fall on a person's face to elicit a sense of eye contact. Participants made judgements about eye contact while viewing rendered images of faces with finely-varying gaze direction at a close interpersonal distance (50 cm). The ‘zone of eye contact’ tends to peak between the two eyes and is often surprisingly narrower than the observer's actual eye region. Indeed, the zone tends to extend further across the face in height than in width. This shares an interesting parallel with the ‘cyclopean eye’ of visual perspective – our sense of looking out from a single point in space despite the physical separation of our two eyes. The distribution of eye-contact strength across the face can be modelled at the individual-subject level as a 2D Gaussian function. Perception of eye contact is more precise than the sense of having one's face looked at, which captures a wider range of gaze locations in both the horizontal and vertical dimensions, at least at the close viewing distance used in the present study. These features of eye-contact perception are very similar cross-culturally, tested here in Australian and Japanese university students. However, the shape and position of the zone of eye contact does vary depending on recent sensory experience: adaptation to faces with averted gaze causes a pronounced shift and widening of the zone across the face, and judgements about eye contact also show a positive serial dependence. Together, these results provide insight into the conditions under which eye contact is felt, with respect to face morphology, culture, and sensory context.


Under efficiency and redistribution channels and Utilitarian social welfare weights the optimal minimum wage is $15; under only the efficiency channel, the optimal minimum wage is narrowly around $8, robust to social welfare weights

Minimum Wages, Efficiency and Welfare. David W. Berger, Kyle F. Herkenhoff & Simon Mongey. NBER Working Paper 29662. Jan 2022. DOI 10.3386/w29662

Abstract: It has long been argued that a minimum wage could alleviate efficiency losses from monopsony power. In a general equilibrium framework that quantitatively replicates results from recent empirical studies, we find higher minimum wages can improve welfare, but most welfare gains stem from redistribution rather than efficiency. Our model features oligopsonistic labor markets with heterogeneous workers and firms and yields analytical expressions that characterize the mechanisms by which minimum wages can improve efficiency, and how these deteriorate at higher minimum wages. We provide a method to separate welfare gains into two channels: efficiency and redistribution. Under both channels and Utilitarian social welfare weights the optimal minimum wage is $15, but alternative weights can rationalize anything from $0 to $31. Under only the efficiency channel, the optimal minimum wage is narrowly around $8, robust to social welfare weights, and generates small welfare gains that recover only 2 percent of the efficiency losses from monopsony power.




Problems replication traditional mortality salience effect on national patriotism, democratic values, processing speed, psychophysiological responses, ingroup identification, and pro-sociality; effect of death reminders is less robust than assumed

Mortality salience effects fail to replicate in traditional and novel measures. Bjørn Sætrevik, Hallgeir Sjåstad. Meta-Psychology, Vol 6, Jan 17 2022. https://orcid.org/0000-0002-8730-1038

Abstract: Mortality salience (MS) effects, where death reminders lead to ingroup-bias and defensive protection of one’s world-view, have been claimed to be a fundamental human motivator. MS phenomena have ostensibly been identified in several hundred studies within the “terror management theory” framework, but transparent and high-powered replications are lacking. Experiment 1 (N = 101 Norwegian lab participants) aimed to replicate the traditional MSeffect on national patriotism, with additional novel measures of democratic values and pro-sociality. Experiment2 (N = 784 US online participants) aimed to replicate the MS effect on national patriotism in a larger sample, with ingroup identification and pro-sociality as additional outcome measures. The results showed that neither experiment replicated the traditional MS effect on national patriotism. The experiments also failed to support conceptual replications and underlying mechanisms on democratic values, processing speed, psychophysiological responses, ingroup identification, and pro-sociality. This indicates that the effect of death reminders is less robust and generalizable than previously assumed.

Keywords: Mortality salience , death reminders, worldview defence , terror management , replication


Monday, January 17, 2022

Customers are more likely to tip when paying by cash rather than by credit; customers dining alone are less likely to tip than customers in a group; men are more likely to tip relative to women when paying by cash

Cash or Card? Impression Management and Restaurant Tipping Behavior. Vikas Kakkar, King King Li. Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, January 17 2022, 101837. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socec.2022.101837

Highlights

•Customers are more likely to tip when paying by cash rather than by credit.

•Customers dining alone are less likely to tip than customers in a group.

•Men are more likely to tip relative to women when paying by cash.

•The visibility of cash tips is exploited for impression management by customers.

Abstract: Existing literature in economics and psychology has documented that impression management is an important motivator of human behavior. However, most of the existing evidence is based on laboratory experiments, where the concern for impression management is artificially induced. We hand-collect a unique data set on restaurant tipping and use the mode of payment to discriminate between impression management and other possible motivations for tipping in a naturally occurring environment. The impression management hypothesis predicts that consumers will tip more frequently when paying by cash, relative to paying by a credit card, because their tipping behavior can be publicly observed and enables them to foster a positive social image. Our three main findings are that (a) the probability of tipping is significantly higher when paying by cash; (b) customers dining alone are significantly less likely to tip and tip significantly lower amounts when paying by cash; and (c) men are significantly more likely to tip and tip larger amounts relative to women. These results are broadly consistent with the impression management hypothesis.

Keywords: Social imageimpression managementmode of payment


Staggered termination of compulsory religious education across German states reduced religiosity, led to more equalized gender roles, fewer marriages & children, higher labor-market participation & earnings; no effect in ethical & political values

Can Schools Change Religious Attitudes? Evidence from German State Reforms of Compulsory Religious Education Benjamin W. Arold, Ludger Woessmann, Larissa Zierow. Ludwigs-Maximilians University’s Center for Economic Studies, working paper 9504-2022. https://www.cesifo.org/DocDL/cesifo1_wp9504.pdf

Abstract: We study whether compulsory religious education in schools affects students’ religiosity as adults. We exploit the staggered termination of compulsory religious education across German states in models with state and cohort fixed effects. Using three different datasets, we find that abolishing compulsory religious education significantly reduced religiosity of affected students in adulthood. It also reduced the religious actions of personal prayer, church-going, and church membership. Beyond religious attitudes, the reform led to more equalized gender roles, fewer marriages and children, and higher labor-market participation and earnings. The reform did not affect ethical and political values or non-religious school outcomes.

JEL-Codes: Z120, I280, H750.

Keywords: religious education, religiosity, school reforms


'Assholes' described by participants were typically middle-aged, predominantly male, and included romantic partners, coworkers, bosses, family members, and friends

Sharpe, Brinkley M., Courtland Hyatt, Donald Lynam, and Josh Miller. 2022. “"they Are Such an Asshole": Describing the Targets of a Common Insult Among English-speakers in the United States.” PsyArXiv. January 16. doi:10.31234/osf.io/7vpx8

Abstract: Insults convey information about the speaker’s perception of the target’s personality. Previous research has found that several commonly used insults (“asshole,” “dick,” “bitch”) are uniformly associated with self- and other-reported antagonism (or low Agreeableness). We aimed to replicate and extend these findings by focusing on the insult “asshole,” a common insult used to refer to both men and women. In the present study, participants (n = 397) described the “biggest assholes” in their lives using a measure of the Five-Factor Model of personality. “Assholes” described by participants were typically middle-aged, predominantly male, and included romantic partners, coworkers, bosses, family members, and friends. Results showed that “assholes” were perceived to be characterized by interpersonally relevant traits (i.e., low Agreeableness, high Anger). The consensus Five Factor Model profile for target “assholes” was similar to expert profiles of psychopathic, antisocial, and narcissistic personality disorders. Exploratory analyses conducted on open-ended descriptions of nominated bothersome “asshole-related” behaviors revealed common themes including manipulation, aggression, irresponsibility, and entitlement.



Legitimizing marital infidelity thru the diffusion of responsibility, the attribution of blame on the cheated partner, advantageous comparisons with other immoral acts, justifying infidelity through certain benefits, and minimizing its negative consequences

Lisman, Carmen, and Andrei C. Holman. 2022. “Innocent Cheaters: A New Scale Measuring the Moral Disengagement of Marital Infidelity.” PsyArXiv. January 16. doi:10.31234/osf.io/pbc49

Abstract: Marital infidelity is both socially perceived as immoral and very frequent. This contradiction might be explained through the process of moral disengagement, specifically by the use of certain socially shared moral justifications of infidelity, which consequently foster unfaithful behavior. This research developed and examined the Infidelity Moral Disengagement Scale (IMDS), aiming to capture the strategies of morally legitimizing infidelity used among people engaged in marital relationships. Across two studies (total N = 609 married participants) we investigated the dimensions and psychometric properties of the IMDS. Results showed that the dominant strategies of legitimizing marital infidelity are the diffusion of responsibility, the attribution of blame on the cheated partner, advantageous comparisons with other immoral acts, justifying infidelity through certain benefits, and minimizing its negative consequences. The IMDS emerged as negatively related to moral identity and strongly associated to people’s past infidelity and to their tendency to engage in unfaithful behaviors.


Sunday, January 16, 2022

Underestimating Others’ Desire for Constructive Feedback: In this study, only 2.6% of individuals provided feedback to survey administrators that the administrators had food or marker on their faces

“Just Letting You Know…”: Underestimating Others’ Desire for Constructive Feedback. Nicole Abi-Esber, Jennifer Abel, Juliana Schroeder, Francesca Gino. Harvard Business School, Working Paper 22-009. https://www.hbs.edu/ris/Publication%20Files/22-009_f209da0a-61ff-4594-ac18-2e84d142159c.pdf

Abstract: People often avoid giving feedback to others even when it would help fix a problem immediately. Indeed, in a pilot field study (N=155), only 2.6% of individuals provided feedback to survey administrators that the administrators had food or marker on their faces. Five experiments (N=1,984) identify a possible reason for the lack of feedback: people underestimate how much others want to receive constructive feedback. We examine two reasons why people might underestimate others’ desire for feedback: considerations about their own experience (e.g., anticipating discomfort giving feedback or a harmed relationship with the receiver) and/or considerations about the receiver’s experience (e.g., anticipating discomfort receiving feedback or the feedback not being valuable). In Experiment 1, participants underestimated others’ desire for feedback across multiple situations. This underestimation persisted when participants recalled giving feedback (Experiment 2) and when participants gave live feedback to their relationship partners in the laboratory (Experiment 3). Experiment 4 tests two interventions to make feedback-givers more accurate: taking the receiver’s perspective (making feedback-givers consider the receiver’s experience more) or having someone else provide the feedback (making feedback-givers consider their own experience less). Both interventions led to more accurate estimates of receivers’ desire for feedback, but the perspective-taking intervention increased accuracy most. Finally, Experiment 5 showed that underestimating others’ desire for feedback was associated with giving less feedback in a public speaking contest and less improvement in the feedback-receiver’s performance. People’s tendency to underestimate others’ desire for feedback can lead them to withhold feedback that could be helpful.

Keywords: feedback; help; prosocial; relationships; misprediction


Protestant activities in China since 1870s contributed to long-run economic growth; the missionaries’ endeavors persisted in China through human capital channel

The long-term effects of protestant activities in China. Yuyu Chen, Hui Wang, Se Yan. Journal of Comparative Economics, January 13 2022. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jce.2021.12.002

Research highlights

• Protestant activities in China since 1870s contributed to long-run economic growth

• Missionaries conducted disaster relief to effectively convert local people

• Missionaries promoted Western education and health care in China since 1870s

• The missionaries’ endeavors persisted in China through human capital channel

Abstract: Combining China's county-level data on Protestant density before 1920 and socioeconomic indicators in 2000, we find persistent positive effects of historical missionary activities on contemporary growth. Using disaster frequency as an instrument for Protestant distribution, we find stronger IV results. We further find that although improvements in education and health care account for a sizable portion of the total effects, other channels such as transformed social values may also matter. Our findings acknowledge the pioneering effects of missionary work in China's modernization, and imply that China's recent growth may benefit from of human capital and social values acquired in history.

Keywords: Chinese economyProtestant activitiesEconomic GrowthEducation


Hating magic: Lower Openness to Experience & lower awe-proneness; higher dogmatism, intolerance of uncertainty, & personal need for structure; & higher socially aversive traits (lower Agreeableness, greater interpersonal dominance, & higher psychopathy)

Silvia, Paul, Gil Greengross, Maciej Karwowski, Rebekah Rodriguez-Boerwinkle, and Sara J. Crasson. 2020. “Who Hates Magic? Exploring the Loathing of Legerdemain.” PsyArXiv. September 14. doi:10.31234/osf.io/mzry6

Abstract: Magic is an ancient, universal, diverse, and wide-ranging domain of artistic performance. Despite its worldwide popularity, however, any working magician will tell you that some people really hate magic. They seem to see every illusion as a challenge to be solved and every performance as an insult to their intelligence. A distinctive feature of magic is that it seeks to create emotions through deception—practitioners create the illusion of the impossible, which can provoke intense curiosity and uncertainty, but will not explain the method—so disliking magic could stem from a few factors: (1) low propensity for curiosity, awe, and wonder; (2) high needs for certainty and cognitive structure, which make a person averse to uncertainty and to events that violate one’s mental models of the world; and (3) high needs for social status and dominance, which make a person averse to being manipulated. The present research explored people’s attitudes toward magic with a brief Loathing of Legerdemain (LOL) scale. In a multinational sample of 1599 adults, people who hated magic were marked by (1) lower Openness to Experience and lower awe-proneness; (2) higher dogmatism, intolerance of uncertainty, and personal need for structure; and (3) higher socially aversive traits, such as lower Agreeableness, greater interpersonal dominance, and higher psychopathy. We suggest that magic is an interesting case for researchers interested in audience and visitor studies and that the psychology of art would benefit from a richer understanding of negative audience attitudes more generally.


Camorra prisoners show a high degree of cooperativeness and a strong tendency to punish defectors, as well as a clear rejection of the imposition of external rules even at significant cost to themselves

Cooperation, punishment and organized crime: a lab-in-the-field experiment in southern Italy. Annamaria Neseae et al. European Economic Review, Volume 107, August 2018, Pages 86-98. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.euroecorev.2018.05.004

Abstract: This paper reports the results of an experimental investigation which provides insights into the social preferences of organized criminals and how these differ from those of “ordinary” criminals on the one hand and from those of the non-criminal population in the same geographical area on the other. We develop experimental evidence on cooperation and response to sanctions by running prisoner's dilemma and third party punishment games on three different pools of subjects; students, ordinary criminals and Camorristi (Neapolitan ‘Mafiosi’). The latter two groups were recruited from within prisons. Camorra prisoners show a high degree of cooperativeness and a strong tendency to punish defectors, as well as a clear rejection of the imposition of external rules even at significant cost to themselves. The subsequent econometric analysis further enriches our understanding demonstrating inter alia that individuals’ locus of control and reciprocity are associated with quite different and opposing behaviours amongst different participant types; a strong sense of self-determination and reciprocity both imply a higher propensity to punish for Camorra inmates, but quite the opposite for ordinary criminals, further reinforcing the contrast between the behaviour of ordinary criminals and the strong internal mores of Camorra clans.

Keywords: Prisoner's dilemmaThird party punishment


Saturday, January 15, 2022

Women, Republicans, those who live in the South, and those who were raised in a religion or still attend religious services conceal more their Atheism

Patterns of Perceived Hostility and Identity Concealment among Self-Identified Atheists. Jacqui Frost, Elaine Howard Ecklund, Christopher P Scheitle. Social Forces, soab165, January 8 2022. https://doi.org/10.1093/sf/soab165

Abstract: Researchers have produced important findings regarding the types of stigma associated with nonreligion, particularly atheism. However, while numerous studies analyze who is more or less likely to identify as an atheist given that stigma, less is known about how self-identified atheists manage the stigma associated with their identity. This study uses new survey data from a nationally representative sample of US adults, with an oversample of individuals identifying as atheists, to examine the predictors of and connections between atheists’ perceptions of hostility toward their identities and whether they conceal those identities. Contrary to our expectations, we find no association between atheists’ perceived hostility toward their identity and concealment of that identity. We do find, however, that atheists in some social locations report higher levels of identity concealment, particularly those who identify as women, those who identify as Republican, those who live in the South, and those who were raised in a religion or still attend religious services. Our findings suggest that atheists who feel like social or institutional outsiders are more likely to conceal their identity. Our findings also suggest that affirming an atheist identity may buffer some of the negative effects of atheist stigma. These findings have implications for how researchers understand the context-specific nature of religious discrimination, as well as implications for research on stigma management and the ways that the shifting religious and political landscape in the United States shapes the expression of atheist identities.


About seven out of ten therapists found a client sexually attractive, a quarter fantasized about a romantic relationship; more male therapists reported sexual feelings and behaviors than female therapists

Intimacy in Psychotherapy: An Exploratory Survey Among Therapists. Lara Vesentini, Roel Van Overmeire, Frieda Matthys, Dirk De Wachter, Hubert Van Puyenbroeck & Johan Bilsen. Archives of Sexual Behavior, Jan 15 2022. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-021-02190-7

Abstract: A certain level of intimacy is necessary in psychotherapeutic relationships for them to be effective, but it can sometimes develop further into more intimate feelings and behaviors related to friendship and sexuality, into friendship, or even into sexual relationships. In this study, a self-administered questionnaire was sent to psychotherapists in Flanders (Belgium), asking about the occurrence of these situations. It provides an overview of these occurrences and comparative data to view for generational and cultural differences with previous studies. A response rate of 40% was obtained (N = 786): 69% of respondents were female therapists and none were transgender. A total of 758 therapists stated that they had actually provided psychotherapy and were included for further analysis. Three percent started a sexual relationship with a current and/or former client, 3.7% started a friendship during therapy, and 13.4% started a friendship after therapy. About seven out of ten therapists found a client sexually attractive, a quarter fantasized about a romantic relationship, and a fifth gave a goodbye hug at the end of a session (22%). In general, more male therapists reported sexual feelings and behaviors than female therapists. Older therapists more often behaved informally and started friendships with former clients compared to younger colleagues. Psychiatrists reported sexual feelings and fantasies less often than non-psychiatrists, and behavioral therapists reported this less frequently than person-centered and psychoanalytic therapists. Overall, prevalence rates of intimate feelings and behaviors related to friendship and sexuality are lower than those in previous studies.

Lara Vesentini's PhD Thesis: Intimacy and Sexuality in the Psychotherapeutic Relationship. Mental Health and Wellbeing Research Group (MENT), School of Medicine and Pharmacy, Vrije Universiteit Brussel. 2021. https://cris.vub.be/ws/portalfiles/portal/70983681/PhD_Lara_Vesentini_finaal_def_van_VUBPRESS.pdf

Prior increases in shame forecasted higher current sexual desire for men with problematic hypersexuality, but not for the other groups, suggesting that men with PH use sexual desire to downregulate dysphoric feelings of shame

Associations between Fluctuating Shame, Self-Esteem, and Sexual Desire: Comparing Frequent Porn Users and a General Population Sample. Piet van Tuijl, Peter Verboon and Jacques J. D. M. van Lankveld. Sexes 2022, 3(1), 1-19; Dec 22 2021. https://doi.org/10.3390/sexes3010001

Abstract: In the present study, we explore the proposed cyclic models for problematic hypersexuality (PH) that involve shame, self-esteem, and sexual desire. These cyclic models are characterized by temporal associations but have not been investigated previously with intensive longitudinal designs. In this study, we collected up to 70 measurements per participant within a period of seven consecutive days, which allowed us to investigate associations between fluctuations of shame, self-esteem, and sexual desire. Participants were divided in four subgroups: (1) women (n = 87); (2) men (n = 46) from a general population convenience sample; (3) men watching porn >2 times per week, showing non-problematic hypersexuality (NH; n = 10); and (4) men watching porn >2 times per week, experiencing PH (n = 11). Multilevel analyses, including cross-level interactions, were used to investigate between-group differences in intraindividual processes. Results showed that prior increases in shame forecasted higher current sexual desire for men with PH, but not for the other groups, suggesting that men with PH use sexual desire to downregulate dysphoric feelings of shame. Differences between groups in associations between self-esteem and sexual desire were also found. Based on our results, we propose the Split Pleasure/Shame model, which represents emotion dysregulation in PH, and juxtapose this with the pleasurable experience of sex by non-PH groups. Further intensive longitudinal research is necessary to test this model and, more generally, to investigate the fluctuating nature of sexual desire. 

Keywords: sexual desire; shame; self-esteem; split pleasure/shame model; problematic hypersexuality


Friday, January 14, 2022

Creativity: Altered and Transitional States

Creativity: Altered and Transitional States. Stanley Krippner. In Encyclopedia of Creativity 3rd ed. Prinzter, Runco eds. Elsevier 2020.

Glossary

Altered States of Consciousness An “altered” conscious state can be defined as a pattern of phenomenological properties recognizable by an individual (or group), or by an external observer of that individual (or group), as demonstrating a major difference in behavior and experience from an ordinary baseline pattern of wakefulness. An “altered state” involves changes in a number of “subsystems” of consciousness such as perceptions, cognitions, emotions, and sense of time and space. Both dreaming and non-dreaming sleep differ from baseline consciousness, thus qualifying as “altered states.” Others include variants in wakefulness resulting from meditation, prayer, hypnosis, “peak experiences,” “mediumistic” and “channeling” rituals, and more. Studying the phenomenology (or subjective experience) of an “altered state” can be accomplished through observation, self-reports, interviews, brain scans and other psychophysiological measures, or the administration of psychological tests and inventories

Consciousness The term “consciousness” derives from the Latin conscire, to know with, or to be cognizant of something.  Ordinary waking consciousness reflects the explicit knowledge of one’s situation and one’s sense of personal existence. In general, “consciousness” can be described as a phenomenological pattern that characterizes humans or other sentient organisms at any given time and place

Creative The term “creative” can be applied to any act, idea, or product that changes or transforms an existing domain of human endeavor. A phenomenon is creative if it is novel and, in some manner, useful or appropriate for the situation in which it occurs

Phenomenology This is an approach to disciplined inquiry that emphasizes the nature of conscious experiences in their own terms. Phenomenologists investigate the relationship between conscious behaviors and the objects of such acts, thereby differing it from introspection

Transitional States of Consciousness Typically, a “transitional conscious state” lasts for a brief time period, mediating between two longer lasting patterns of consciousness. Hypnagogic states are transitional, because they mark the shift from a baseline state (wakefulness) to a long-lasting altered state (sleep). Other transitional states include daydreaming, reverie, napping, and hypnagogic or hypnopompic states, the former occurring when falling asleep and the latter upon waking from sleep. Transitional states are sometimes called “transliminal,” because they cross a “limen” or threshold


Historical Overview

The terms by which people make sense of their world are social artifacts, products of historically situated interchanges among people. In the history of Western civilization, not all individuals have had equal opportunities for creative expression. For example, until recently the creativity of women was rarely valued or encouraged in Western cultures; women were given few occasions to develop the skills (e.g., critical thinking) or life circumstances (e.g., solitude) on which creative work often depends. One of creativity’s “Four Ps” is Place, the historical and cultural context of Person, Process, and Product.

Shamans are community-sanctioned practitioners who purport to access information in what Westerners would call “altered states.” Shamans then use this information in service of their community. For example, Pablo Amaringo, a Peruvian shaman, interacted with “spirits” after drinking ayahuasca, a mind-altering brew made from Amazonian plants. His paintings of the “spirit world” attracted the attention of tourists. Using funds from the sale of his paintings, Amaringo established an art school for young people from the Amazonian rainforest. Jeremy Narby, an anthropologist, took three scientists to the Amazon to imbibe ayahuasca under the guidance of shamans. All three reported creative insights that helped them solve problems relating to their work (Narby and Huxley, 2009).

The paintings in the Lascaux Caves of southern France date back at least 17,000 years; the prone figure depicted in the cave is often regarded as a shaman experiencing changed consciousness, perhaps dreaming. Cave art often depicts substances now referred to as “psychedelic” (from the Greek words psyche and deloun, i.e., “mind-manifesting”). Such substances as the peyote cactus apparently helped many shamans enter the “spirit world.” Psychedelics provided a technology that triggered theatrical performances, mythic narratives, chants, songs, dances, and other products currently labeled “creative.” Traditional Siberian shamans still “journey” to the “spirit world” with the aid of psychedelic mushrooms, ritualistic dancing, and/or rhythmic drumming.

Initiates of the Eleusinian Mysteries in ancient Greece probably used a potion containing a psychedelic fungus to fathom what the poet Pindar called “the end of life and its god-sent beginning.” India’s Vedic hymns sing the praises of soma, an intoxicant, perhaps a psychedelic mushroom, that was “all pervading, swift as thought.”

In pre-Conquest Mesoamerica, people used their talents creatively in the service of their religious beliefs. Aztec poets and musicians rhapsodized about the “dream flowers” that took them to another world. Wasson found similarities between the employment of psychedelics in pre-Conquest Mexico and their use in ancient Greece; mind-altering plants adorn both the vases of Attica and the architecture of Mitla.


Cross-Cultural Comparisons

Societies have an assortment of terms to describe activities resembling what Western psychologists refer to as creativity; for example, the first hexagram of the Chinese “Book of Changes” (or I Jing) is Ch’ien, the “Creative Principle.” Most Asian, African, and Native American traditions also have used creative imagination to enrich and enhance everyday life. Novel and original contributions were typically seen as gifts from deities or spirits who used humans as “channels.”

When the Catholic Church’s power was dominant, Western cultures tended to consider “channeling” wicked and demonic.  Following the Renaissance, science and medicine prevailed. However, the rituals of “mediums” and “channelers” were now cast in psychopathological terms, even though their phenomenology was quite different. In contrast, traditional Eastern worshippers, such as Buddhists, Hindus, and Taoists, had intricate vocabularies to describe the phenomenology of changed consciousness.  In dreams and in waking visions, the Maya people asked their deities to appear before them, reflecting a tradition of visionary ecstasy. Mayan artists depicted an overlap between the world of everyday reality and the “spirit world,” suggesting that their phenomenology was more “dreamlike” than that of their European conquerors. Freud described the conscious “ego” as the external boundary of a volatile reservoir of both conscious and unconscious “psychic energies.” This resembles the shamanic energetic model of the human body embedded in a community and environmental matrix. However, from the shaman’s perspective, the “unconscious energies” of the Freudians were not blind and irrational, but keenly intelligent forces originating in the earth itself.


Creativity and Psychedelics

Psychedelic substances and other drugs affect consciousness by modifying the process of synaptic transmission in the brain. Excitatory and inhibitory connections are carried out by transfer of biochemicals (by neurotransmitters) across the synaptic gap between neurons. Drugs can affect synaptic transmission in a variety of ways, such as blocking the production or reception of a neurotransmitter or mocking a neurotransmitter, thus effectively increasing its activity level. The phenomenological pattern that a drug evokes depends upon which neurotransmitters it affects. In the case of psychedelics, the outcome seems to be a disruption of logical analysis and the automatic reality-checking functions of the brain, probably connected to the ability of these drugs to block serotonin transmission. In psychotherapy, psychedelics can produce a depatterning influence that breaks up the individual’s habitual experiences of the world, tending to increase the individual’s suggestibility and susceptibility to reprogramming (Baruss, 2003).

Several creative individuals have produced anecdotal accounts claiming that their phenomenology has been affected by ingestion of psychedelics (Krippner, 2017). They include neurologist S. Weir Mitchell, British writer Aldous Huxley, U.S. naval technician John Busby, actors Cary Grant and Rita Moreno, and the Canadian architect Kyo Izumi. Both Kary Mullis and Francis Crick attributed their Nobel Prize-winning discoveries (i.e., a DNA detection method; the double helix structure of DNA), at least in part, to experiences with LSD.


The “Model Psychosis” Assumption

Some early researchers reported that LSD users gave highly imaginative, although bizarre, responses to Rorschach inkblots and other measures. In summarizing his observations of LSD users in 1976, the psychoanalyst Silvano Arieti found that the use of “primary process mechanisms” was enhanced, but that the “secondary processing” required to put the imagery to creative use was impaired.  These studies and related research, conducted with artists and non-artists, and with laboratory participants and “street users,” identified many dysfunctional results of informal psychedelic drug use. However, no conclusive data supported the notion that psychedelics could produce a “model psychosis.” In 1988, T. E. Oxman and colleagues reported a content analysis of 66 autobiographical accounts of schizophrenia, psychedelic drug experience, and mystical experience, as well as personal experiences in ordinary consciousness. They concluded that there is a “clear dissimilarity” among changed states of consciousness, especially between psychosis and psychedelic drug states, as a refutation of the “model psychosis” perspective. Creativity, of course, is only one of many behaviors affected by psychedelics. One of creativity’s “Four Ps” is Process, and psychedelics may accelerate the incubation phase.


Psychedelic Research With Volunteers

Another of creativity’s “Four Ps” is Person, and several studies have been conducted with volunteers to determine the relationship between psychedelics and creative behavior. For example, to study the effects of LSD on creativity test scores, a test battery (also administered to a control group) was given before LSD ingestion, and alternative forms of the same tests were administered 2 h later. The researchers observed that changed scores on the creativity tests favored the LSD group, even though they did poorly on tests requiring visual attention. In another study, one-third of the participants were administered a high dose of LSD, onethird a low dose, and one-third an amphetamine. Questionnaires were administered to each group prior to drug ingestion and again at two follow-ups. The low LSD and amphetamine groups obtained similar results, but the high LSD group bought more musical records, spent more time in museums, and attended more musical events. Another study dispensed psilocybin to volunteers who had completed tests for creativity and for brain damage; they were re-tested after drug ingestion. A significant inverse relationship between the scores on the two tests was reported.

A 2018 study found that both convergent and divergent thinking test scores improved following frequent “microdoses” of LSD.  In summation, psychedelic substances affect several subsystems of consciousness that enhance creativity (Pappas, 2018). However, these insights need to be implemented in the elaboration phase of creativity.


Psychedelic Research With Selected Participants

In the 1960s, LSD was administered to 50 well-known artists at the Max Planck Institute in Munich. The artists concurred that the experience was of value, and the ensuing work was displayed in a Frankfurt gallery. In a study on the effects of mescaline and LSD on four U.S. graphic artists, a panel of art critics judged the paintings to have greater aesthetic value than the artists’ usual work, noting that the lines were bolder and the use of color more vivid. A similar study giving LSD to American artists resulted in judgments by a professor of art history that the LSD paintings were more imaginative, especially in color, line, and texture, although the technique was poorer.

A study of professional workers in creativity-related fields showed that mescaline ingestion resulted in a statistically significant increase in creativity test scores, with enhanced fluency of ideas, visualization, and field independence. Interview and questionnaire data revealed that half the group had accomplished a great deal more during the mescaline session than would have characterized their ordinary workday. All participants reported positive reactions to mescaline, but many were unable to focus because they were diverted by the experience itself.

In one study, ayahuasca was ingested by 24 volunteers. Their pre-session and post-session scores on creativity tests revealed a decrease in convergent thinking and an increase in divergent thinking. The researchers concluded that ayahuasca “enhances creative divergent thinking,” but that “additional research . is warranted” (Kuypers et al., 2016, p. 3407).


Cross-Cultural Considerations

The potent red mescal bean, Sophora secundiflora, has been found with the remains of the extinct bison and the tools and weapons of early North American hunters. Anthropologists have noted that the chants and poems used in contemporary spiritual ceremonies make great demands on the practitioner; the Yakut shaman in Siberia, for example, has a poetic vocabulary of some 12,000 words used in Amanita muscaria mushroom rites, as compared to 4000 in ordinary daily endeavors. The Zuni rain priests of New Mexico have a special language with which they converse with “spirit birds” once they have ingested Datura meteloides. For native people, these substances are not taken trivially, for momentary pleasures or “cheap thrills” (De Rios, 2003). To maintain their standards, native groups require a precise amount of time for the preparation of psychedelic concoctions, and the mixture of ingredients must be exact. Even then, there may be an initial period of bodily discomfort, physical pain, or vomiting, followed by encounters with “malevolent spirits.”

Psychedelics often foster creative behavior among indigenous people by reinforcing cultural myths and traditions. The ayahuascaingesting Siona shamans of the Amazon have provided phenomenological reports that involve categorizing the induced visions into culturally meaningful symbols and experiences. On the other hand, psychedelics often stimulate creativity among specialists in industrialized societies by deconditioning them to their cultural traditions; their images are likely to tap into their personal rather than their social imaginario.


Creativity, Hypnagogia, and Hypnopompia

Colorful images often occur during hypnagogic (from the Greek Hypnos, or sleep, and agogeus, or leading into) reverie, the transliminal state occurring during the onset of sleep. There is a similar association between creativity and hypnopompic (from the Greek Hypnos, or sleep, and pompe, or leading out of) reverie, which occurs as one awakens from sleep. These transitional states, referred to as hypnagogia and hypnopompia, resemble dreams in that both contain visual, auditory, and/or kinesthetic imagery. However, material from these twilight states is not typically characterized by narration, as with dreams (Mavromatis, 1987).  Hypnagogic images seem to have been a critical factor in chemist Friedrich August Kekule’s conceptualization of the structural formula of the benzene molecule as well as a Ludwig van Beethoven composition obtained while napping in his carriage en route to Vienna. William Blake claimed that images of spiritual beings, which started coming to him as a child, served as the basis for many of his later drawings. Thomas Edison often stretched out on his workshop couch; during these “half-waking” episodes, he claimed that he was “flooded” by creative images. Mary Shelley disclosed that her classic tale, Frankenstein, came to her as a series of hypnagogic images the evening after her group of friends agreed to compete for the best original Gothic horror tale (Shelley won).


Creativity and Daydreaming

Autobiographies and biographies reveal that several prominent individuals apparently utilized various types of daydreaming for creative purposes. Isaac Newton claimed to have solved many vexing problems in physics when his attention was waylaid by private musings.

The composer Claude Debussy used to gaze at the river Seine and its playful reflections of the sun to establish an atmosphere for his creativity. The writer Friedrich Schiller kept rotten apples in his desk drawer, stating the aroma helped evoke creative reverie. The philosopher John Dewey observed that creative conceptions frequently occur when people “are relaxed to the point of reverie.” Jerome Singer (1966) found evidence in both children and adults of frequent daydreaming among those whose written or dictated stories were rated by judges as the most original and creative. Singer also reported that daydreaming was marked by passive, effortless indulgence of a wish in fantasy an uncritical condition typical of some types of creativity.


Cross-Cultural Comparisons

The way a culture conceptualizes creativity restricts it to some social practices and processes and denies it to others. During the heyday of Maoist thought in China, creativity was a matter of teamwork, and no individual artisan was allowed to sign a painting, claim authorship for an orchestral piece, or register credit for an invention. For spiritual reasons, the composers of Indian ragas did not affix their names to their works, and, in the Benin culture, the African deity Olokun is thought to influence artists through dreams and reverie. There are several societies in which specialists are encouraged to put aside their rational problem-solving modes of thought so that divinities may work through them.


Creativity, Meditation, Hypnosis, and Mediumship

There are psychophysiological markers for hypnagogia, hypnopompia, and napping. In the case of meditation, several studies have identified markers such as reduced respiration rate and volume of air breathed, reduced oxygen consumption and carbon dioxide elimination, and reduced blood lactate. In these studies, heart rate and the skin’s electrical conductance decreased, but the frequency of alpha (and sometimes of theta) brain waves increased. All of these suggest reduced energy metabolism, autonomic nervous system arousal, cortical energy metabolism, and autonomic nervous system and cortical arousal. Reduced arousal during meditation is due to its rest and relaxation aspects rather than to the specific meditation practice employed. However, it is probably more accurate to speak of “meditative states of consciousness” than to hypothesize a single “meditative state,” because different practices may emphasize rapid breathing and active movement rather than counting breaths, repeating phrases, focusing on a mandala, or witnessing to one’s thoughts (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996).

The term “hypnosis” refers to a variety of structured, goal-oriented procedures in which the suggestibility and/or motivation of an individual or a group is enhanced by another person (or persons), or by oneself. These procedures attempt to blur, focus, and/or amplify mentation (e.g., imagination and intention), leading to the accomplishment of specified behaviors or experiences that reflect expectations and role enactments on the part of the “hypnotized” individuals who attend (often with little awareness) to the interpersonal or situational cues that shape their responses. Other research data emphasize the part that attention plays in hypnosis, enhancing the salience of the suggested task or experience. Both these bodies of hypnosis literature stress the interaction of several variables, suggesting that there are great individual differences in hypnotic responsiveness. Some participants are fantasyprone, others dissociate easily, and still others are highly motivated to be “hypnotized.” Both hypnotic susceptibility and creativity are fairly stable personality traits, as measured by several standardized tests. The research on hypnosis and creative phenomena has shown that fantasy and absorptive experiences are concomitants of various changes in consciousness, including those due to hypnosis. They occur spontaneously in the context of a creative act; and they are often experienced by creative participants who, as a group, seem more adept than their less creative peers at shifting cognitively from a higher to a lower level of psychic functioning – from a more active to a more passive condition. In addition, the ability to tolerate unusual experiences and become absorbed in a variety of experiences correlates highly with hypnotic susceptibility. Time distortion in hypnosis has been used to facilitate the expressive arts and creative writing (Cooper and Erickson, 1954). Benefits from hypnotically enhanced rehearsals have been reported by actors and performing artists (Shames, 1992).

Because of the link between hypnosis and creativity, practitioners need to know with what degree of facility a hypnotized subject can produce pseudo-memories. Even if the increase in memories later is found to be accurate, it is often accompanied by an increase in inaccurate memories. These pseudo-memories attest to the participants’ creativity but are often used inappropriately in psychotherapy.

The term “meditation” (from the Latin meditatio or thinking over) refers to a variety of practices that are used to self-regulate one’s attention. All meditative practices attempt to bring the meditator into the “here and now,” breaking through habitual phenomenological patterns. The case for increased creativity during meditation rests on the practice’s ability to assist the meditator to break through socially ingrained patterns of perceiving and conceptualizing the world (Murphy and Donovan, 1988). If the linear, cause-and-effect way of thinking can be transcended, creativity may result. Creativity may be further enhanced by adopting a more circular way of thinking in which the focus is on relationships, possibilities, and recursive patterns rather than on linear causality and single-outcome events (Csikszentmihalyi, 1996). The research on meditation and creativity has produced mixed results. One group of researchers found no relationship between creativity test scores and experience in meditation. Another group reported significant increases in creativity scoring among practitioners of transcendental meditation (TM) and among Zen meditators.  One of the latter studies focused on students of Zen koans, finding that they were able to eliminate prior approaches interfering with problem solving and enhance the unification of contradictory events.

Patricia Carrington has reported several cases of students whose grades have improved, whose emotions have stabilized, and whose artistic productions have flourished following their initiation of a meditation practice. At the same time, in a comparison of a group of teachers of TM with a group of non-meditators, the former did no better than the latter on most measures, worse on a few measures, and better on one measure – an open-ended task requiring them to make up a story. It seems that meditation may enhance the free flow of associations and evoke new ideas for a meditator, but an abundance of meditation (probably the case with the group of teachers) may interfere with a person’s logical problem-solving capacity. A meta-analysis of all existing studies of TM and “self-actualization” concluded that the magnitude of the effects was not due to expectation, motivation, or relaxation, but to TM practice itself (Carrington, 1978).

Chico Xavier was a Brazilian medium who claimed to receive information from deceased persons (“spirits”), most of whom he had never met. By the time that he died in 2001, Xavier had written thousands of letters and nearly 500 books, all purportedly dictated by “spirits.” A linguistic analysis of several of these books found no underlying similarities among the purported authors or with the writings of which Xavier claimed ownership (Playfair, 2010). Occasionally, someone who is not a professional medium will produce poems, essays, and books through automatic writing. In 1913, a Missouri housewife, Pearl Curran, was using a Ouija Board when a message arrived from “Patience Worth” who allegedly lived in the 18th century. Over two decades, Curran produced over 400,000 words “dictated” by Patience Worth. Some were historical novels that received acclaim from both literary critics and historical scholars. Curran wrote a detailed phenomenology of her “automatic writing,” describing how images came to her while she was fully aware and never in a “trance” state.


Cross-Cultural Comparisons

Eastern and Western meditative practices have a long history; they have been viewed as spiritual exercises – means for attaining the special kind of awareness that can be arrived at in concert with other life practices. In contemporary industrialized societies, however, meditation tends to be oriented toward practical goals, with no ties to a specific belief system. The advantage is that one is free to use meditation outside a spiritual context, combining it with other methods of self-development and healthoriented or psychotherapeutic treatment. The disadvantage is that one may not attain the peace of mind of the unitive “bliss” claimed by members of traditional meditation schools.

The history of hypnosis is more recent. In the middle of the 19th century, James Braid introduced the term “neuro-hypnotism” or “nervous sleep” (from the Greek hypnosis, or sleep). However, the roots of hypnosis reach back to tribal rites and the practices of shamans. Hypnotic-like procedures were used in the court of the Pharaoh Khufu in 3766 BCE.; priests in the healing temples of Asclepius induced their clients into “temple sleep,” and the ancient Druids chanted over their clients until the desired effect was obtained. Herbs were used by native shamans to enhance verbal suggestion in pre-Columbian Central and South America. It is, nonetheless, incorrect to label these procedures “hypnosis” simply because they drew upon similar procedures such as suggestion, repetitive stimuli, and client expectations. People, groups, and cultures are “creative” during those periods of time when they exhibit activities that are innovative for that specific group in ways it considers valuable. These novel concepts, objects, and behaviors (e.g., a scientific discovery, a mathematical theorem, a philosophical insight, an artistic masterpiece) can be considered creative, although one social group might arrive at a consensus different from that of another group.

The practice of mediumship varies from culture to culture. The enslaved Africans brought their religions with them to the New World. Since such practices were vigorously opposed by Christian clerics, they went underground. This was a successful strategy in the French, Spanish, and Portuguese colonies; currently, mediumship is being practiced in New Orleans, the Caribbean, and Brazil, often in a temple that represents a syncretic religion (such as Candomblé or Santeria). Some church members are renowned for “incorporating” famous artists, selling the artwork both to local people and to tourists.


Neurophysiological Mechanisms

Art involves the controlled structuring of a medium or material to communicate as vividly as possible the artist’s personal vision of experience. If the Product (one of the “Four Ps”) resonates with a larger public, it has succeeded in filling some gaps in social knowledge or in resolving cultural contradictions. Artists also attempt to supply missing information or material in a culture’s legacy. The same can be said for those creative individuals who work with institutions and groups of other people. None of this labor is done in a vacuum; there are neurophysiological predispositions interacting with social and psychological variables in the development of a Product, Process, Person, or Place that is eventually deemed creative.

There are several perceptual mechanisms ordinarily driven by sensory input during one’s baseline state of consciousness that are decoupled, totally or partially, from sensory input during many alterations in consciousness. A total decoupling takes place during dreaming, while partial decouplings take place in hypnagogic or hypnopompic states, daydreaming, meditation, and some druginduced or hypnosis-induced conditions. Transitions from such states represent a fertile ground for the development of creative ideas, because the perceptual mechanisms automatically linked to organizing the sensory inputs still occur, occasionally constructing novel and useful images from fragments of internal neural noise and loosely guided consultations with memory. Language allows the abstract images and relationships to be translated into a communicable form (Fink et al., 2009).  There is a direct relationship between perceptual processes and creative thought. The decoupling of normal sensory input during changed consciousness can be viewed as distinct from restricting sensory input in an individual’s ordinary waking state.


Psychosocial Mechanisms

The forms in which creative experiences are expressed cannot be separated from individuals and their cultures. Cross-cultural research has demonstrated that patterns of expectation within a given culture have an a priori influence on creative experiences.  Thus, in those cultures where women are devalued, there is little opportunity for their creativity to be expressed and appreciated.  The effects of psychedelics upon creativity depend on more than their neurophysiological effects, which are produced by an interaction between pharmacological drug factors (type or dose), long-term psychosocial factors (culture, personality, attitudes, knowledge, beliefs, prior experience), immediate psychosocial factors (mood, expectations, group ambience), and situational factors (setting, instructions, implicit and explicit demands). For example, anthropologists who have observed the effects of ayahuasca among indigenous people in the Amazon comment that the phenomenology differs, sometimes strikingly, according to the environmental and ceremonial background against which the drug is taken, the ingredients used in its preparation, the amount of it imbibed, and the expectancies on the part of the participant.


Learning From the Past

The formal study of creativity dates back only to J. P. Guilford’s 1950 presidential address to the American Psychological Association, in which he urged his colleagues to pursue this overlooked area. After the connection between changed states of consciousness and divergent thinking was made, and investigations of the links among drugs, hypnosis, and creativity ensued, studies of additional altered and transitional states followed.

A seminal research project was undertaken by R.K. Siegel (1977). He conducted a systematic study of visual images produced by a variety of drugs, focusing on such varied dimensions of these images as color, movement, action, and form. Siegel’s participants were trained to use an image classification system prior to the drug sessions. There were baseline and placebo sessions for comparative purposes. Regarding reported images, the amphetamine (a stimulant) and phenobarbital (a sedative) sessions did not differ from placebo sessions. However, the sessions with mescaline, LSD, psilocybin, and a marijuana derivative produced similar images.  In the psychedelic drug sessions, for example, complex images did not appear until well after there was a shift to lattice tunnel forms; memory images emerged in the later stages of the appearance of complex imagery. Noting that hypnagogic and hypnopompic images were accompanied by theta and low-frequency alpha brain waves, other researchers used biofeedback to teach participants how to obtain this phenomenology. There was an expected increase in the participants’ awareness of internal imagery and dream recall. What was unexpected was that most of them reported an increase in “integrative experiences” and “feelings of well-being.” These positive changes were amenable to intuition, insight, and creativity.

Several questions regarding the research on hypnosis and creativity remain unanswered. Robust findings are lacking due to methodological differences in the studies, the varied hypnotic responsiveness of the participants, and the disparate ways that creativity has been measured. Even when similar tests are used, they are administered differently, and the tests themselves admittedly assess a single instance or aspect of creativity. It may be that restrictions in awareness increase the priming of associative networks (outside of one’s awareness) by reducing cognitive interference. As a result, new associations are made, giving rise to creative insights.  Imagination or fantasy provides a continuous backdrop to mentation outside of awareness, and hypnosis may increase its accessibility.  Heart rate probably reflects shifts of attention from external to internal events, making it a potentially revealing way to assess the oscillation of attention from an external focus of concern toward the internal events it triggers, a process that is one aspect of creativity. A significant relationship has been reported between heartbeat rate variability and participants’ creativity scores, as more creative persons tended to show higher cardiac variability.

The psychophysiological studies of Zen meditators and yogic meditators revealed basic differences: members of the former group demonstrated “openness” to external stimuli, but were not distracted by them, whereas members of the latter group demonstrated “detachment” from external stimuli. In the light of this diversity, it is important that the type of meditation studied be identified in the assessment of phenomenological accounts, as well as the length of time the participants had been meditating. Further, it is common for meditation to blend into sleep during an experiment; hence, the images reported may be the result of hypnagogia or hypnopompia and not meditation itself. The application of chaos theory to the study of creativity has produced several insights, among them a description of how chaotic activity patterns in the brain can reconcile convergent and divergent problem-solving processes, and how “chaotic attractors” can utilize the brain’s neural networks to combine images and thoughts that would escape detection during wakefulness.


Planning for the Future

It is customary to study “the four Ps of creativity”: product, process, person, and place (sometimes called press). Simonton added a fifth P, persuasion. And this entry has added another “P,” namely, phenomenology. One’s experiences, whether ordinary, altered, or transitional, often play a key and pivotal role in evoking creativity as well as sustaining creative behavior.  Future research might identify the extent to which individual differences determine the scope of creativity. Such data could provide a better grasp of the degree to which information processing in altered or transitional states constitutes a major source of creative productivity. Mental constructions occurring during such states can be useful only insofar as they are remembered in order to be evaluated for application and utility. It may be that the degree to which decoupled automatic perceptual processes contribute to creative output has far more to do with facility in higher-level cognitive processes (such as memory storage and retrieval, search, and comparison) than in individual differences in the perceptual organization processes themselves.  One common view of why individuals manifesting some of the streams of schizophrenic-like thought might be viewed as creative is that deficiencies in their customary involuntary perceptual organization processes lead to an increased likelihood of an atypical representation of a perceptual event. In other words, it may be the anomalous organization of sensory input, coupled with sufficiently appropriate higher order processes to evaluate the potential value of a mental construction, that lead to creative output.  Creativity attributable to looseness in perceptual organization in the presence of stimuli is very different from creativity attributed to perceptual organization processes decoupled from normal sensory inputs. An increased frequency of transitions from transitional states of consciousness, as might reasonably be expected to occur in association with certain psychotic disorders, may be combined with unimpaired, or even superior, mechanisms of perceptual organization. This would represent a potential alternative route for contributing to creative thought by those individuals who are disposed toward cognitive disorders. Moreover, the relative instability or looseness in organizational processes, in tandem with the ability to exploit involuntary organizational processes decoupled from sensory input, may display individual difference variables. In this regard, what Richards (2018) has dubbed “everyday creativity” is an overlooked phenomenon in a field that all too often emphasizes the exotic, the dramatic, and the spectacular. It is quite likely that creative work draws more upon the ordinary waking state with its intact subsystems of consciousness than upon altered and transitional states.

Drugs can be ingested, meditation can be practiced, hypnosis can be utilized, and the contents of reverie can be recorded, but everyday behaviors and experiences can also provide inspiration for what later may become a novel approach to a long-delayed home refurbishing, an improved golf stroke, a new recipe for a family dinner, a breakthrough in a troubled relationship, an ingenious plan to divert restaurant leftovers to homeless people, a challenging educational technology, or any one of many other achievements.

The need for creative approaches at all social levels, as well as from all phenomenological states, has never been greater. Their development and application need to reflect the concepts of “origin” and “making,” which have so appropriately grounded the Latin word creare.


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