General sexual desire, but not desire for uncommitted sexual relationships, tracks changes in women's hormonal status. Benedict Jones et al. In bioRxiv, https://doi.org/10.1101/155788
Abstract: Several recent longitudinal studies have investigated the hormonal correlates of both young adult women's general sexual desire and, more specifically, their desire for uncommitted sexual relationships. Findings across these studies have been mixed, potentially because each study tested only small samples of women (Ns = 43, 33, and 14). Here we report results from a much larger (N = 375) longitudinal study of hormonal correlates of young adult women's general sexual desire and their desire for uncommitted sexual relationships. Our analyses suggest that within-woman changes in general sexual desire are negatively related to progesterone, but are not related to testosterone or cortisol. We observed some positive relationships for estradiol, but these were generally only significant for solitary sexual desire. By contrast with our results for general sexual desire, analyses showed no evidence that changes in women's desire for uncommitted sexual relationships are related to their hormonal status. Together, these results suggest that changes in hormonal status contribute to changes in women's general sexual desire, but do not influence women's desire for uncommitted sexual relationships.
Bipartisan Alliance, a Society for the Study of the US Constitution, and of Human Nature, where Republicans and Democrats meet.
Thursday, December 21, 2017
When proficiency levels are only adequate, and without special investment in L2, native language jokes will be evaluated as funnier than foreign language jokes. With intermediate proficiency and investment, jokes can be experienced as similarly humorous in the two languages
Are jokes funnier in one’s native language? Ayşe Ayçiçeği-Dinn, Simge Şişman-Bal, Catherine L Caldwell-Harris. International Journal of Humor Research, https://doi.org/10.1515/humor-2017-0112
Abstract: Appreciating the humor in jokes involves incongruity-detection and resolution, which requires good language skills. Foreign language comprehension is challenging, including interpreting words within their sentence context. An implication is that jokes in a foreign language will be more difficult to understand and therefore probably less humorous, compared to native language jokes. To study this question while preserving humor across translations, jokes were selected from Turkish and English websites to minimize language play and cultural references. Turkish university students rated both Turkish and English jokes for humor. Humor for foreign language jokes was positively correlated with ease-of-understanding of specific jokes and also by the individual-differences characteristics of English proficiency and likely career investment (e.g., preparing for a future career as English teacher or translator). We propose the proficiency X investment theory: Foreign language jokes will be experienced as funnier than native language jokes when proficiency levels are high (ranging from good to excellent) and bilinguals have a high level of L2 investment. When proficiency levels are only adequate, and without special investment in L2, native language jokes will be evaluated as funnier than foreign language jokes. With intermediate proficiency and investment, jokes can be experienced as similarly humorous in the two language. Important in this pattern is the proposal that weaker L2-proficiency can trade-off with language investment to bolster L2 humor appreciation.
Keywords: humor appreciation; bilingualism; foreign language learning; Turkish students
Abstract: Appreciating the humor in jokes involves incongruity-detection and resolution, which requires good language skills. Foreign language comprehension is challenging, including interpreting words within their sentence context. An implication is that jokes in a foreign language will be more difficult to understand and therefore probably less humorous, compared to native language jokes. To study this question while preserving humor across translations, jokes were selected from Turkish and English websites to minimize language play and cultural references. Turkish university students rated both Turkish and English jokes for humor. Humor for foreign language jokes was positively correlated with ease-of-understanding of specific jokes and also by the individual-differences characteristics of English proficiency and likely career investment (e.g., preparing for a future career as English teacher or translator). We propose the proficiency X investment theory: Foreign language jokes will be experienced as funnier than native language jokes when proficiency levels are high (ranging from good to excellent) and bilinguals have a high level of L2 investment. When proficiency levels are only adequate, and without special investment in L2, native language jokes will be evaluated as funnier than foreign language jokes. With intermediate proficiency and investment, jokes can be experienced as similarly humorous in the two language. Important in this pattern is the proposal that weaker L2-proficiency can trade-off with language investment to bolster L2 humor appreciation.
Keywords: humor appreciation; bilingualism; foreign language learning; Turkish students
Greater importance of intrasexual competition than female choice in human male sexual selection than we thought -- physical dominance, but not sexual attractiveness, predicted mating success
Kordsmeyer, Tobias, John Hunt, David Puts, Julia Ostner, and Lars Penke. 2017. “The Relative Importance of Intra- and Intersexual Selection on Human Male Sexually Dimorphic Traits"”. PsyArXiv. December 21. psyarxiv.com/edw4f
Abstract: Recent evidence suggests that in sexual selection on human males, intrasexual competition plays a larger role than female choice. In a sample of men (N = 164), we sought to provide further evidence on the effects of men’s physical dominance and sexual attractiveness on mating success and hence in sexual selection. Objective measures and subjective ratings of male sexually dimorphic traits purportedly under sexual selection (height, vocal and facial masculinity, upper body size from 3D scans, physical strength, and baseline testosterone) and observer perceptions of physical dominance and sexual attractiveness based on self-presentation video recordings were assessed and associated with mating success (sociosexual behaviour and number of potential conceptions) in a partly longitudinal design. Results from structural equation models and selection analyses revealed that physical dominance, but not sexual attractiveness, predicted mating success. Physical dominance mediated associations of upper body size, physical strength, as well as vocal and facial physical dominance and attractiveness with mating success. These findings thus suggest a greater importance of intrasexual competition than female choice in human male sexual selection.
Abstract: Recent evidence suggests that in sexual selection on human males, intrasexual competition plays a larger role than female choice. In a sample of men (N = 164), we sought to provide further evidence on the effects of men’s physical dominance and sexual attractiveness on mating success and hence in sexual selection. Objective measures and subjective ratings of male sexually dimorphic traits purportedly under sexual selection (height, vocal and facial masculinity, upper body size from 3D scans, physical strength, and baseline testosterone) and observer perceptions of physical dominance and sexual attractiveness based on self-presentation video recordings were assessed and associated with mating success (sociosexual behaviour and number of potential conceptions) in a partly longitudinal design. Results from structural equation models and selection analyses revealed that physical dominance, but not sexual attractiveness, predicted mating success. Physical dominance mediated associations of upper body size, physical strength, as well as vocal and facial physical dominance and attractiveness with mating success. These findings thus suggest a greater importance of intrasexual competition than female choice in human male sexual selection.
There is a limit to the number of friends we can manage at any one time, Dunbar’s number, imposed by a combination of the time and the cognitive demands of maintaining relationships. ⦁ There are striking gender differences in how relationships are maintained
The Anatomy of Friendship. R.I.M. Dunbar. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, Volume 22, Issue 1, January 2018, Pages 32–51. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2017.10.004
Abstract: Friendship is the single most important factor influencing our health, well-being, and happiness. Creating and maintaining friendships is, however, extremely costly, in terms of both the time that has to be invested and the cognitive mechanisms that underpin them. Nonetheless, personal social networks exhibit many constancies, notably in their size and their hierarchical structuring. Understanding the processes that give rise to these patterns and their evolutionary origins requires a multidisciplinary approach that combines social and neuropsychology as well as evolutionary biology.
Trends
⦁ Having friends has dramatic effects on our happiness, mental well-being and longevity.
⦁ There is a limit to the number of friends we can manage at any one time, sometimes known as ‘Dunbar’s number’.
⦁ This limit is imposed by a combination of the time and the cognitive demands (the latter a function of prefrontal cortex volume) of maintaining relationships.
⦁ There are striking gender differences in how relationships are maintained.
⦁ The Internet has not (yet) changed any of this.
Keywords: endorphins; gender differences; happiness; health; social networks
---
On the cognitive side, some form of cost accounting (a totting up of favours owed and promises broken) must be important [10]. A survey of the causes of relationship breakdown, for example, has identified lack of caring, poor communication, jealousy, and alcohol/drugs as the main causes (accounting for approximately 57% of all breakdowns) [122], all of which suggest that some kind of tally is being kept. However, there have been no studies that have explored the cognitive bases of this accounting process (other than to emphasise the obvious need to remember past interactions).
The data on relationship breakdown should remind us that trust plays a crucial role in building and maintaining relationships [10,123,124]. The functionality of friendships (emotional support, unstinting help) depends implicitly on trust that, over the long haul, the relationship will be in approximate economic balance (i.e., debts will be repaid eventually). While close friendships (those in the innermost layers) may well involve unstinting altruism and, at least in the short term, less emphasis on scorekeeping, score-keeping and the monitoring of reputations are none-theless likely to become increasingly important in the outer layers. Interestingly, despite the kinship premium, breakdown of family relationships is unexpectedly common compared to friendships [122]. This may be because, whereas friendships simply drift apart after minor breaches of trust, kin (and romantic partners) are initially more tolerant but eventually, after many breaches of trust, so much strain has been put on the relationship that it undergoes a catastrophic fracture. As a result, the sense of ‘hurt’ is greater and reconciliation is invariably difficult to engineer [122].
Friendships are cognitively demanding because they are implicit social contracts – in effect, promises of future support. This makes them particularly susceptible to freeriding (taking the benefits without paying all the costs). Freeriding, in its many forms (stealing others’ property, reneging on obligations, behaving ungenerously and, at least in humans, trading once too often on someone’s good nature or spreading rumours about their motives), is very destructive of relationships and rapidly leads to the collapse and contraction of social networks because people become unwilling to trust more than their closest friends [125,126].
-
Gendered Networks?
Aside from striking gender homophily of networks [26,40], the two sexes exhibit a number of important differences in respect of friendships. One is that, while both sexes have broadly similar social networks, women consistently have larger inner layers than men, in most cases significantly so [18,127,129]. This correlates with women’s typically better performance on mentalising tasks [127,132]. Second, women seem to have a category of friend that is almost unknown among men, namely, a same-sex best friend (a BFF, or ‘best friend forever’), in addition to a romantic partner [216]. Although this additional individual is occasionally male, the great majority are women: in a sample of 257 women’s best friends, just 18.3% were men [217]. It is unlikely that many of these male BFFs were extra lovers, since it seems difficult to maintain two equally intense sexual relationships simultaneously [85].
The two genders also differ in what maintains the emotional closeness of friendships over time. For women, this involves making the effort to spend more time talking together (either face-to-face, by phone or via the Internet), whereas talking has almost no effect on men’s friendships; what maintains the emotional quality of men’s friendships is increased investment in ‘doing things together’ (sports, drinking, etc.) [91]. Although doing things together does benefit women’s friendships, it has much less effect than it does for men.
These contrasts parallel differences in social media and phone use (women account for around two-thirds of active Facebook users [218,219] and make longer and more frequent phone calls [29]) as well as differences in style of aggression (men are more likely to respond with physical violence, while women are more likely to use verbal aggression [220]). Analyses of a large national mobile phone database suggest that women focus their phone calling on an opposite sex person of similar age much more than males do, and they do so from a much earlier age and continue for considerably longer [221].
In sum, women seem to invest more heavily in their relationships than men, whose relationships seem to be much more casual (even in the case of their most intimate relationships) [217]. For this reason, women’s friendships often seem to be more fragile and susceptible to catastrophic breakdown [122].
Check also Optimising human community sizes. R.I.M. Dunbar, R. Sosis. Evolution and Human Behavior, http://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2017/11/group-longevity-as-function-of-its-size.html
Abstract: Friendship is the single most important factor influencing our health, well-being, and happiness. Creating and maintaining friendships is, however, extremely costly, in terms of both the time that has to be invested and the cognitive mechanisms that underpin them. Nonetheless, personal social networks exhibit many constancies, notably in their size and their hierarchical structuring. Understanding the processes that give rise to these patterns and their evolutionary origins requires a multidisciplinary approach that combines social and neuropsychology as well as evolutionary biology.
Trends
⦁ Having friends has dramatic effects on our happiness, mental well-being and longevity.
⦁ There is a limit to the number of friends we can manage at any one time, sometimes known as ‘Dunbar’s number’.
⦁ This limit is imposed by a combination of the time and the cognitive demands (the latter a function of prefrontal cortex volume) of maintaining relationships.
⦁ There are striking gender differences in how relationships are maintained.
⦁ The Internet has not (yet) changed any of this.
Keywords: endorphins; gender differences; happiness; health; social networks
---
On the cognitive side, some form of cost accounting (a totting up of favours owed and promises broken) must be important [10]. A survey of the causes of relationship breakdown, for example, has identified lack of caring, poor communication, jealousy, and alcohol/drugs as the main causes (accounting for approximately 57% of all breakdowns) [122], all of which suggest that some kind of tally is being kept. However, there have been no studies that have explored the cognitive bases of this accounting process (other than to emphasise the obvious need to remember past interactions).
The data on relationship breakdown should remind us that trust plays a crucial role in building and maintaining relationships [10,123,124]. The functionality of friendships (emotional support, unstinting help) depends implicitly on trust that, over the long haul, the relationship will be in approximate economic balance (i.e., debts will be repaid eventually). While close friendships (those in the innermost layers) may well involve unstinting altruism and, at least in the short term, less emphasis on scorekeeping, score-keeping and the monitoring of reputations are none-theless likely to become increasingly important in the outer layers. Interestingly, despite the kinship premium, breakdown of family relationships is unexpectedly common compared to friendships [122]. This may be because, whereas friendships simply drift apart after minor breaches of trust, kin (and romantic partners) are initially more tolerant but eventually, after many breaches of trust, so much strain has been put on the relationship that it undergoes a catastrophic fracture. As a result, the sense of ‘hurt’ is greater and reconciliation is invariably difficult to engineer [122].
Friendships are cognitively demanding because they are implicit social contracts – in effect, promises of future support. This makes them particularly susceptible to freeriding (taking the benefits without paying all the costs). Freeriding, in its many forms (stealing others’ property, reneging on obligations, behaving ungenerously and, at least in humans, trading once too often on someone’s good nature or spreading rumours about their motives), is very destructive of relationships and rapidly leads to the collapse and contraction of social networks because people become unwilling to trust more than their closest friends [125,126].
-
Gendered Networks?
Aside from striking gender homophily of networks [26,40], the two sexes exhibit a number of important differences in respect of friendships. One is that, while both sexes have broadly similar social networks, women consistently have larger inner layers than men, in most cases significantly so [18,127,129]. This correlates with women’s typically better performance on mentalising tasks [127,132]. Second, women seem to have a category of friend that is almost unknown among men, namely, a same-sex best friend (a BFF, or ‘best friend forever’), in addition to a romantic partner [216]. Although this additional individual is occasionally male, the great majority are women: in a sample of 257 women’s best friends, just 18.3% were men [217]. It is unlikely that many of these male BFFs were extra lovers, since it seems difficult to maintain two equally intense sexual relationships simultaneously [85].
The two genders also differ in what maintains the emotional closeness of friendships over time. For women, this involves making the effort to spend more time talking together (either face-to-face, by phone or via the Internet), whereas talking has almost no effect on men’s friendships; what maintains the emotional quality of men’s friendships is increased investment in ‘doing things together’ (sports, drinking, etc.) [91]. Although doing things together does benefit women’s friendships, it has much less effect than it does for men.
These contrasts parallel differences in social media and phone use (women account for around two-thirds of active Facebook users [218,219] and make longer and more frequent phone calls [29]) as well as differences in style of aggression (men are more likely to respond with physical violence, while women are more likely to use verbal aggression [220]). Analyses of a large national mobile phone database suggest that women focus their phone calling on an opposite sex person of similar age much more than males do, and they do so from a much earlier age and continue for considerably longer [221].
In sum, women seem to invest more heavily in their relationships than men, whose relationships seem to be much more casual (even in the case of their most intimate relationships) [217]. For this reason, women’s friendships often seem to be more fragile and susceptible to catastrophic breakdown [122].
Check also Optimising human community sizes. R.I.M. Dunbar, R. Sosis. Evolution and Human Behavior, http://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2017/11/group-longevity-as-function-of-its-size.html
Gender Composition and Group Confidence Judgment: The Perils of All-Male Groups
Gender Composition and Group Confidence Judgment: The Perils of All-Male Groups. Steffen Keck, Wenjie Tang. Management Science, https://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/mnsc.2017.2881
Abstract: We explore the joint effects of group decision making and group gender composition on the calibration of confidence judgments. Participants in two laboratory experiments, individually and in groups of three, stated confidence interval estimates for general-knowledge questions and for financial forecasts. Across both studies, our results reveal that groups with at least one female member are significantly better calibrated than all-male groups. This effect is mediated by the extent to which group members share opinions and information during the group discussion. Moreover, we find that compared to a statistical aggregation of individual confidence intervals, group discussions have a neutral or positive effect on the quality of confidence judgments for groups with at least one female group member; in contrast, group discussion actually harms confidence calibration for all-male groups. Overall, our findings indicate that compared to all-male groups, even the inclusion of a small proportion of female members can have a strong effect on the quality of group confidence judgment.
Abstract: We explore the joint effects of group decision making and group gender composition on the calibration of confidence judgments. Participants in two laboratory experiments, individually and in groups of three, stated confidence interval estimates for general-knowledge questions and for financial forecasts. Across both studies, our results reveal that groups with at least one female member are significantly better calibrated than all-male groups. This effect is mediated by the extent to which group members share opinions and information during the group discussion. Moreover, we find that compared to a statistical aggregation of individual confidence intervals, group discussions have a neutral or positive effect on the quality of confidence judgments for groups with at least one female group member; in contrast, group discussion actually harms confidence calibration for all-male groups. Overall, our findings indicate that compared to all-male groups, even the inclusion of a small proportion of female members can have a strong effect on the quality of group confidence judgment.
The Rejection of Collective Religiosity Centred Around the Worship of Moral Gods Is Associated with High Mutational Load
The Mutant Says in His Heart, “There Is No God”: the Rejection of Collective Religiosity Centred Around the Worship of Moral Gods Is Associated with High Mutational Load. Edward Dutton, Guy Madison, Curtis Dunkel. Evolutionary Psychological Science, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40806-017-0133-5
Abstract: Industrialisation leads to relaxed selection and thus the accumulation of fitness-damaging genetic mutations. We argue that religion is a selected trait that would be highly sensitive to mutational load. We further argue that a specific form of religiousness was selected for in complex societies up until industrialisation based around the collective worship of moral gods. With the relaxation of selection, we predict the degeneration of this form of religion and diverse deviations from it. These deviations, however, would correlate with the same indicators because they would all be underpinned by mutational load. We test this hypothesis using two very different deviations: atheism and paranormal belief. We examine associations between these deviations and four indicators of mutational load: (1) poor general health, (2) autism, (3) fluctuating asymmetry, and (4) left-handedness. A systematic literature review combined with primary research on handedness demonstrates that atheism and/or paranormal belief is associated with all of these indicators of high mutational load.
h/t: https://twitter.com/DegenRolf
Abstract: Industrialisation leads to relaxed selection and thus the accumulation of fitness-damaging genetic mutations. We argue that religion is a selected trait that would be highly sensitive to mutational load. We further argue that a specific form of religiousness was selected for in complex societies up until industrialisation based around the collective worship of moral gods. With the relaxation of selection, we predict the degeneration of this form of religion and diverse deviations from it. These deviations, however, would correlate with the same indicators because they would all be underpinned by mutational load. We test this hypothesis using two very different deviations: atheism and paranormal belief. We examine associations between these deviations and four indicators of mutational load: (1) poor general health, (2) autism, (3) fluctuating asymmetry, and (4) left-handedness. A systematic literature review combined with primary research on handedness demonstrates that atheism and/or paranormal belief is associated with all of these indicators of high mutational load.
h/t: https://twitter.com/DegenRolf
Men Who Compliment a Woman's Appearance Using Metaphorical Language: Associations with Creativity, Masculinity, Intelligence and Attractiveness
Men Who Compliment a Woman's Appearance Using Metaphorical Language: Associations with Creativity, Masculinity, Intelligence and Attractiveness. Zhao Gao et al. Front. Psychol., 21 December 2017 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02185
Abstract: Language may have evolved as a signal of mental fitness. However, it remains unclear what language form and topic men use to covertly signal mate quality. In this study 69 men created compliments to impress unfamiliar women they chose to either date or work with and provided hand scans to compute 2D4D ratio as a proxy for prenatal testosterone exposure and masculinity indicator. Compliments were coded in terms of form (literal vs. metaphorical) and topic (women's appearance vs. non-appearance), with metaphorical ones being subsequently rated by 114 women for psycholinguistic features, indices of intelligence and willingness to have a romantic relationship with the author. Results showed that in a dating context, men produced more metaphorical form compliments targeting appearance compared to the working context and they were associated with men's art creativity and negatively with 2D4D ratio (i.e., positively with masculinity). Women preferred establishing a romantic relationship with a higher proportion of the men producing metaphorical compliments in a dating than a working context. Furthermore, in the dating but not the working context, women perceived men producing such compliments as being more intelligent, and importantly this correlated with the men's actual verbal intelligence. Overall, findings suggest that men may use metaphorical language compliments targeting women's appearance in a dating context to signal covertly their mate quality.
Abstract: Language may have evolved as a signal of mental fitness. However, it remains unclear what language form and topic men use to covertly signal mate quality. In this study 69 men created compliments to impress unfamiliar women they chose to either date or work with and provided hand scans to compute 2D4D ratio as a proxy for prenatal testosterone exposure and masculinity indicator. Compliments were coded in terms of form (literal vs. metaphorical) and topic (women's appearance vs. non-appearance), with metaphorical ones being subsequently rated by 114 women for psycholinguistic features, indices of intelligence and willingness to have a romantic relationship with the author. Results showed that in a dating context, men produced more metaphorical form compliments targeting appearance compared to the working context and they were associated with men's art creativity and negatively with 2D4D ratio (i.e., positively with masculinity). Women preferred establishing a romantic relationship with a higher proportion of the men producing metaphorical compliments in a dating than a working context. Furthermore, in the dating but not the working context, women perceived men producing such compliments as being more intelligent, and importantly this correlated with the men's actual verbal intelligence. Overall, findings suggest that men may use metaphorical language compliments targeting women's appearance in a dating context to signal covertly their mate quality.