Androstadienone, a Chemosignal Found in Human Sweat, Increases Individualistic Behavior and Decreases Cooperative Responses in Men

Androstadienone, a Chemosignal Found in Human Sweat, Increases Individualistic Behavior and Decreases Cooperative Responses in Men. A Banner, I Frumin, S G Shamay-Tsoory. Chemical Senses, bjy002, https://doi.org/10.1093/chemse/bjy002

Abstract: A growing body of evidence suggests that humans can communicate socially relevant information, such as aggression, dominance and readiness for competition, through chemosensory signals. Androstadienone (androsta-4,16,-dien-3-one), a testosterone-derived compound found in men's axillary sweat, is a main candidate for a human pheromone that may convey such information. The current study aimed to investigate whether androstadienone serves as a chemosignaling threat cue to men, thus triggering avoidance behavior during competitive interaction with another man. In a double-blind, placebo-controlled, within-subject study design, 30 healthy, normosmic, heterosexual male participants completed the Social Orientation Paradigm (SOP), a monetary game played against a fictitious partner that allows three types of responses to be measured in the context of provocation: an aggressive response, an individualistic withdrawal response, and a cooperative response. Participants completed the SOP task twice, once under exposure to androstadienone and once under exposure to a control solution. The results indicate that androstadienone increased individualistic responses while it decreased cooperative responses. These findings support the role of androstadienone as a threatening signal of dominance that elicits behavioral avoidance and social withdrawal tendencies, possibly as a submissive response.

The echo chamber is overstated: the moderating effect of political interest and diverse media

The echo chamber is overstated: the moderating effect of political interest and diverse media. Elizabeth Dubois & Grant Blank. Information, Communication & Society, https://doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2018.1428656

ABSTRACT: In a high-choice media environment, there are fears that individuals will select media and content that reinforce their existing beliefs and lead to segregation based on interest and/or partisanship. This could lead to partisan echo chambers among those who are politically interested and could contribute to a growing gap in knowledge between those who are politically interested and those who are not. However, the high-choice environment also allows individuals, including those who are politically interested, to consume a wide variety of media, which could lead them to more diverse content and perspectives. This study examines the relationship between political interest as well as media diversity and being caught in an echo chamber (measured by five different variables). Using a nationally representative survey of adult internet users in the United Kingdom (N = 2000), we find that those who are interested in politics and those with diverse media diets tend to avoid echo chambers. This work challenges the impact of echo chambers and tempers fears of partisan segregation since only a small segment of the population are likely to find themselves in an echo chamber. We argue that single media studies and studies which use narrow definitions and measurements of being in an echo chamber are flawed because they do not test the theory in the realistic context of a multiple media environment.

KEYWORDS: Echo chamber, high-choice media environment, political interest, media diversity, survey

Check also: Polarized Mass or Polarized Few? Assessing the Parallel Rise of Survey Nonresponse and Measures of Polarization. Amnon Cavari and Guy Freedman. The Journal of Politics, https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2018/03/polarized-mass-or-polarized-few.html

There is a small positive relation between service quality and percentage of a bill tipped; service quality was a stronger predictor of percentage of the bill tipped than food quality, frequency of patronage, and dining party size

Banks, G. C., Woznyj, H. M., Kepes, S., Batchelor, J. H. and McDaniel, M. A. (), A meta-analytic review of tipping compensation practices: An agency theory perspective. Personnel Psychology. Accepted Author Manuscript. doi:10.1111/peps.12261

Tipping represents a form of compensation valued at over $50 billion a year in the U.S. alone. Tipping can be used as an incentive mechanism to reduce a principal-agent problem. An agency problem occurs when the interests of a principal and agent are misaligned and it is challenging for the principal to monitor or control the activities of the agent. However, past research has been limited in the investigation of the extent to which tipping is effective at addressing this problem. Following an examination of 74 independent studies with 12,271 individuals, meta-analytic results indicate that there is a small, positive relation between service quality and percentage of a bill tipped (rho =.15 without outliers). Yet, in support of the idea behind tipping, relative weights analyses illustrate that service quality was a stronger predictor of percentage of the bill tipped than food quality, frequency of patronage, and dining party size. Evidence also suggests that racial minority servers tend to be tipped less than White servers (Cohen's d = .17), and females tend to be tipped more than males (Cohen's d = .15). Still, given the magnitude of the effect, one might question if tipping is an effective compensation practice to reduce the principal-agent problem. We discuss theoretical and practical implications for future research.

Only Bad for Believers? Religion, Pornography Use, and Sexual Satisfaction Among American Men

Only Bad for Believers? Religion, Pornography Use, and Sexual Satisfaction Among American Men. Perry, Samuel L., Whitehead, Andrew L. The Journal of Sex Research, https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2017.1423017

Abstract: Research has often demonstrated a negative association between pornography use and various intrapersonal and relationship outcomes, particularly for men. Several recent studies, however, have suggested that the negative association between pornography use and these indicators is stronger among more religious Americans, suggesting that moral incongruence (engaging in an activity that violates one’s sacred values) and the attendant shame or cognitive dissonance, rather than pornography use per se, may be the primary factor at work. The current study tested and extended this theory by examining how religion potentially moderates the link between pornography use and sexual satisfaction in a national random sample of American adults (N = 1,501). Analyses demonstrated that while pornography use was negatively associated with sexual satisfaction for American men (not women), among men who rarely attended religious services or held a low opinion of the Bible this negative association essentially disappeared. Conversely, the negative association between frequency of pornography consumption and sexual satisfaction was more pronounced for men with stronger ties to conventional religion. These findings suggest that the connection between pornography use and sexual satisfaction, especially for men, depends largely on what viewing pornography means to consumers and their moral community and less so on the practice itself.

Offspring sex ratio: Coital rates and other potential causal mechanisms

Offspring sex ratio: Coital rates and other potential causal mechanisms. William H.James, VictorGrech. Early Human Development, Volume 116, January 2018, Pages 24-27. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.earlhumdev.2017.10.006

Highlights
•    Sex ratios at birth (SRB) are elevated by increased coital rates.
•    Maternal stress induces male foetal losses.
•    Periconceptual parental hormone concentrations may influence SRB.
•    Understanding SRB influences may help understand causes of diseases with unusual SRB.
•    E.g.: testicular cancer, hepatitis B, Toxoplasma gondii and, perhaps, prostatic cancer

Abstract: In recent years, scientists have begun to pay serious attention to the hypothesis that human parental coital rates around the time of conception causally influences the sexes of subsequent births. In this paper, the grounds of the argument are outlined. The point is important because, if the hypothesis were credible, it can potentially explain one of the best established (and otherwise unexplained) epidemiological features of sex ratio at birth – its rises during and just after World Wars 1 and 2 insofar as increased coital rates increase the ratio. Moreover, the greater the understanding of the variations of sex ratio at birth, the greater will be the understanding of the causes of those selected diseases associated with unusual sex ratios at birth (testicular cancer, hepatitis B, Toxoplasma gondii, and, perhaps, prostatic cancer).

Our primary result is that collective bargaining rights lead to about a 27% increase in complaints of officer misconduct for the typical sheriff’s office

Dharmapala, Dhammika and McAdams, Richard H. and Rappaport, John, The Effect of Collective Bargaining Rights on Law Enforcement: Evidence from Florida (December 31, 2017). University of Chicago Coase-Sandor Institute for Law & Economics Research Paper No. 831; U of Chicago, Public Law Working Paper No. 655. Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3095217

Abstract: Growing controversy surrounds the impact of labor unions on law enforcement behavior. Critics allege that unions impede organizational reform and insulate officers from discipline for misconduct. The only evidence of these effects, however, is anecdotal. We exploit a quasi-experiment in Florida to estimate the effects of collective bargaining rights on law enforcement misconduct and other outcomes of public concern. In 2003, the Florida Supreme Court’s Williams decision extended to county deputy sheriffs collective bargaining rights that municipal police officers had possessed for decades. We construct a comprehensive panel dataset of Florida law enforcement agencies starting in 1997, and employ a difference-in-difference approach that compares sheriffs’ offices and police departments before and after Williams. Our primary result is that collective bargaining rights lead to about a 27% increase in complaints of officer misconduct for the typical sheriff’s office. This result is robust to the inclusion of a variety of controls. The time pattern of the estimated effect, along with an analysis using agency-specific trends, suggests that it is not attributable to preexisting trends. The estimated effect of Williams is not robustly significant for other potential outcomes of interest, however, including the racial and gender composition of agencies and training and educational requirements.

Keywords: Collective bargaining rights; police unions; police misconduct; law enforcement

The effects of social priming, the voodoo theory of social psychology, manifested themselves only when the experiments weren't double blinded, exposing a self-fulfilling prophecy

The Role of Experimenter Belief in Social Priming. Thandiwe S. E. Gilder, Erin A. Heerey. Psychological Science, https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797617737128

Abstract: Research suggests that stimuli that prime social concepts can fundamentally alter people’s behavior. However, most researchers who conduct priming studies fail to explicitly report double-blind procedures. Because experimenter expectations may influence participant behavior, we asked whether a short pre-experiment interaction between participants and experimenters would contribute to priming effects when experimenters were not blind to participant condition. An initial double-blind experiment failed to demonstrate the expected effects of a social prime on executive cognition. To determine whether double-blind procedures caused this result, we independently manipulated participants’ exposure to a prime and experimenters’ belief about which prime participants received. Across four experiments, we found that experimenter belief, rather than prime condition, altered participant behavior. Experimenter belief also altered participants’ perceptions of their experimenter, suggesting that differences in experimenter behavior across conditions caused the effect. Findings reinforce double-blind designs as experimental best practice and suggest that people’s prior beliefs have important consequences for shaping behavior with an interaction partner.

Keywords: social power, priming, experimenter effects, open data, preregistered

h/t: Rolf Degen https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/958243341338054657