Just a poster, but who knows... Ease your Partner's Jealousy by Cheating Again: Jealousy Decreases as Partner Number Increases

Poster 61.  Ease your Partner's Jealousy by Cheating Again: Jealousy Decreases as Partner Number Increases. Benjamin Gelbart, Cari M. Pick, Asha Ganesan, Adam Cohen. Human Behavior and Evolution Society, 30th Annual Meeting, July 2018. http://www.hbes.com/conference/hbes2018/

Abstract: A large body of research suggests that men report more jealousy following a partner's imagined sexual infidelity, whereas women report more jealousy following a partner's imagined emotional infidelity (Sagarin et al., 2012). Here, we build upon this resear ch by suggesting that the number of sexual cheating partners with whom one is involved may be a novel cue to the likelihood of concomitant emotional infidelity. Sexual cheating with a single person, particularly when done repeatedly, may cue concurrent emo tional involvement. Conversely, sexual cheating with multiple partners, particularly when consisting of one-time encounters, may suggest that emotional involvement is unlikely. Across two studies in online (N = 345) and undergraduate (N = 488) samples, res ults from regression analyses showed that jealousy is greatest when imagining a romantic partner cheating with a single individual, relative to multiple individuals (ps < .001). This effect held across genders, remained when holding the number of sexual en counters constant, and appeared to be unique to jealousy. Other emotions -- including anger, distress, and disgust -- increased when imagining multiple cheating partners. The relationship between partner number and jealousy was significantly mediated by concerns of emotional attachment. These findings highlight the functionally specialized nature of sexual jealousy.

Humans detect valid facial cues of leadership in chimpanzees

Humans detect valid facial cues of leadership in chimpanzees. Alexander Bor, Darren Schreiber, Sarah Brosnan, Susan Lambeth, Steven Schapiro, Frans de Waal, Mark Van Vugt. Human Behavior and Evolution Society, 30th Annual Meeting, July 2018. http://www.hbes.com/conference/hbes2018/

Abstract: Humans rely on facial cues to assess the leadership ability of their peers, which af fects the selection and assessment of leaders in political and business settings. Prominent theoretical explanations propose that facial cues serve as inputs into an adaptive, context-sensitive followership psychology. Here, we push this evolutionary explanation further by testing if humans are able to identify chimpanzee (pan troglodytes) leaders. Importantly, we do not claim that detecting leadership across species had adaptive benefits. Instead, we argue that it is reasonable to assume that facial cues o f leadership may be similar across humans and chimps due to convergences and/or homologies and that humans’ facial cue detecting mechanisms are triggered by encountering chimpanzee faces. We, therefore, predict that alpha chimpanzees will be perceived to b e more dominant and leader-looking than non-alpha chimpanzees. We test our hypothesis relying on a unique inventory of over 150 standardized photographs of more than 70 captive adult male chimpanzees from three colonies. Naive human raters recruited on Ama zon’s Mechanical Turk rated these photographs on six traits (dominance, age, leader ability, attractiveness, likability and competence). Subsequently, we compare the average trait ratings of alpha and non-alpha targets. Preliminary results show that interrater reliability of evaluations are very high and that alpha males are rated higher on dominance, age and leader ability.

Men & women more strongly blamed men for their own disadvantages, were more supportive of policies that favored women, & donated more to a female-only (vs male-only) homeless shelter. Females showed a stronger in-group bias, perceiving women's harm as more problematic

Man up and take it: Greater concern for female than male suffering. Tania Reynolds, Hallgeir Sjåstad, Chuck Howard, Tyler Okimoto, Roy Baumeister, Karl Aquino, JongHan Kim. Human Behavior and Evolution Society, 30th Annual Meeting, July 2018. http://www.hbes.com/conference/hbes2018/

Throughout human history, women set the upper limit on reproduction. Women's greater physiological contribution to reproduction may have favored psychological mechanisms within individuals aimed at protecting women from harm. Across 5 studies, we tested the prediction that harm to women would evoke greater concern and outrage than equivalent harm to men. In Study 1, participants more readily assumed an unspecified harmed target was a woman than a man, but especially if the terms 'victim/perpetrator' were used. In Study 2, participants expected both female victims and female perpetrators to experience mo re pain than male victims or perpetrators. They were also less willing to forgive and more strongly desired to punish male perpetrators. Using a variety of social scenarios (e.g., affirmative action, sex-biased careers), Studies 3-5 found female harm or di sadvantage evoked more sympathy and outrage and was perceived as more unfair than equivalent male harm or disadvantage. Participants more strongly blamed men for their own disadvantages, were more supportive of policies that favored women, and donated more to a female-only (vs male-only) homeless shelter. Female participants showed a stronger in-group bias, perceiving women's harm as more problematic and more strongly endorsed policies that favored women.

Double Standards of the Political Mind: Results support the Alliance Theory & suggest that ideologies are less morally principled, & more strategic, than has been previously supposed

Double Standards of the Political Mind: Empirical Support for the Alliance Theory. David Pinsof. Human Behavior and Evolution Society, 30t Annual Meeting, July 2018. http://www.hbes.com/conference/hbes2018/

According to many prominent theories in political psychology, ideologies are a type of ethical belief system. According to the Alliance Theory, however, ideologies are collections of ad hoc arguments designed to mobilize support for one's political allies (e.g. the demographic groups associated with one's political party) in particular conflicts. Accordingly, the two frameworks make different predictions about the prevalence of ideological double standards (i.e. inconsistently held moral principles). If ideologies are ethical belief systems, then moral principles should be held consistently. But if ideologies are collections of ad hoc arguments, then moral “principles” should change depending on whether they are applied to one's political allies or enemies. Here, I present American polling data using cellphones and landlines (N = 1,215) showing that majorities of both Democrats and Republicans endorse moral double standards across different questions in the same survey. For example, of the Republicans who trust Vladimir Putin when he said that he did not interfere with the 2016 presidential election, 71% say that Americans should be less trusting of foreigners. Of the Democrats who object to blaming terrorist attacks on Muslims as a group, 65% blame the Charlottesville killing on Trump supporters as a group. Overall, results support the Alliance Theory and suggest that ideologies are less morally principled, and more strategic, than has been previously supposed

Genes associated with homosexual behaviour are, in heterosexuals, associated with greater mating success; genes that predispose to homosexual behaviour may have been evolutionarily maintained in the population because they confer a mating advantage to heterosexual carriers

The evolutionary genetics of homosexuality. Brendan Zietsch, Andrea Ganna, Karin Verweij, Felix Day, Michel Nivard, Robert Maier, Robbee Wedow, Abdel Abdellaoui, Benjamin Neale, John Perry. Human Behavior and Evolution Society, 30t Annual Meeting, July 2018. http://www.hbes.com/conference/hbes2018/

Abstract: Homosexual behaviour in humans is genetically influenced and is associated with having fewer offspring. This presents a Darwinian paradox: why have genes that predispose to homosexual behaviour been maintained in the population despite apparent selection against them? Here we show that genes associated with homosexual behaviour are, in heterosexuals, associated with greater mating success. In in a genotyped sample of more than 400,000 individuals from the UK and USA, we for the first time found genomewide-significant association of specific variants with ever having had a same-sex partner, and hundreds of additional variants were significantly associated in aggregate. Among men and women who had never had a same-sex partner, these same aggregate genetic effects were significantly associated with having more lifetime sexual partners and, in an independent sample, with being judged more physically attractive. Our results suggest that genes that predispose to homosexual behaviour may have been evolutionarily maintained in the population because they confer a mating advantage to heterosexual carriers.

Mate-copying is a form of social learning in which witnessing sexual interactions biases own future mate-choice; female fruit flies can copy the choice for _mutant_ males despite the fact that mating with those induces a significant fitness cost for the observer

Mate-copying for a costly variant in Drosophila melanogaster females. Sabine Nöbel Etienne Danchin Guillaume Isabel. Behavioral Ecology, ary095, https://doi.org/10.1093/beheco/ary095

Abstract: Mate-copying is a form of social learning in which witnessing sexual interactions between conspecifics biases an observer individual's future mate-choice. Mate-copying exists in many vertebrates, as well as in Drosophila melanogaster. Here, we show that female fruit flies can copy the choice for mutant males (Curly-wing [Cy] mutants vs. wild types [WTs]) despite the fact that mating with Cy males induces a significant fitness cost for the observer female. When facing WT and Cy males, naive observer females of both phenotypes naturally prefer WT males. In a mate-copying experiment, naive observer Cy or WT females saw a demonstrator female copulating with either a Cy or a WT male aside a lonely male of the opposite phenotype. In the subsequent mate-choice test, the Cy and WT observer females did not change their already high natural preference for WT males after witnessing a WT male copulating during the demonstration. Contrastingly, Cy and WT females increased their preference for the naturally nonpreferred Cy males after witnessing a Cy male copulating, showing that mate-copying also exists for costly variants in invertebrates. Furthermore, mate-copying efficiency did not differ when using neutral artificial variants (coloring, Dagaeff et al. 2016) versus phenotypic variants (this study), suggesting that these 2 types of experiments are equivalently suitable to study mate-copying. We finally discuss how mate-copying can participate to the maintenance of costly traits in a population.

Check also Mate copying in Drosophila melanogaster males. Sabine Nöbel, Mélanie Allain, Guillaume Isabel, Etienne Danchin. Animal Behaviour, Volume 141, July 2018, Pages 9–15. https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2018/05/mate-copying-has-been-documented-in.html

Mr. Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao, proposed less significant constitutional changes 15 months before the amendments became law & tolerated some open debate [...] The wording of Mr. Hu’s revisions was released to the public nearly three months before lawmakers approved them

How Xi Jinping Made His Power Grab: With Stealth, Speed and Guile. Chris Buckley. The New York Times, March 7, 2018
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/03/07/world/asia/china-xi-jinping-party-term-limit.html

BEIJING — Some 200 senior Communist Party officials gathered behind closed doors in January to take up a momentous political decision: whether to abolish presidential term limits and enable Xi Jinping to lead China for a generation.

In a two-day session in Beijing, they bowed to Mr. Xi’s wish to hold onto power indefinitely. But a bland communiqué issued afterward made no mention of the weighty decision, which the authorities then kept under wraps for more than five weeks.

That meeting of the party’s Central Committee was the culmination of months of secretive discussions that are only now coming to light — and show how Mr. Xi maneuvered with stealth, swiftness and guile to rewrite China’s Constitution.

The decision was abruptly announced only last week, days before the annual session of China’s legislature, the National People’s Congress. The delay was apparently an effort to prevent opposition from coalescing before formal approval of the change by the legislature’s nearly 3,000 members.

The congress is all but certain to approve the change and other constitutional amendments — the first since 2004 — in a vote on Sunday, sweeping away a rule that restricts presidents to two five-year terms and has been in the Constitution for 35 years. The congress alone has the power to amend the Constitution, by a two-thirds vote, but lawmakers, picked by the party, have always passed proposals presented to them.

Even those who thought that they had taken the full measure of Mr. Xi’s ambition are surprised by how fast he has moved.

“I always thought Xi would seek to stay for three or four terms, and could even introduce a new presidential system after his terms were finished. But I never thought the Constitution would be revised so quickly,” said Wu Wei, a former official who advised Zhao Ziyang, the party leader ousted during the mass protests of 1989 in Tiananmen Square.

“For such a major revision to an important clause of the Constitution, the views of the whole public nationwide should have been more broadly sought,” he added, pausing to contain his emotion.

Mr. Xi deployed speed, secrecy and intimidation to smother potential opposition inside and outside the party. He swept past the consensus-building conventions that previous leaders used to amend the Constitution. He installed loyalists to draft and support the amendments. And he kept the whole process under the tight control of the party, allowing little debate, even internally.

Soon after China’s Communist Party announced a plan to end presidential term limits, its censors and propaganda machine kicked into high gear. Here’s how it unfolded.Published OnFeb. 28, 2018CreditImage by Greg Baker/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

Mr. Xi first formally proposed amending the Constitution little more than five months ago, at a Sept. 29 meeting of the Politburo, a council of 25 party leaders more powerful than the Central Committee, according to an official account issued at the congress on Monday.

But he did not immediately raise the possibility of removing the term limit, said a retired official, citing a senior serving official. To avoid being seen as dictating changes, Mr. Xi let loyal provincial and city leaders quietly promote the idea in his stead, the retired official said. He spoke on condition of anonymity, citing fear of punishment for describing internal discussions.

At that same meeting, the Politburo agreed to purge one of its own members, Sun Zhengcai, who had once been considered a potential successor to Mr. Xi, on corruption charges — a warning to other party officials that needed little elaboration.

Previous rounds of constitutional amendments in China took much longer and involved at least the trappings of public discussion.

Mr. Xi’s predecessor, Hu Jintao, proposed less significant constitutional changes 15 months before the amendments became law and tolerated some open debate, including forums held by liberal intellectuals. The wording of Mr. Hu’s revisions was released to the public nearly three months before lawmakers approved them in March 2004.

By contrast, Mr. Xi first announced that he wanted to make constitutional changes in December, without specifying what they would be. The full details of the amendments, including the abolition of his term limit, were released to the public only eight days before the National People’s Congress convened.

Mr. Xi kept a tight lid on his machinations. After the Politburo meeting in late September, he entrusted the task of revising the Constitution to just three officials: the chairman of the congress, Zhang Dejiang, and two close allies, Li Zhanshu and Wang Huning, both of whom were elevated last year into the Politburo Standing Committee, the party’s top body.

Mr. Wang has long been sympathetic to the authoritarian argument that China needs a strongman to maintain social order while pushing through painful policies, such as closing down inefficient factories.

“If somewhere lacks a central authority, or central authority is in decline, the country falls into a state of rupture and turmoil,” he said in an interview published in 1995.

In recent speeches, Mr. Xi has echoed that theme, arguing that China faces unprecedented risks and opportunities. “Our party was born under a sense of peril, grew up under a sense of peril and matured under a sense of peril,” he told a meeting of senior officials in December.

Momentum for ending the term limit built in November, when the party began secretly seeking suggestions on possible constitutional changes, according to the official account issued at the congress. Mr. Xi’s allies began an effort to support the change, and in a clue of their effectiveness, the official account said there was “consistent approval for issuing new rules on the term of office of the president.”

Still, Mr. Xi needed to win approval for his plan at the January meeting of the Central Committee, and when and how he did so have been the subject of dispute.

Reuters, citing two unnamed sources, has reported that the Central Committee failed to reach a consensus at the January meeting and convened its next meeting earlier than usual.

But four party insiders — two retired officials, a party newspaper editor and a businessman with family links to the leadership — told The New York Times that Mr. Xi prevailed in January, essentially confirming the official timeline.

Any committee members with misgivings were unlikely to speak out, given the array of punishment they could face, and party elders who may have once opposed such a move — including Mr. Hu and another former president, Jiang Zemin — are too old or too cowed by Mr. Xi’s anticorruption investigations to muster resistance, party insiders said.

Mr. Xi gained the Central Committee’s backing for ending the term limit just three months after winning his second term as party leader, his other main title, and before starting his second term as president.

“It demonstrates Xi’s penchant for rule-breaking,” said Christopher K. Johnson, an expert on Chinese elite politics at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington. “It’s slowly, slowly, slowly, and then when no one’s looking, he turns around and does something big. I think it comes back to the political shock and awe that really dates back to his arrival.”

Several experts and former party officials who have met Mr. Xi said he appears to be driven to overturn the term limit out of a confluence of confidence and anxiety.

He is confident that he has eliminated potential rivals in the elite and enjoys broad public support after cracking down on corruption. But he is worried that a crisis such as an economic slump or a war over North Korea could weaken his authority, they said.

Even with victory in sight, Mr. Xi appears wary of a potential public backlash. Online commentary on ending the term limit has been heavily censored.

After the official Xinhua news agency first announced the proposal on Twitter, which is blocked in China, the journalist who issued the bulletin in English was punished. A colleague, speaking on condition of anonymity, said officials apparently thought it was too bluntly worded.

Critics said the imperious way in which Mr. Xi scored his constitutional coup was a foretaste of how his power could swell into dangerous hubris. Mr. Xi demolished a political convention that for decades has helped to shield China from the succession struggles that convulsed politics under the earlier leaders Mao Zedong and Deng Xiaoping, they said.

The legislature will go through the motions of debating the constitutional changes, but there is virtually no chance that the handpicked delegates will oppose them in large numbers when they vote.

On Monday, delegates broke into applause twice when a legislative official read out the proposal to end Mr. Xi’s term limit.

“I think we should give Xi 20 years to accomplish the Chinese dream and give us back a strong China,” said Jiao Yun, a congress delegate from northeast China who is chairman of a coal processing company. “The previous 10-year limit doesn’t mesh with China’s long-term development.”

Keith Bradsher and Steven Lee Myers contributed reporting. Adam Wu, Ailin Tang and Zoe Mou contributed research.

Follow Chris Buckley on Twitter: @ChuBailiang.

A version of this article appears in print on March 8, 2018, on Page A1 of the New York edition with the headline: Behind Xi’s Power Grab: Stealth, Speed and Guile.

Revisiting Perceiver & Target Gender Effects in Deception Detection: Female targets were easier to “read” (i.e., greater sensitivity) by both sexes & were called liars more frequently than male targets

Revisiting Perceiver and Target Gender Effects in Deception Detection. E. Paige Lloyd, Kevin M. Summers, Kurt Hugenberg, Allen R. McConnell. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10919-018-0283-6

Abstract: Existing research is inconclusive regarding the influence of perceiver gender and target gender on lie detection. Researchers have offered a number of conclusions regarding gender effects in deception detection (e.g., women are better at lie detection than men, participant and target gender interact in predicting deception detection accuracy, there are no gender effects in deception detection). In the current work, we revisit the question of whether and how gender influences lie detection, employing a large database of controlled stimuli, a large sample size, and the analytical advantages provided by signal detection theory. Participants viewed videos of male and female targets telling truths and lies about interpersonal relationships, and after each video, they rendered a truth or lie judgment. Female targets were easier to “read” (i.e., greater sensitivity) and were called liars more frequently than male targets. No effects of participant gender were observed. This work sheds light on an important issue in the lie detection literature (i.e., does gender matter?), and it identifies important considerations for understanding gender biases and cross-gender social interactions.

Trained male rats to associate copulation with wearing a [Velcro jacket]. After training, males were sexually aroused by being fitted with the jacket, and even showed reduced sexual activity when exposed unclothed to females

Evaluation and hedonic value in mate choice. Gil G Rosenthal. Current Zoology, zoy054, https://doi.org/10.1093/cz/zoy054

Abstract: Mating preferences can show extreme variation within and among individuals even when sensory inputs are conserved. This variation is a result of changes associated with evaluative mechanisms that assign positive, neutral, or negative hedonic value to stimuli – that is, label them as attractive, uninteresting, or unattractive. There is widespread behavioral evidence for differences in genes, environmental cues, or social experience leading to marked changes in the hedonic value of stimuli. Evaluation is accomplished through an array of mechanisms that are readily modifiable through genetic changes or environmental inputs, and that may often result in the rapid acquisition or loss of behavioral preferences. Reversals in preference arising from “flips” in hedonic value may be quite common. Incorporating such discontinuous changes into models of preference evolution may illuminate our understanding of processes like trait diversification, sexual conflict, and sympatric speciation.

Keywords: associative learning, mating preference, sensory biology, assortative mating, valence

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Indeed, animals can be trained to develop fetishes: striong, specific preferences for arbitrary stimuly. Pfaus and colleagues trained male rats to associate copulation with wearing a [Velcro jacket]. After training, males were sexually aroused by being fitted with the jacket, and even showed reduced sexual activity when exposed unclothed to females.

Greater national gender inequality significantly predicts greater gender differences in job satisfaction, but not life satisfaction

A Meta-Analysis of Gender Differences in Subjective Well-Being: Estimating Effect Sizes and Associations With Gender Inequality. Cassondra Batz-Barbarich et al. Psychological Science, http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0956797618774796

Abstract: Despite global gender inequalities, findings on gender differences in subjective well-being have been inconsistent. We conducted a meta-analysis on gender differences in subjective well-being to account for the type of subjective-well-being measure, sampling variability, and levels of national gender inequality from which samples are gathered. Based on 281 effect sizes for life satisfaction (N = 1,001,802) and 264 for job satisfaction (N = 341,949), results showed no significant gender differences in both types of subjective well-being. Supplementary meta-analyses found significantly lower job satisfaction, but not life satisfaction, in women for studies that used both life-satisfaction and job-satisfaction measures, and studies that relied on measures that previously demonstrated measurement equivalence. Using the Gender Inequality Index, we found that greater national gender inequality significantly predicts greater gender differences in job satisfaction, but not life satisfaction. We discuss the implications of these findings and the use of subjective well-being as a measure of societal progress.

Keywords: gender differences, subjective well-being, life satisfaction, job satisfaction, inequality