Pyszczynski, Tom, Pelin Kesebir, Matt Motyl, Andrea Yetzer, and Jacqueline M. Anson. 2018. “Ideological Consistency, Political Orientation, and Variability Across Moral Foundations.” PsyArXiv. October 10. doi:10.31234/osf.io/qgmsc
Abstract: We conceptualized ideological consistency as the extent to which an individual’s attitudes toward diverse political issues are coherent among themselves from an ideological standpoint. Four studies compared the ideological consistency of self-identified liberals and conservatives. Across diverse samples, attitudes, and consistency measures, liberals were more ideologically consistent than conservatives. In other words, conservatives’ individual-level attitudes toward diverse political issues (e.g., abortion, gun control, welfare) were more dispersed across the political spectrum than were liberals’ attitudes. Study 4 demonstrated that variability across commitments to different moral foundations predicted ideological consistency and mediated the relationship between political orientation and ideological consistency.
Monday, October 15, 2018
Observed negative impact of socioeconomic status on olfactory function could reflect differential exposures to xenobiotic agents, cultural differences, familiarity with odors or their names, cognitive development, or other factors
Relationship of socioeconomic status to olfactory function. Aurélio Fornazieri et al. Physiology & Behavior, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physbeh.2018.10.011
Highlights
• This research employs data from the largest clinical study of olfaction ever performed outside of North America and Europe.
• Lower education levels and economic status were independently associated with an adverse influence on standardized olfactory test scores.
• The observed negative impact of socioeconomic status on olfactory function could reflect differential exposures to xenobiotic agents, cultural differences, familiarity with odors or their names, cognitive development, or other factors.
Abstract: Socioeconomic status can significantly impact health. To what degree education and other socioeconomic factors influence the chemical sense of olfaction is not clear. Most studies that have assessed such influences come from countries lacking large disparities in education and income and generally view such measures as nuisance variables to be controlled for statistically. In this study, we evaluated the influences of education and income on odor identification in a diverse sample of subjects from Brazil, a society where large disparities in both income and education are present. The 40-item University of Pennsylvania Smell Identification Test (UPSIT) was administered to 1572 healthy Brazilian citizens with no self-reported olfactory or gustatory deficits and for whom detailed socioeconomic and educational status data were obtained. Univariate and multivariate models were employed to examine the influence of socioeconomic status on the test scores. After controlling for age, sex, ethnicity, and smoking behavior, income and educational level were positively and independently related to the olfactory test scores (respective ps < 0.001 & 0.01). Both linear and quadratic functions described the relationship between the UPSIT scores and the levels of education and socioeconomic status. Individuals of lower socioeconomic status performed significantly worse than those of higher socioeconomic status on 20 of the 40 odorant items. This study demonstrates socioeconomic status is significantly associated with influence the ability to identify odors. The degree to which this reflects differential exposures to xenobiotic agents, cultural differences, familiarity with odors or their names, cognitive development, or other factors requires further investigation.
Highlights
• This research employs data from the largest clinical study of olfaction ever performed outside of North America and Europe.
• Lower education levels and economic status were independently associated with an adverse influence on standardized olfactory test scores.
• The observed negative impact of socioeconomic status on olfactory function could reflect differential exposures to xenobiotic agents, cultural differences, familiarity with odors or their names, cognitive development, or other factors.
Abstract: Socioeconomic status can significantly impact health. To what degree education and other socioeconomic factors influence the chemical sense of olfaction is not clear. Most studies that have assessed such influences come from countries lacking large disparities in education and income and generally view such measures as nuisance variables to be controlled for statistically. In this study, we evaluated the influences of education and income on odor identification in a diverse sample of subjects from Brazil, a society where large disparities in both income and education are present. The 40-item University of Pennsylvania Smell Identification Test (UPSIT) was administered to 1572 healthy Brazilian citizens with no self-reported olfactory or gustatory deficits and for whom detailed socioeconomic and educational status data were obtained. Univariate and multivariate models were employed to examine the influence of socioeconomic status on the test scores. After controlling for age, sex, ethnicity, and smoking behavior, income and educational level were positively and independently related to the olfactory test scores (respective ps < 0.001 & 0.01). Both linear and quadratic functions described the relationship between the UPSIT scores and the levels of education and socioeconomic status. Individuals of lower socioeconomic status performed significantly worse than those of higher socioeconomic status on 20 of the 40 odorant items. This study demonstrates socioeconomic status is significantly associated with influence the ability to identify odors. The degree to which this reflects differential exposures to xenobiotic agents, cultural differences, familiarity with odors or their names, cognitive development, or other factors requires further investigation.
We like to be scared: After voluntary arousing negative experiences, reported affect improved, particularly for those that reported feeling tired, bored, or stressed prior to the experience
Kerr, M., Siegle, G. J., & Orsini, J. (2018). Voluntary arousing negative experiences (VANE): Why we like to be scared. Emotion. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/emo0000470
Abstract: This study examined survey data and neural reactivity associated with voluntarily engaging in high arousal negative experiences (VANE). Here we suggest how otherwise negative stimuli might be experienced as positive in the context of voluntary engagement. Participants were recruited from customers who had already purchased tickets to attend an “extreme” haunted attraction. Survey data measuring self-report affect, expectations, and experience was collected from 262 adults (139 women and 123 men; age M = 27.5 years, SD = 9.3 years) before and after their experience. Changes in electroencephalographic (EEG) indices of reactivity to cognitive and emotional tasks were further assessed from a subsample of 100 participants. Results suggested that participants’ reported affect improved, particularly for those that reported feeling tired, bored, or stressed prior to the experience. Among those whose moods improved, neural reactivity decreased in response to multiple tasks. Together, these data suggest that VANE reduces neural reactivity following stress. This result could explain post-VANE euphoria and may be adaptive in that it could help individuals to cope with subsequent stressors. To the extent that this phenomenon replicates in clinical situations, it could inform clinical interventions by using VANE principles to reduce neural reactivity to subsequent stressors.
Abstract: This study examined survey data and neural reactivity associated with voluntarily engaging in high arousal negative experiences (VANE). Here we suggest how otherwise negative stimuli might be experienced as positive in the context of voluntary engagement. Participants were recruited from customers who had already purchased tickets to attend an “extreme” haunted attraction. Survey data measuring self-report affect, expectations, and experience was collected from 262 adults (139 women and 123 men; age M = 27.5 years, SD = 9.3 years) before and after their experience. Changes in electroencephalographic (EEG) indices of reactivity to cognitive and emotional tasks were further assessed from a subsample of 100 participants. Results suggested that participants’ reported affect improved, particularly for those that reported feeling tired, bored, or stressed prior to the experience. Among those whose moods improved, neural reactivity decreased in response to multiple tasks. Together, these data suggest that VANE reduces neural reactivity following stress. This result could explain post-VANE euphoria and may be adaptive in that it could help individuals to cope with subsequent stressors. To the extent that this phenomenon replicates in clinical situations, it could inform clinical interventions by using VANE principles to reduce neural reactivity to subsequent stressors.
This paper establishes a new fact about educational production: ordinal academic rank during primary school has long-run impacts that are independent from underlying ability
Top of the Class: The Importance of Ordinal Rank. Richard Murphy, Felix Weinhardt. NBER Working Paper No. 24958. http://www.nber.org/papers/w24958
Abstract: This paper establishes a new fact about educational production: ordinal academic rank during primary school has long-run impacts that are independent from underlying ability. Using data on the universe of English school students, we exploit naturally occurring differences in achievement distributions across primary school classes to estimate the impact of class rank conditional on relative achievement. We find large effects on test scores, confidence and subject choice during secondary school, where students have a new set of peers and teachers who are unaware of the students’ prior ranking. The effects are especially large for boys, contributing to an observed gender gap in end-of-high school STEM subject choices. Using a basic model of student effort allocation across subjects, we derive and test a hypothesis to distinguish between learning and non-cognitive skills mechanisms and find support for the latter.
Abstract: This paper establishes a new fact about educational production: ordinal academic rank during primary school has long-run impacts that are independent from underlying ability. Using data on the universe of English school students, we exploit naturally occurring differences in achievement distributions across primary school classes to estimate the impact of class rank conditional on relative achievement. We find large effects on test scores, confidence and subject choice during secondary school, where students have a new set of peers and teachers who are unaware of the students’ prior ranking. The effects are especially large for boys, contributing to an observed gender gap in end-of-high school STEM subject choices. Using a basic model of student effort allocation across subjects, we derive and test a hypothesis to distinguish between learning and non-cognitive skills mechanisms and find support for the latter.
Democracy's Unique Advantage in Promoting Economic Growth: Quantitative Evidence for a New Institutional Theory
Democracy's Unique Advantage in Promoting Economic Growth: Quantitative Evidence for a New Institutional Theory. Rui Tang, Shiping Tang. Kyklos, https://doi.org/10.1111/kykl.12184
Summary: Bringing together the classic defense of liberty and democracy, the political economy of hierarchy, endogenous growth theory, and the new institutional economics on growth, we propose a new institutional theory that identifies democracy's unique advantage in prompting economic growth. We contend that the channel of liberty‐to‐innovation is the most critical channel in which democracy holds a unique advantage over autocracy in promoting growth, especially during the stage of growth via innovation. Our theory thus predicts that democracy holds a positive but indirect effect upon growth via the channel of liberty‐to‐innovation, conditioned by the level of economic development. We then present quantitative evidence for our theory. To our best knowledge, we are the first to propose such an indirect and conditional effect of democracy upon economic development and provide systematic evidence. Our study promises to integrate and reconcile many seemingly unrelated and often contradictory theories and evidence regarding regime and growth, including providing a possible explanation for the inconclusive results from regressing overall regime score against the rate of economic growth or change in level of GDP per capita.
Summary: Bringing together the classic defense of liberty and democracy, the political economy of hierarchy, endogenous growth theory, and the new institutional economics on growth, we propose a new institutional theory that identifies democracy's unique advantage in prompting economic growth. We contend that the channel of liberty‐to‐innovation is the most critical channel in which democracy holds a unique advantage over autocracy in promoting growth, especially during the stage of growth via innovation. Our theory thus predicts that democracy holds a positive but indirect effect upon growth via the channel of liberty‐to‐innovation, conditioned by the level of economic development. We then present quantitative evidence for our theory. To our best knowledge, we are the first to propose such an indirect and conditional effect of democracy upon economic development and provide systematic evidence. Our study promises to integrate and reconcile many seemingly unrelated and often contradictory theories and evidence regarding regime and growth, including providing a possible explanation for the inconclusive results from regressing overall regime score against the rate of economic growth or change in level of GDP per capita.
Humans exhibit important shifts in this aspect of our social cognition: younger individuals attend more to negative stimuli, whereas older adults tend to focus on positive information; rhesus monkeys show an increasing negativity bias with age
Developmental shifts in social cognition: socio-emotional biases across the lifespan in rhesus monkeys. Alexandra G. Rosati, Alyssa M. Arre, Michael L. Platt, Laurie R. Santos. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs00265-018-2573-8
Abstract: Humans exhibit a suite of developmental changes in social cognition across the lifespan. To what extent are these developmental patterns unique? We first review several social domains in which humans undergo critical ontogenetic changes in socio-cognitive processing, including social attention and theory of mind. We then examine whether one human developmental transition—a shift in socio-emotional preferences—also occurs in non-human primates. Specifically, we experimentally measured socio-emotional processing in a large population of rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) ranging from infancy to old age. We tested whether macaques, like humans, also exhibited developmental shifts from a negativity bias at younger ages, indicating preferential attention to negative socio-emotional stimuli, to a positivity bias at older ages. We first assessed monkeys’ (n = 337) responses to negative socio-emotional stimuli by comparing their duration of looking towards photos of negative conspecific signals (threat displays) versus matched neutral expressions. In contrast to the pattern observed in humans, we found that older monkeys were more attentive to negative emotional stimuli than were younger monkeys. In a second study, we used the same method to examine monkeys’ (n = 132) attention to positive (affiliative displays) versus matched neutral expressions. Monkeys did not exhibit an overall preference for positive stimuli, nor major age-related changes in their attention. These results indicate that while monkeys show robust ontogenetic shifts in social preferences, they differ from humans by exhibiting an increasing negativity bias with age. Studies of comparative cognitive development can therefore provide insight into the evolutionary origins of human socio-cognitive development.
Significance statement: Humans are characterized by complex and flexible social behavior. Understanding the proximate psychological mechanisms and developmental processes that underpin these social behaviors can shed light on the evolutionary history of our species. We used a comparative developmental approach to identify whether a key component of human social cognition, responses to emotionally-charged social stimuli, are shared with other primates. Humans exhibit important shifts in this aspect of our social cognition: younger individuals attend more to negative stimuli, whereas older adults tend to focus on positive information. These shifts are thought to appropriately tailor our age-dependent social goals. We found that, unlike humans, rhesus monkeys show an increasing negativity bias with age. By examining primate cognition across the lifespan, this work can help disentangle how complex forms of social behavior emerge across species.
Keywords: Social cognition Comparative development Primates Socio-emotional biases Emotional signals
Abstract: Humans exhibit a suite of developmental changes in social cognition across the lifespan. To what extent are these developmental patterns unique? We first review several social domains in which humans undergo critical ontogenetic changes in socio-cognitive processing, including social attention and theory of mind. We then examine whether one human developmental transition—a shift in socio-emotional preferences—also occurs in non-human primates. Specifically, we experimentally measured socio-emotional processing in a large population of rhesus macaques (Macaca mulatta) ranging from infancy to old age. We tested whether macaques, like humans, also exhibited developmental shifts from a negativity bias at younger ages, indicating preferential attention to negative socio-emotional stimuli, to a positivity bias at older ages. We first assessed monkeys’ (n = 337) responses to negative socio-emotional stimuli by comparing their duration of looking towards photos of negative conspecific signals (threat displays) versus matched neutral expressions. In contrast to the pattern observed in humans, we found that older monkeys were more attentive to negative emotional stimuli than were younger monkeys. In a second study, we used the same method to examine monkeys’ (n = 132) attention to positive (affiliative displays) versus matched neutral expressions. Monkeys did not exhibit an overall preference for positive stimuli, nor major age-related changes in their attention. These results indicate that while monkeys show robust ontogenetic shifts in social preferences, they differ from humans by exhibiting an increasing negativity bias with age. Studies of comparative cognitive development can therefore provide insight into the evolutionary origins of human socio-cognitive development.
Significance statement: Humans are characterized by complex and flexible social behavior. Understanding the proximate psychological mechanisms and developmental processes that underpin these social behaviors can shed light on the evolutionary history of our species. We used a comparative developmental approach to identify whether a key component of human social cognition, responses to emotionally-charged social stimuli, are shared with other primates. Humans exhibit important shifts in this aspect of our social cognition: younger individuals attend more to negative stimuli, whereas older adults tend to focus on positive information. These shifts are thought to appropriately tailor our age-dependent social goals. We found that, unlike humans, rhesus monkeys show an increasing negativity bias with age. By examining primate cognition across the lifespan, this work can help disentangle how complex forms of social behavior emerge across species.
Keywords: Social cognition Comparative development Primates Socio-emotional biases Emotional signals
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
