Social media dreams were quite rare (2pct of all remembered dreams); their frequency correlated with neuroticism and extraversion

Social Media, Dreaming, and Personality: An Online Study. Michael Schredl and Anja S. Göritz. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, Oct 3 2019. https://doi.org/10.1089/cyber.2019.0385

Abstract: Social media consumption plays an important role in everyday life and, thus, one would expect that this topic is reflected in dreams. This online survey included 1,349 participants (763 women, 586 men) completing questions about social media use in waking, percentage of social media dreams, and the Big Five personality dimensions. Social media dreams were quite rare (two percent of all remembered dreams), but their frequency correlated with neuroticism and extraversion—in addition to the amount of time using social media in waking—supporting the hypothesis that social media have a stronger effect on those person's inner life due to the higher importance attached to this channel of communication. For future research it would be of interest to elicit emotions related to social media in waking and the emotional tones of social media dreams to study whether positive and/or negative aspects of waking-life social media use are directly reflected in dreams.

Job referrals: Women tend to favor women when choosing a candidate, & men do not attach much importance to the gender; gendered networks alone fail to explain the observed gender homophily in referred-referrer pairs

Gender Bias in Job Referrals: An Experimental Test. Julie Beugnot, Emmanuel Peterlé. Journal of Economic Psychology, October 4 2019, 102209. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joep.2019.102209

Highlights
•    Gender homophily in job referral choices is largely observed in the field.
•    We test whether an implicit same-gender bias exists in job referrals.
•    We run a lab experiment to control social network and work environments.
•    Only women tend to favor same-gender candidates when making referrals.
•    We identify an implicit same-gender bias in the cooperative environment only.

Abstract: Employee referral programs, while efficient for the employer, have been shown to amplify sex-based occupational segregation in labor markets because of the tendency of workers to refer people of the same gender. We implement a controlled laboratory experiment that precludes any concern for network composition or reputation effects in referral choice. In this way, our experimental design allows us to disentangle statistical discrimination, preferences, and implicit same-gender bias. Our data suggest that women tend to favor women when choosing a candidate, whereas men do not attach much importance to the gender of potential candidates. We deduce from our various treatments that same-gender referrals are mainly driven by preferences in competitive environments and implicit same-gender bias in cooperative environments. Our findings add to the existing literature by highlighting that gendered networks alone fail to explain the observed gender homophily in referred-referrer pairs.

Impression formation on online dating sites: Effects of language errors in profile texts on perceptions of profile owners’ attractiveness

Impression formation on online dating sites: Effects of language errors in profile texts on perceptions of profile owners’ attractiveness. Tess Van der Zanden et al. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, October 3, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407519878787

Abstract: This article presents two experimental studies investigating the impact of language errors in online dating profiles on impression formation. A first study examined whether language errors have a negative effect on perceptions of attraction and dating intention and whether this effect is moderated by the presence of visual information, that is, the profile picture. This 2 (Language Errors/No Language Errors) × 2 (Visible/Blurred Picture) experiment revealed that language errors negatively affect perceptions of social and romantic attraction and that a visible picture on a profile positively affects perceptions of physical attraction. Study 2 focused on mechanical, rule-based, and informal language errors, which can each be attributed to different personality traits. Mechanical and rule-based errors lead to lower scores on, respectively, perceived attentiveness and intelligence, which in turn lead to lower attraction and dating intention scores. These results highlight the importance of error-free language use as a cue for attractiveness.

Keywords Dating profiles, impression formation, language errors, language use, online dating, profile picture

Dummy pills and pain relief; the connection between hostility and heart attacks in women with diabetes; and insomnia is not simply an adverse effect of depression

Matters of the Mind: Honest Placebos, Hostility and Heart Attacks, and Sleepless Nights. Rita Rubin. JAMA, October 3, 2019. doi:10.1001/jama.2019.15983

Dummy pills and pain relief, the connection between hostility and heart attacks in women with diabetes, and the notion that insomnia is not simply an adverse effect of depression have been the focus of recent studies.


“Honest” Placebos Might Help Relieve Back Pain

Until recently, the conventional wisdom was that placebo treatments worked only if patients who received them didn’t know they were placebos.

But not telling patients that sugar pills or saline injections are placebos raises ethical and legal questions related to informed consent.

Researchers have started to investigate the effectiveness of prescribing placebos with patients’ full knowledge, an approach called open-label placebo (OLP).

It turns out that the placebo effect can survive disclosure to patients, at least in those with chronic back pain, according to a German study recently published in Pain.

The researchers randomly assigned 127 people aged 19 years or older who had chronic back pain (persisting for at least 12 weeks) to usual care or usual care plus placebo. As part of the informed consent procedure before randomization, participants were shown a video produced by CBS New York that had been translated into German. The video contained information about the placebo effect in general and recent research findings about the potential benefits of OLPs.

Participants randomized to the placebo received capsules made by Zeebo Effect, a Vermont company that markets them as “honest placebos.” They’re not actually sugar pills—they contain microcrystalline cellulose, refined wood pulp commonly used as a food additive. Patients in the placebo group were told the capsules were placebos that they should take twice a day for 21 days.

The combination of OLP with treatment as usual significantly reduced patient-reported pain, disability, and depressive symptoms but not stress or anxiety, the study found. In addition, OLP treatment showed a trend toward reduced demand for analgesic rescue medication to help relieve back pain. However, OLP had no effect on objective measures of spine mobility, such as range of motion. This suggests that the approach wouldn’t work for conditions with primarily objective treatment outcomes, such as cardiovascular or immunological diseases, according to the authors.


Hostility and the Heart in Women With Diabetes

A growing body of evidence suggests that hostility is bad for the heart.

Recent findings reported in Menopause suggest this holds true for postmenopausal women with type 2 diabetes. Researchers tracked 15 029 women aged 50 to 79 years at enrollment, all of whom were participants in the Women’s Health Initiative (WHI), for 10 years on average. All of the women reported being treated for diabetes, either at the beginning of the study or during the follow-up period. None had been diagnosed with cardiovascular disease before entering the study.

At baseline, the researchers administered questionnaires to the women to assess a variety of personality traits.

During follow-up, 1118 cases of nonfatal or fatal myocardial infarction and 710 cases of stroke occurred. After accounting for confounders such as age, race and ethnicity, education, high cholesterol, and family history of myocardial infarction, women in the highest quartile of hostility had a 22% higher risk of a heart attack than women in the lowest quartile. No other personality traits were associated with coronary heart disease (CHD) risk, and there was no statistically significant association between hostility—or any other personality trait—and stroke risk.

In a stratified analysis, though, a higher level of hostility and CHD risk were significantly associated only in women diagnosed with diabetes during the course of the study, not those with the disease at baseline. The researchers speculated that among women with higher hostility, those who weren’t yet diagnosed with diabetes at the beginning of the study might have lived longer with impaired glucose homeostasis, in part because they might be less likely to engage in healthy behaviors such as seeing a physician regularly.

Previous research has found that higher levels of hostility in people with type 2 diabetes raised susceptibility to stress-induced inflammation, a possible explanation for the increased risk of a heart attack. However, another study also based on WHI participants, but not specifically those with diabetes, found that greater hostility was not associated with a higher risk of CHD, while greater optimism was linked to a lower risk.

Personality traits are not easily changed, the authors point out. But, at least, identifying patients with diabetes who have high hostility could lead to the testing of interventions that would help minimize their risk for adverse outcomes.

Sorting Out the Relationship Between Depression and Insomnia

Nearly 90% of people with major depressive disorder (MDD) report disturbed sleep, but a recent study in the Journal of Affective Disorders suggests that MDD and insomnia are comorbid yet separate disorders.

The study involved patients enrolled in the STAR*D (Sequenced Treatment Alternatives to Relieve Depression) study, a prospective, randomized clinical trial funded by the National Institutes of Health (NIH) that assessed the efficacy of several antidepressants and cognitive therapy for people with treatment-resistant depression.

The 7-year study enrolled 4041 outpatients aged 18 to 75 years with MDD and tested 4 different medications or medication combinations. The insomnia study assessed the first level of STAR*D, which tested citalopram for 12 or 14 weeks, depending on whether patients responded early or late.

The insomnia study excluded participants who had no postbaseline assessments as well as those who reported sleeping more than average, not less, bringing the total included in the analysis to 2788 people.

At baseline and 5 or 6 times during treatment with citalopram, researchers administered the Quick Inventory of Depressive Symptomology–Clinician Rated (QIDS-C) to assess symptom severity for the previous week. Three of the 16 items on the QIDS-C deal with insomnia, and the researchers combined them to arrive at a global insomnia score. Each QIDS-C item has a maximum score of 3, so the maximum global insomnia score, signifying the most severe insomnia, was 9.

Participants’ global insomnia scores improved over the course of the study. After accounting for age, hypnotic medication use by a quarter of participants, medication dose, and general medical comorbidity, global insomnia scores dropped on average from 6.2 at baseline to 3.7 by week 9 before increasing to 4.4 at the end of the citalopram treatment phase. This further validates the sedative effects of citalopram, the authors wrote.

Patients with more severe depression symptoms at baseline were less likely to achieve MDD remission by the end of the study. Patients with more severe insomnia at baseline were also less likely to achieve MDD remission, which was not explained by the severity of their depression. On the other hand, improved sleep was independent of MDD remission.

These findings support the notion that insomnia is not simply a symptom of MDD but a separate, co-occurring disease process, which, if true, should shift how clinicians conceptualize and treat insomnia and MDD, according to the researchers. For example, they wrote, instead of lumping together excessive sleep and insomnia as a single biological dysfunction when assessing patients with MDD, it might be better to evaluate and treat those sleep disturbances independently with targeted therapies.

Mockingbirds imitate frogs and toads across North America; they imitate at least 12 species

Mockingbirds imitate frogs and toads across North America. David E. Gammon, Anna M. Corsiglia. Behavioural Processes, October 3 2019, 103982. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.beproc.2019.103982

Highlights
• Vocal mimicry is widespread, but we know little about mimicry of non-avian models.
• Archived recordings show mockingbirds imitate at least 12 species of anurans.
• Anurans get imitated more when calls are acoustically similar to mockingbird song.
• Mockingbirds simplify anuran calls by leaving out formants and truncating calls.

Abstract: Vocal mimicry is taxonomically widespread among birds, but little is known about mimicry of non-avian models. Prior studies show preferential imitation of avian models whose sounds are acoustically similar to the non-imitative songs of the vocal mimic. Based on these studies and anecdotes about frog imitations by northern mockingbirds (Mimus polyglottos), we hypothesized which anuran models would be most likely to get imitated by mockingbirds across their geographic range. We tested our hypothesis using >40 hours of archived mockingbird recordings. Our results showed that mockingbirds imitated at least 12 anuran species, and calls were disproportionately mimicked when they contained dominant frequencies within the vocal range of the mockingbird (750-7000 Hz). Mockingbirds also frequently modified model anuran sounds by leaving out formants and/or truncating call duration. Our results represent the most comprehensive survey for any mimicking species of the imitation of anurans.

Conservatives infrahumanized all immigrants equally (and more than liberals), but liberals were more sensitive to racial/religious biases in their evaluations of immigrants

The surprising politics of anti‐immigrant prejudice: How political conservatism moderates the effect of immigrant race and religion on infrahumanization judgements. Olivia Banton, Keon West, Ellie Kinney. British Journal of Social Psychology, July 30 2019. https://doi.org/10.1111/bjso.12337

Abstract: Attitudes towards immigrants in the United Kingdom are worsening. It has been posited that these attitudes may reflect covert racial and religious prejudices, particularly among conservatives. To investigate this, two studies examined the role that immigrant race (Black/White; Study 1) and immigrant religion (Muslim/non‐Muslim; Study 2) played in immigrant infrahumanization judgements, using political conservatism as a moderating variable. There was a moderating effect of political conservatism; however, it was not in the predicted direction. The results of both studies indicated that immigrant race (Black) and immigrant religion (Muslim) predicted greater infrahumanization when political conservatism was low. Conservatives infrahumanized all immigrants equally (and more than liberals), but liberals were more sensitive to racial/religious biases in their evaluations of immigrants.

Comprehensive review of findings from neuroimaging studies investigating the relation between pubertal and functional brain development in humans

Puberty and functional brain development in humans: Convergence in findings? Junqiang Dai, K. Suzanne Scherf. Developmental Cognitive Neuroscience, Volume 39, October 2019, 100690. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.dcn.2019.100690

Abstract: Although there is a long history of studying the influence of pubertal hormones on brain function/structure in animals, this research in human adolescents is young but burgeoning. Here, we provide a comprehensive review of findings from neuroimaging studies investigating the relation between pubertal and functional brain development in humans. We quantified the findings from this literature in which statistics required for standard meta-analyses are often not provided (i.e., effect size in fMRI studies). To do so, we assessed convergence in findings within content domains (reward, facial emotion, social information, cognitive processing) in terms of the locus and directionality (i.e., positive/negative) of effects. Face processing is the only domain with convergence in the locus of effects in the amygdala. Social information processing is the only domain with convergence of positive effects; however, these effects are not consistently present in any brain region. There is no convergence of effects in either the reward or cognitive processing domains. This limited convergence in findings across domains is not the result of null findings or even due to the variety of experimental paradigms researchers employ. Instead, there are critical theoretical, methodological, and analytical issues that must be addressed in order to move the field forward.

6. Conclusion

Although there is a long history of studying the influence of pubertal hormones on brain function and structure in animal models (see Sisk and Zehr, 2005a, 2005b), similar research in human adolescents is still early in its own ontogeny. We reviewed the existing 28 studies in this field that have been primarily conducted in the last decade. To quantify the findings, we measured convergence in results within content domains (reward, facial emotion, social information, cognitive processing) in terms of the locus and directionality of effects. We report that facial emotion processing is the only content domain with convergence in the locus of effects, such that studies consistently find a relation between metrics of pubertal development and neural activation in the amygdala. Social information processing is the only content domain in which there is consistency across studies in the directionality of effects. Specifically, functional brain activation during a variety of social information tasks is consistently positively associated with measures of pubertal development in adolescents; however, these effects do not converge in any particular locus of the brain. In contrast, there is no convergence in the locus or directionality of effects in either the reward or cognitive processing domains. These findings highlight important directions for scientists to pursue in future research.

Importantly, we reveal that this limited convergence in findings relating functional brain and pubertal development is not because of null findings or even the variety of experimental paradigms researchers employ. For example, in the social information processing domain, there is immense variety in paradigm, but convergence in the directionality of effects. In contrast, in the reward processing domain, there is high consistency in the experimental paradigm, and participant sample across studies, but no convergence in locus or directionality of effects. As a result, we argue that there are critical theoretical, methodological, and analytic issues that must be addressed in order to move the field forward. To tackle these issues, we suggest that this interdisciplinary work needs to be conducted by teams of scientists with complementary expertise in adolescent development, pubertal development, endocrinology, and pediatric neuroimaging.

Blackouts are costing the Lebanese economy about $3.9 billion per year, or roughly 8.2 percent of the country's GDP

Robert Bryce's A Question of Power: Electricity and the Wealth of Nations. Public Affairs, March 17, 2020, ISBN-13: 978-1610397490

Excerpts about the situation in Lebanon (as Tyler Cowen mentions in his site, https://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2019/10/the-generator-mafia-in-lebanon.html):

...blackouts are costing the Lebanese economy about $3.9 billion per year, or roughly 8.2 percent of the country's GDP.

I asked why the Lebanese government can't put the private generators out of business.  He replied that EdL [the state-owned electricity company] is losing some $1.3 billion per year, while the private generators are taking in as much as $2 billion per annum.  "It's a huge business," he said, "and it's very dangerous to interfere with this business."

...Nakhle, an official in the Energy Ministry, was admitting that the generator mafia bribes Lebanese politicians to make sure that EdL stays weak and blackouts persist...

Maya Ammar, a model and architect in Beirut...told me, "The one reason is Lebanon that we do not have electricity is corruption, plain and simple."...The electric grid, she continued, is "a microcosmic example of how this country runs."

No evidence for a protective effect of education on mental health

No evidence for a protective effect of education on mental health. Sarah C. Dahmann, Daniel D. Schnitzlein. Social Science & Medicine, October 3 2019, 112584. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2019.112584

Highlights
•    We study whether education has a causal protective effect on mental health.
•    We use a compulsory schooling reform in Germany as a source of exogenous variation.
•    We measure mental health by the MCS score and subjective well-being from SOEP data.
•    We find no evidence for a causal protective effect.
•    Our results are robust to various specifications.

Abstract: This paper analyzes whether education has a protective effect on mental health. To estimate causal effects, we employ an instrumental variable (IV) technique that exploits a reform extending compulsory schooling by one year implemented between 1949 and 1969 in West Germany. We complement analyses on the Mental Component Summary (MCS) score as a generic measure of overall mental health with an MCS-based indicator for risk of developing symptoms of mental health disorder and a continuous measure of subjective well-being. Results support existing evidence of a positive relationship between completed years of secondary schooling and mental health in standard OLS estimations. In contrast, the IV estimations reveal no such causal protective effect and negative effects cannot be ruled out.

There is substantial evidence for the hypothesis that accidental disgust does not affect moral ratings, contrary to the common view

Jylkkä, Jussi, Johanna Härkönen, and Jukka Hyönä. 2019. “Accidental Disgust Does Not Cause Moral Condemnation of Neutral Actions.” PsyArXiv. October 3. doi:10.31234/osf.io/b26vz

Abstract: Emotivism in moral psychology holds that making moral judgements is at least partly an affective process. Three emotivist hypotheses can be distinguished: the elicitation hypothesis (that moral transgressions elicit emotions); the amplification hypothesis (that disgust amplifies moral judgments); and the moralization hypothesis (that affect moralizes the non-moral). Even though the moralization hypothesis is the strongest and most radical form of emotivism, it has not been systematically experimentally tested. Most previous studies have used as stimuli morally wrong actions, and thus they cannot answer whether disgust is sufficient to moralize an otherwise neutral action. In Experiment 1 (N = 87) we tested the effect of accidental disgust on morally neutral scenarios, and in Experiment 2 (N = 510) the differential effect of disgust on neutral and wrong scenarios. The results did not support either the moralization or the amplification hypothesis. Instead, Bayesian analyses provided substantial evidence for the null hypothesis that accidental disgust does not affect moral ratings. In line with a recent meta-analysis suggesting that disgust has no effect on moral ratings, our study indicates that this field of research is plagued by false positives due to small sample sizes.

First description of “wealth” inequality in an animal (hermit crabs), which may provide an animal model of the dynamics generating wealth inequality

A comparison of wealth inequality in humans and non-humans. Ivan D. Chase, Raphael Douady, Dianna K. Padilla. Physica A: Statistical Mechanics and its Applications, September 26 2019, 122962. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physa.2019.122962

Highlights
•    We present the first description of “wealth” inequality in a non-human animal.
•    We describe the distribution of snail shells occupied by a hermit crab species.
•    The distribution of shells resembles the common form of human wealth distributions.
•    Hermit crabs may provide an animal model of the dynamics generating wealth inequality.
•    Shell distribution in hermit crabs provides a baseline to compare to human inequality.

Abstract: Inequality in the distribution of material resources (wealth) occurs widely across human groups. The extent of inequality, as measured by the Gini coefficient, is less in small-scale societies, such as hunter-gatherers and pastoralists, and greater in large-scale ones like current nation states. In many societies, the statistical distribution of wealth takes a characteristic form: unimodal, skewed to the right, and fat-tailed. However, we have relatively little systematic information about the distribution of material resources in nonhuman animals even though such resources are vital to their survival and fitness. Here we present the first description of inequality in material resources in an animal population: the distribution of gastropod (snail) shells inhabited by the hermit crab Pagurus longicarpus. We find that the shell distribution for the crabs strongly resembles the characteristic form of wealth distribution in human groups. The amount of inequality in the crabs is more than that in some small-scale human groups but less than that in nations. We argue that the shell distribution in the crabs is not simply generated by biological factors such as survival and growth of either crabs or gastropods. Instead, the strong resemblance in the human and hermit crab distributions suggests that comparable factors, not dependent upon culture or social institutions, could shape the patterns of inequality in both groups. In addition to the similarity in their inequality distributions, human and hermit crabs share other features of resource distribution, including the use of vacancy chains, not seen in other species. Based upon these parallels, we propose that P. longicarpus could be used as an animal model to test two factors – individual differences and intergenerational property transfers – that some economists theorize as major factors influencing the form of wealth distributions in humans. We also propose that inequality in hermit crabs could provide a baseline for examining human inequality.