Friendship jealousy is sensitive to the value of the threatened friendship, strongly calibrated to cues that one is being replaced, & ultimately motivates behavior aimed at countering third-party threats to friendship (“friend guarding”)

Krems, J. A., Williams, K. E. G., Aktipis, A., & Kenrick, D. T. (2020). Friendship jealousy: One tool for maintaining friendships in the face of third-party threats? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Aug 11 2020. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000311

Abstract: Friendships can foster happiness, health, and reproductive fitness. However, friendships end—even when we might not want them to. A primary reason for this is interference from third parties. Yet, little work has explored how people meet the challenge of maintaining friendships in the face of real or perceived threats from third parties, as when our friends inevitably make new friends or form new romantic relationships. In contrast to earlier conceptualizations from developmental research, which viewed friendship jealousy as solely maladaptive, we propose that friendship jealousy is one overlooked tool of friendship maintenance. We derive and test—via a series of 11 studies (N = 2,918) using hypothetical scenarios, recalled real-world events, and manipulation of online emotional experiences—whether friendship jealousy possesses the features of a tool well-designed to help us retain friends in the face of third-party threats. Consistent with our proposition, findings suggest that friendship jealousy is (a) uniquely evoked by third-party threats to friendships (but not the prospective loss of the friendship alone), (b) sensitive to the value of the threatened friendship, (c) strongly calibrated to cues that one is being replaced, even over more intuitive cues (e.g., the amount of time a friend and interloper spend together), and (d) ultimately motivates behavior aimed at countering third-party threats to friendship (“friend guarding”). Even as friendship jealousy may be negative to experience, it may include features designed for beneficial—and arguably prosocial—ends: to help maintain friendships.

Out-of-partnership births in East and West Germany: Single women in East Germany are significantly more likely to give birth to a child than single women in West Germany, partly predating 1945

Out-of-partnership births in East and West Germany. Uwe Jirjahn & Cornelia Chadi. Review of Economics of the Household volume 18, pages853–881(2020). https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11150-019-09463-0

Abstract: Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), we show that single women in East Germany are significantly more likely to give birth to a child than single women in West Germany. This applies to both planned and unplanned births. Our analysis provides no evidence that the difference between East and West Germany can be explained by economic factors or the higher availability of child care in East Germany. This suggests that the difference in out-of-partnership births is rather driven by behavioral and cultural differences. However, these behavioral and cultural differences do not only reflect different gender role models that evolved under the former communist regime in East Germany and the democratic one in West Germany. Partly, they also reflect a long historical divide that predates the 1945 separation of Germany.

Notes

1. 1.
   A further reason for building up the comprehensive child care system was that the communist regime tried to control the socialization and education of its citizens from the very start of their lives.
2. 2.
   Giavazzi et al. (2019) show that a process of cultural transmission can indeed take a long time. They examine the speed of evolution of a series of cultural attitudes for different generations of European immigrants to the US. Specifically, they identify family and moral values, general political views, and religious values as being relatively persistent.
3. 3.
   See www.destatis.de/DE/ZahlenFakten/Indikatoren/LangeReihen/Arbeitsmarkt/lrarb001.html.
4. 4.
   See www.destatis.de/DE/ZahlenFakten/GesamtwirtschaftUmwelt/VerdiensteArbeitskosten/VerdiensteVerdienstunterschiede/Tabellen/Bruttomonatsverdienste.html.
5. 5.
   Note that the data provide no information whether women younger than 18 years gave birth to a child.
6. 6.
   While the estimated coefficient on East Germany is slightly smaller in regression (2) than in regression (1), the marginal effect is higher. The nonlinearity of the probit model implies that the marginal effect of a variable not only depends on the coefficient of that variable, but also on the other explanatory variables included in the regression.
7. 7.
   A potential limitation of our dependent variable is that the share of women with a planned out-of-partnership birth is low. This might result in greater randomness and, hence, in insignificant coefficients of the variables for child care availability and risk attitude in the equation for planned births. However, these variables even take negative coefficients in that equation indicating that they may indeed have no positive influence on planned births.
8. 8.
   At the same time, more equal gender roles imply that cohabitation is more prevalent among East than among West Germans (Jirjahn and Struewing 2018). More emancipated women who are less dependent on a partner may be less inclined to safeguard a relationship through marriage. Moreover, as stressed by sociologists, cohabitation involves a greater lack of normative prescriptions for role performance (Baxter 2001). This leaves more space for cohabiting couples to negotiate more egalitarian relationships.
9. 9.
   We only provide coefficients as STATA has no canned command to calculate marginal effects for Firth’s model.
10. 10.
    E.g., see Brady and Burroway (2012); Corak et al. (2008); Krein and Beller (1988); Lerman (1996); Lichter and Graefe (1999); McLanahan and Sandefur (1994), and Scharte and Bolte (2012).
11. 11.
    E.g., see Maldonado and Nieuwenhuis (2015) and Pong et al. (2003).

Religious individuals assert superior, but false, knowledge on domains highly relevant to religiosity (e.g., international health charities, humanitarian aid organizations)

Do Religious People Self-Enhance? Constantine Sedikides, Jochen E Gebauer. Current Opinion in Psychology, August 10 2020. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2020.08.002

We ask if and when religious individuals self-enhance more than non-believers. First, religious individuals self-enhance on domains central to their self-concept. Specifically, they exhibit the Better-Than-Average Effect: They rate themselves as superior on attributes painting them as good Christians (e.g., traits like “loving” or “forgiving,” Biblical commandments) than on control attributes. Likewise, they exhibit the Overclaiming Effect: They assert superior, but false, knowledge on domains highly relevant to religiosity (e.g., international health charities, humanitarian aid organizations) than on control domains. Second, religious individuals self-enhance strongly in religious (than secular) cultures, which elevate religion to a social value. Finally, Christians may self-enhance in general, perhaps due to their conviction that they have a special relationship with God.