Greater crying proness in women relative to men are found in wealthier, more democratic, or more feminine countries

Bylsma, L. M., Gračanin, A., & Vingerhoets, A. J. J. M. (2020). A clinical practice review of crying research. Psychotherapy, Sep 2020. https://doi.org/10.1037/pst0000342

Rolf Degen's take: https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/1304456093939138562

Abstract: The goal of this clinical practice review is to assess the current state of the theoretical and empirical literature on emotional crying (i.e., crying in response to an emotional stimulus), a topic that has received surprisingly limited attention of behavioral scientists and clinicians. Although the empirical research on emotional crying remains in a nascent state, we draw upon the existing scientific knowledge to provide preliminary suggestions for clinicians on how to interpret and respond to crying in clinical contexts. We also identify research gaps and provide recommendations for further research to improve our understanding of this intriguing and still poorly understood human behavior. We suggest that a better understanding of individual differences in crying behavior and the postulated intraindividual and interindividual functions of crying is of critical importance for clinicians, given its frequent occurrence and notable associations with emotional and social functioning. An improved characterization of this important phenomenon will lead to improvements in clinical assessment, treatment planning, and psychotherapy interventions.

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Greater crying proness in women relative to men are found in wealthier, more democratic, or more feminine countries

Social Class Predicts Emotion Perception and Perspective-Taking Performance in Adults

Social Class Predicts Emotion Perception and Perspective-Taking Performance in Adults. Pia Dietze, Eric D. Knowles. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, April 27, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167220914116

Abstract: “Theory of Mind” (ToM; people’s ability to infer and use information about others’ mental states) varies across cultures. In four studies (N = 881), including two preregistered replications, we show that social class predicts performance on ToM tasks. In Studies 1A and 1B, we provide new evidence for a relationship between social class and emotion perception: Higher-class individuals performed more poorly than their lower-class counterparts on the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test, which has participants infer the emotional states of targets from images of their eyes. In Studies 2A and 2B, we provide the first evidence that social class predicts visual perspective taking: Higher-class individuals made more errors than lower-class individuals in the Director Task, which requires participants to assume the visual perspective of another person. Potential mechanisms linking social class to performance in different ToM domains, as well as implications for deficiency-centered perspectives on low social class, are discussed.

Keywords: social class, culture, theory of mind, Director Task, Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test

Mountainous areas were lower on agreeableness, extraversion, neuroticism and conscientiousness but higher on openness to experience

Physical topography is associated with human personality. Friedrich M. Götz, Stefan Stieger, Samuel D. Gosling, Jeff Potter & Peter J. Rentfrow. Nature Human Behaviour (2020). September 7 2020. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-0930-x

Abstract: Regional differences in personality are associated with a range of consequential outcomes. But which factors are responsible for these differences? Frontier settlement theory suggests that physical topography is a crucial factor shaping the psychological landscape of regions. Hence, we investigated whether topography is associated with regional variation in personality across the United States (n = 3,387,014). Consistent with frontier settlement theory, results from multilevel modelling revealed that mountainous areas were lower on agreeableness, extraversion, neuroticism and conscientiousness but higher on openness to experience. Conditional random forest algorithms confirmed mountainousness as a meaningful predictor of personality when tested against a conservative set of controls. East–west comparisons highlighted potential differences between ecological (driven by physical features) and sociocultural (driven by social norms) effects of mountainous terrain.

Given the small mean effect size and small-study effects, this meta-analysis gives little support for a bilingual advantage on overall executive function

Gunnerud, H. L., ten Braak, D., Reikerås, E. K. L., Donolato, E., & Melby-Lervåg, M. (2020). Is bilingualism related to a cognitive advantage in children? A systematic review and meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, Sep 2020. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000301

Abstract: Bilingual people are often claimed to have an advantage over monolingual people in cognitive processing owing to their ability to learn and use two languages. This advantage is considered to be related to executive function (EF). However, no consensus exists as to whether this advantage is present in the population or under which conditions it prevails. The present meta-analysis examines the bilingual advantage in EF of children aged 18 years and under for different components of inhibition (hot; rewarding stimuli/cold; neutral stimuli), attention, switching, monitoring, working memory, and planning in 143 independent group comparisons comprising 583 EF effect sizes. The bilingual advantage in overall EF was significant, albeit marginal (g = 0.06), and there were indications of publication bias. A moderator analysis showed significant group differences on EF in favor of bilinguals for studies of children from middle-class socioeconomic backgrounds and studies from one specific lab. The EF components of cold inhibition, switching, and monitoring expressed significant bilingual advantages, but monitoring and cold inhibition were affected by publication bias. As for switching, this remained significant after controlling for publication bias. Thus, given the small mean effect size and small-study effects, this meta-analysis gives little support for a bilingual advantage on overall EF. Still, also after the moderator analysis, there was a large heterogeneity of true effects and a large amount of unexplained heterogeneity in the effect sizes. Thus, there might be bilingual advantages (or disadvantages) under conditions that this study is not able to identify through the analysis of 12 moderators

Partisanship & stereotyping: Learning what car one drives (hybrid/pickup truck), where one buys coffee / eats fast food (Chipotle/Chick-fil-A), or where one works (college/bank) affect our willingness to interact

How the Politicization of Everyday Activities Affects the Public Sphere: The Effects of Partisan Stereotypes on Cross-Cutting Interactions. Amber Hye-Yon Lee. Political Communication, Sep 10 2020. https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2020.1799124

Rolf Degen's take: https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/1304392615371198464

ABSTRACT: People use social cues to decide whether they want to interact with others. As everyday life has become more politicized, we now attach political meaning to seemingly apolitical activities, from the food we eat, to the movies and TV shows we watch, to the car we drive. Do these stereotypes affect social behavior? Using two survey experiments, including one with a nationally representative sample, I show that people use apolitical cues to draw inferences about others’ political leanings. More importantly, these inferences impact decisions about which individuals they want to interact with, which lead to reduced cross-party contact as well as cross-cutting political discussion. The findings have important implications for how partisan stereotypes of everyday attributes might indirectly exacerbate political polarization.

KEYWORDS: Political stereotypes, cross-cutting interactions, political polarization

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While these stereotypes are not always accurate, people think they are, and so they use these stereotypes as shortcuts to make sense of others and decide how to react to them in social situations.

We find those who disagree with our art evaluations as more influenced by biases (conformity, financial incentives); reminding us of art preferences as “matters of opinion” reduced this thinking, but did not eliminate it

Seeing the subjective as objective: People perceive the taste of those they disagree with as biased and wrong. Nathan N. Cheek  Shane F. Blackman  Emily Pronin. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, September 11 2020. https://doi.org/10.1002/bdm.2201

Abstract: People think that they see things as they are in “objective reality,” and they impute bias and other negative qualities to those who disagree. Evidence for these tendencies initially emerged in the domain of politics, where people tend to assume that there are objectively correct beliefs and positions. The present research shows that people are confident in the correctness of their views, and they negatively judge those who disagree, even in the seemingly “subjective” domain of art. Across seven experiments, participants evaluated paintings and encountered others who agreed or disagreed with their evaluations. Participants saw others' evaluations as less objective when they clashed with their own, and as more influenced by biasing factors like conformity or financial incentives. These aesthetic preferences felt as objective as political preferences. Reminding people of their belief that artistic preferences are “matters of opinion” reduced this thinking, but did not eliminate it. These findings suggest that people's convictions of their own objectivity are so powerful as to extend to domains that are typically regarded as “subjective.”

These studies confirm pets can be perpetrators of rejection and such rejection hurts similarly to if a human perpetrated it

Stephanie B. Richman (2020). Man's Best Friend? The Effects of Being Rejected by a Pet. Journal of Social and Clinical Psychology: Vol. 39, No. 6, pp. 498-522.
https://doi.org/10.1521/jscp.2020.39.6.498

Abstract
Introduction: People can be rejected by friends, strangers, hated outgroups, or computer simulations. The present research examines whether people can be rejected by pets.

Methods: Two studies examined whether people can feel rejected by pets and how this affects their mood, fundamental needs, and aggression. Participants in Study 1 were directly rejected by a pet using an adapted version of the video message paradigm, and then reported on their mood, fundamental needs, and aggression. Study 2 directly compared differences in needs when writing about a rejection experience by a pet, a rejection experience by a person, and a control experience.

Results: Study 1 confirmed that people can feel rejected by their pets by demonstrating that those who were rejected felt more negatively and less positively and had decreased need satisfaction, however they did not experience any changes in their aggression. Finally, in Study 2, people who were rejected by a pet or by a person experienced decreased need satisfaction as compared to a control experience.

Discussion: Ultimately, these studies confirm pets can be perpetrators of rejection and such rejection hurts similarly to if a human perpetrated it. This may add to the growing body of research suggesting that pets do not provide uniformly positive effects on people.

KEYWORDS: social exclusion, pets, emotions

This research documents a perfection premium in evaluative judgments wherein individuals disproportionately reward perfection on an attribute compared to near-perfect values on the same attribute

The Perfection Premium. Mathew S. Isaac, Katie Spangenberg. Social Psychological and Personality Science, September 10, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550620944313

Abstract: This research documents a perfection premium in evaluative judgments wherein individuals disproportionately reward perfection on an attribute compared to near-perfect values on the same attribute. For example, individuals consider a student who earns a perfect score of 36 on the American College Test to be more intelligent than a student who earns a near-perfect 35, and this difference in perceived intelligence is significantly greater than the difference between students whose scores are 35 versus 34. The authors also show that the perfection premium occurs because people spontaneously place perfect items into a separate mental category than other items. As a result of this categorization process, the perceived evaluative distance between perfect and near-perfect items is exaggerated. Four experiments provide evidence in favor of the perfection premium and support for the proposed underlying mechanism in both social cognition and decision-making contexts.

Keywords: perfection, categorization, numerical cognition, social cognition

Learning have long been implicated in influencing eating behavior; memory of recent eating modulates future food consumption; overweight and obesity is associated with impaired memory performance

Seitz, Benjamin M., A. J. Tomiyama, and Aaron Blaisdell. 2020. “Eating Behavior as a New Frontier in Memory Research.” PsyArXiv. September 11. doi:10.31234/osf.io/ry4nv

Abstract: The study of memory is commonly associated with neuroscience, aging, education, and eyewitness testimony. Here we discuss how eating behavior is also heavily intertwined—and yet considerably understudied in its relation to memory processes. Both are influenced by similar neuroendocrine signals (e.g., leptin and ghrelin) and are dependent on hippocampal functions. While learning processes have long been implicated in influencing eating behavior, recent research has shed light on how memory of recent eating modulates future food consumption. In humans, overweight and obesity is associated with impaired memory performance, and studies in rodents (and to a lesser extent humans) show that dietary-induced obesity causes rapid decrements to memory. Lesions to the hippocampus not only disrupt memory, but also induce obesity, highlighting a cyclic relationship between obesity and memory impairment. Enhancing memory of eating has been shown to reduce future eating and yet, very little is known about what influences memory of eating or how memory of eating differs from memory for other behaviors. We discuss recent advancements in these areas and highlight fruitful research pursuits afforded by combining the study of memory with the study of eating behavior.