The tendency to perceive an electoral outcome as foreseeable is positively & consistently associated with satisfaction with the outcome

Hindsight Bias and Electoral Outcomes: Satisfaction Counts More Than Winner-Loser Status. Mauro Bertolotti and Patrizia Catellani. Social CognitionVol. 39, No. 2, March 2021. https://doi.org/10.1521/soco.2021.39.2.201

Abstract: The tendency to perceive outcomes as more foreseeable once they are available is a well-known phenomenon. However, research on the cognitive and motivational factors that induce individuals to overestimate the foreseeability of an electoral outcome has yielded inconsistent findings. In three studies based on large-scale electoral surveys (ITANES, Italian National Election Studies), we argued that the tendency to perceive an electoral outcome as foreseeable is positively and consistently associated with satisfaction with the outcome. Across all studies, satisfaction with the outcome was significantly and positively associated with retrospective foreseeability, above and beyond voters’ preference for a “winning” or “losing” party. In Study 3, a measure of memory distortion of pre-electoral forecasts was included, which was only weakly associated with retrospective foreseeability, but not with satisfaction for the outcome, supporting the notion of different levels of hindsight bias associated with different cognitive and motivational factors.

It has been suggested that inequalities in personality are implicated in the intergenerational transmission of inequality

Inequality in personality over the life cycle. Miriam Gensowski, Mette Gørtz, Stefanie Schurer. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Volume 184, April 2021, Pages 46-77. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2021.01.018

Rolf Degen's take: Personality traits are similarly unequally distributed as wealth, and the former could be a cause of the latter

Chart: Steve Stewart-Williams (@SteveStuWill)

Abstract: We document gender and socioeconomic inequalities in personality over the life cycle (age 18–75), using the Big Five 2 (BFI-2) inventory linked to administrative data on a large Danish population. We estimate life-cycle profiles non-parametrically and adjust for cohort and sample-selection effects. We find that: (1) Women of all ages score more highly than men on all personality traits, including three that are positively associated with wages; (2) High-education groups score more favorably on Openness to Experience, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism than low-education groups, while there is no socioeconomic inequality by Conscientiousness; (3) Over the life cycle, gender and socioeconomic gaps remain constant, with two exceptions: the gender and SES gaps in Openness to Experience widen, while gender differences in Neuroticism, a trait associated with worse outcomes, diminish with age. We discuss the implications of these findings in the context of gender wage gaps, household production models, and optimal taxation.

Keywords: InequalityPersonalityBig Five-2 InventoryLife cycle dynamicsGender disadvantageSocioeconomic disadvantage

Narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy are weakly associated to creativity; the strongest links are between the traits and scientific creativity

Creativity and the Dark Triad: A Meta-Analysis. Izabela Lebud, Bernadetta Figur, Maciej Karwowski. Journal of Research in Personality, March 21 2021, 104088. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2021.104088

Highlights

• A meta-analysis of the links between creativity and the Dark Triad of personality.

• Significant, weak relations between creativity and narcissism and Machiavellianism.

• Dark Triad is mainly related to creativity when it was measured with self-report.

• The strongest links between Dark Triad traits and scientific creativity.

Abstract: This paper presents a meta-analysis of the relationships between creativity (creative potential, activities, and achievement) and the Dark Triad of personality: narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy. Multilevel meta-analytic models demonstrated a small but significant positive association between creativity and narcissism (r = .15 [.10, .29]) and Machiavellianism (r = .06 [.02, .09]), but not with psychopathy (r = .03 [-.02, .07]). Creativity measures (self-report-vs.-performance), aspects (self-perception, creative activity, creative abilities, creative achievements), and domains (general, art, science, and everyday creativity) moderated the links with the Dark Triad. We discuss the possible mechanism of associations between Dark Triad traits and creativity and highlight future research directions.

Keywords: The Dark Triadcreativitymeta-analysispersonality

Swearing/cursing and coprophenomena are prevalent in daily life; swearing makes up around 0.5% of the daily spoken content, however, the inter-individual variability is very high

Swearing and coprophenomena – a multidimensional approach. Asne Senberg et al. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, March 20 2022. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2021.03.016

Rolf Degen's take: https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/1373509898823217155

Highlights

• Swearing/cursing and coprophenomena are prevalent in daily life.

• We provide a multidimensional approach to systematize swearing and coprophenomena.

• We provide a theoretical framework reasons, targets, functions/effects and influencing factors for swearing and coprolalia.

Abstract: Swearing, cursing, expletives – all these terms are used to describe the utterance of taboo words. Studies show that swearing makes up around 0.5% of the daily spoken content, however, the inter-individual variability is very high. One kind of pathologic swearing is coprolalia in Tourette syndrome (TS), which describes the involuntary outburst of taboo words. Coprolalia occurs in approximately 20-30% of all patients with TS. This review compares swearing in healthy people and coprolalia in people with TS and is the first one to develop a multidimensional framework to account for both phenomena from a similar perspective. Different research findings are embedded in one theoretical framework consisting of reasons, targets, functions/effects and influencing factors for swearing and coprolalia. Furthermore, the very limited research investigating obscene gestures and copropraxia, compulsive obscene gestures, is summarized. New research questions and gaps are brought up for swearing, obscene gestures and coprophenomena.

Keywords: swearingcursingcoprolaliacoprophenomenaTourette Syndrome