Evolutionary Psychology and Suicidology

Evolutionary Psychology and Suicidology. John F. Gunn III, Pablo Malo, and C. A. Soper. SAGE Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology, Vol 3, Part 7, Chapter 69. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/332142286_Evolutionary_Psychology_and_Suicidology_Draft_chapter_for_SAGE_Handbook_of_Evolutionary_Psychology_2019

ABSTRACT: Suicide – deliberate, intentional self-killing – is a major cause of human mortality and a global public health concern. Suicidology emerged as an interdisciplinary field focused on the prediction and prevention of suicide. Progress has been disappointing: suicide rates resist efforts to reduce them, and there is no theoretical consensus on suicide’s causation. At least since the writing of Sigmund Freud, the search for a scientific understanding of suicide has included theories with evolutionary links. Apparently a human universal behavior, suicide presents a longstanding evolutionary puzzle: the fitness cost of suicide, of being dead, is predictably injurious for the individual’s reproductive future. Some adaptationist theories have been advanced from the neo-Darwinian idea of inclusive fitness: selection may produce behaviors that, while self-injurious for the individual, favor the reproductive prospects of individual’s genetic kin, but there are multiple theoretical and empirical problems with such proposals. Others suggest “by-product” explanations, that suicide is not in itself adaptive, but may be a noxious side-effect of evolved adaptations that are fitness enhancing overall. Most of these proposals coalesce around the central idea that pain, particularly social pain, a vital protective signal which demands the organism take action to end or escape it, may incidentally provoke suicide as a means to achieve that escape. A minimal level of cognitive functioning appears to operate as a second, incidentally suicidogenic, adaptation among adult humans. Together these twin “pain-and- brain” conditions appear to be both necessary and sufficient for suicide, a formulation that implicitly reframes self-killing as an adaptive problem in the evolution of the human species. The explanatory focus shifts, on this basis, from attempting to identify causes of suicide, to identifying adaptive solutions that operate to prevent suicide. A general framework recently proposed by Soper envisages multiple lines of “pain-type” and “brain-type” antisuicide defenses, transmitted culturally and genetically across generations. One class of evolved psychological mechanisms, “keepers”, is reviewed in detail. Soper posits keepers to mobilize as emergency interventions among people at imminent risk of taking their own lives. Challengingly, the hypothesized features of keepers appear to match symptoms of several common mental disorders, including depression, addictions, non-suicidal self-harm, and psychoses. The model would help to explain why it has not proved possible to predict suicide at the individual level: any and all usefully predictive clues would probably already have been exploited and exhausted by evolved antisuicide defenses. The framework may also account for, among other things, the close association of diverse, and often comorbid, psychopathologies with suicidal ideation, but the only weak association of psychopathologies with the progression from ideation to suicidal action. Major implications of, and problems with, Soper’s conceptual approach are discussed. In conclusion, it is suggested that evolutionary psychology offers fresh perspectives for suicidology, and potentially a means to achieve a long overdue, and much needed, integration and unification of suicide theory.

“Natural selection will never produce in a being anything injurious to itself, for natural selection acts solely by and for the good of each” (Darwin, 1859, p. 201).

Suicide, “the act of deliberately killing oneself” (W.H.O., 2014, p. 12) accounts for some million deaths around the world each year and ends about 1.4% of human lives: more people die by intentional self-killing than from wars, accidents, homicide and all other forms of violent death put together (W.H.O., 2013). Many millions of the living are affected, left to deal with the aftermath of others’ suicides (Cerel et al., 2019). A cross-cultural killer, suicide is viewed as a global public health challenge – a major, and preventable, cause of mortality and misery (Satcher, 1999; W.H.O., 2012, 2014). A new multi-disciplinary field of research emerged in the second half of the 20th century, suicidology, focused on trying to understand and tackle the problem (American Association of Suicidology, 2019; Shneidman, 2001).

But frustratingly, by most accounts, decades of concerted effort have made little impression. While other forms of violent mortality have markedly reduced (Pinker, 2011) the global suicide rate is probably much the same now as it was 50 or 100 years ago (Linehan, 2011; Nock et al., 2012; Nock, Ramirez, & Rankin, 2019). Indeed, self-killings in the USA are reportedly on the increase (Hedegaard, Curtin, & Warner, 2018). Progress in building a theoretical base has been equally disappointing, the causation of suicide remaining a scientific mystery (Lester, 2019; Soper, 2019b). As a report published by the World Health Organization admits, “we continue to lack a firm understanding of why, when, and among whom suicidal behavior will occur” (Nock, Borges, & Ono, 2012a, p. 222). Diverse ideas have accumulated over more than a hundred years of theorizing – reviews of prominent offers can be found in the general suicidology literature (Gunn, 2019; Gunn & Lester, 2014; O’Connor & Portzky, 2018; Paniagua, Black, Gallaway, & Coombs, 2010; Selby, Joiner, & Ribeiro, 2014). But perhaps reflecting widespread acceptance that the proximal causes of suicide are complex and multifactorial, no model has won a consensus of support (Hjelmeland, Jaworski, Knizek, & Marsh, 2019; Lester, 2019). Suicidology is fragmented to the extent that a recent meta-review describes the field as “still in a preparadigmatic phase” (Franklin et al., 2017, p. 188) – that is, still in its infancy.

A subset of theories with evolutionary links shows a long-held, if often implicit, acceptance that a coherent understanding of suicide needs to take its place, alongside other fields of modern life sciences, within an evolutionary paradigm. A hundred years ago, Freud (1920/1991) proposed a potentially suicidogenic “death drive” in the context of his broader theory of libido, a framework which, in keeping with the evolutionist spirit of the age, sought to build on the Darwinian premise that selection is predicated on sexual success (Gilbert, 1989; Litman, 1967; Tolaas, 2005).

Psychoanalysis failed to find a satisfactory explanation for suicide, as its practitioners acknowledged at the time (Zilboorg, 1936a), although comparable ideas continue to circulate in suicidology (Selby et al., 2014). Many alternative approaches have been advanced in the intervening century, as we will discuss, but suicide is still widely viewed as an evolutionary puzzle (Aubin, Berlin, & Kornreich, 2013; Blasco-Fontecilla, Lopez-Castroman, Gomez-Carrillo, & Baca-Garcia, 2009; Confer et al., 2010). The conundrum follows from our opening quotation: how is it that, seemingly contradicting Darwin’s (1859) prediction, selection permits so self-destructive a behavior? 

In search of answers, we review and critique prominent ways in which evolutionary ideas have informed suicide research, and outline a new general approach, the modelling of suicide as an evolutionary by-product which, we believe, offers scope for long overdue convergence in suicide theory and, it is hoped, prospects for saving lives (Gunn, 2017; Humphrey, 2018; Soper, 2016, 2017, 2018).


7 Concluding comments

At one level this chapter carries an encouraging message. The evolutionary approach would seem, in principle, capable of bringing much needed and long overdue unity and coherence to suicidology’s current morass of unconnected theory. A “pain-and-brain” framework in particular could offer a rallying point for numerous, superficially disparate, theoretical positions, including IPTS (Van Orden et al., 2010), IMV (O’Connor et al., 2016), SPM (Gunn, 2017) and others, which essentially characterize suicide as a way to escape intolerable emotional states. None would appear incompatible with the view that pain, as a biological imperative, demands action to end or escape it, while regular adult human cognition offers intentional self-killing as an effective, but genetically destructive, means to answer that demand.

But the corollary, that humans are protected from suicide by evolved psychological mechanisms, may be harder to digest. Blind to our own instinctual motivations (Cosmides & Tooby, 1994), we may be oblivious to their functioning. The idea of antisuicide defenses is not new (e. g., Himmelhoch, 1988; Hundert, 1992; Miller, 2008), but it is only now gaining momentum in the research agenda (Humphrey, 2011, 2018; Soper, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019a, 2019b; Soper & Shackelford, 2018). Their implications may run wide and deep, and call some long-held preconceptions into question: as Lester (2019) finds, accepting the ramifications requires close reading of the arguments.

Progress is not helped by what Soper (2018) believes to be a two-way blockage in communication between suicidology and evolutionary psychology that may go beyond the kind of institutional fragmentation seen elsewhere in psychological sciences (Staats, 2004). Soper posits that suicide and evolution, each for its own reasons, are concepts that many people, researchers included, find intuitively uncomfortable to think or talk about. It may be for this reason that, in one direction, evolutionary psychology has largely ignored suicide, as has psychology generally (J. R. Rogers, 2001): in view of the gravity and ubiquity of suicide as a human phenomenon, and the conspicuous evolutionary puzzle it presents, remarkably little has been written on the subject from an evolutionary psychology perspective, at least until recent years. It is a reticence traceable to Darwin himself: as Tolaas (2005) points out, it is remarkable that a thinker as fearless as Darwin did not confront suicide as a potential problem for his theory. In the other direction, suicidology has largely ignored evolutionary psychology. Illustratively, a review article promisingly titled “Evolutionary processes in suicide” (Chiurliza, Rogers, Schneider, Chu, & Joiner, 2017) attempts to appraise its research group’s ideas (and their ideas alone) without reference to evolutionary psychology’s corpus of texts and tenets – a surprising omission given that evolutionary psychology, “the study of behavior from an evolutionary perspective” (Cornwell, Palmer, Guinther, & Davis, 2005, p. 369), is centrally relevant.

This chapter proposes a pragmatic consilience between the two fields. An evolutionary stance would not seem in itself to entail a radical departure for suicidology: it would, rather, follow the lead set by Freud (1920/1991), Shneidman (1985), Joiner (2005), and other prominent researchers who have drawn on evolutionary ideas across more than a century. Evolutionary psychology could coalesce, not replace, suicidology’s existing theoretical content. There may be little to lose in such an incremental move. The upsides, on the other hand, may be great. Evolutionary psychology offers fresh perspectives and ready tools that could be decisive in a battle currently at stalemate. Evolutionary psychology and suicidology deserve each other’s attention.

Association between childhood adoption & bad mental health: Not fully to be attributed to stressful environments; it is partly explained by differences in genetic risk between adoptees & those not-adopted

Childhood adoption and mental health in adulthood: The role of gene-environment correlations and interactions in the UK Biobank. Kelli Lehto et al. Biological Psychiatry, October 31 2019. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsych.2019.10.016

Abstract
Background Being adopted early in life, an indicator of exposure to early life adversity, has been consistently associated with poor mental health outcomes in adulthood. Such associations have largely been attributed to stressful environments, e.g. exposure to trauma, abuse or neglect. However, mental health is substantially heritable, and genetic influences may contribute to the exposure to childhood adversity, resulting in potential genetic confounding of such associations.
Methods Here we explored associations between childhood adoption and mental health-related outcomes in mid-life in 243 797 UK Biobank participants (n adopted=3151). We used linkage disequilibrium score regression and polygenic risk scores for depressive symptoms, schizophrenia, neuroticism and subjective wellbeing to address potential genetic confounding (gene-environment correlations) and gene-environment interactions. As outcomes we explored depressive symptoms, bipolar disorder, neuroticism, loneliness, and mental health-related socioeconomic and psychosocial measures in adoptees compared to non-adopted participants.
Results Adoptees were slightly worse off on almost all mental, socioeconomic and psychosocial measures. Each standard deviation increase in polygenic risk for depressive symptoms, schizophrenia, and neuroticism was associated with 6%, 5%, and 6% increase in the odds of being adopted, respectively. Significant genetic correlations between adoption status and depressive symptoms, major depression, and schizophrenia were observed. No evidence for gene-environment interaction between genetic risk and adoption on mental health was found.
Conclusions The association between childhood adoption and mental health cannot fully be attributed to stressful environments, but is partly explained by differences in genetic risk between adoptees and those not-adopted (i.e. gene-environment correlation).

Keywords: gene-environment interplaydepressive symptomsschizophrenianeuroticismchildhood adversitypolygenic risk scores

Happiness is not best understood as an affective state, but better understood within its behavioral context, as an emergent property of activity

Imaging Happiness: Meta Analysis and Review. Joshua Ray Tanzer, Lisa Weyandt. Journal of Happiness Studies, October 31 2019. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10902-019-00195-7

Abstract: A challenge in studying happiness is its conceptual nature. Is the happiness of hedonistic indulgence the same as the happiness of selfless volunteering? To understand some of these questions, a narrative review of 64 neuroimaging studies between 1995 and 2018 was conducted. Studies were grouped based on how they conceptualized happiness based on Seligman’s (Authentic happiness: using the new positive psychology to realize your potential for lasting fulfillment, Simon and Schuster, New York, 2002) authentic happiness theory. A qualitative narrative review was performed as well as an ALE meta analysis of activation regions. Happiness was identified in 33 separate brain regions across the telencephalon, diencephalon, and metencephalon. Stratifying results by definition of happiness, regions of activity were generally relevant to the tasks performed during the experiment and the kinds of tasks enjoyed by the phenomenon of happiness examined. The ALE analysis identified the claustrum, insula, basal ganglia, and thalamus as showing meaningful activation clusters across studies. Happiness as pleasure and engagement demonstrated close relevance of neural activity to literal activities being performed. Tasks for happiness as meaning, on the other hand, were generally more abstract. Likewise, there was less direct relationship between behavior and phenomenon of happiness, the insula most likely to activate for happiness as meaning. It was concluded that happiness is not best understood as an affective state, but better understood within its behavioral context, as an emergent property of activity. For pleasure and engagement, this meant a literal relationship between behavioral and neurological activity. For meaning, this meant the ongoing assessment of the moral implications of events. Limitations included cross sectional design and hemodynamic focus. Future research should consider concordance of happiness and brain activity across the lifespan. Additionally, future studies should consider the dynamics of neuropeptides.

Keywords: Authentic happiness Neuroimaging Review

Fear‐containing dreams serve an emotion regulation function; the stronger the recruitment of fear‐responsive regions during dreaming, the weaker their response to actual fear‐eliciting stimuli during wakefulness

Fear in dreams and in wakefulness: Evidence for day/night affective homeostasis. Virginie Sterpenich et al. Human Brain Mapping, October 30 2019. https://doi.org/10.1002/hbm.24843

Abstract: Recent neuroscientific theories have proposed that emotions experienced in dreams contribute to the resolution of emotional distress and preparation for future affective reactions. We addressed one emerging prediction, namely that experiencing fear in dreams is associated with more adapted responses to threatening signals during wakefulness. Using a stepwise approach across two studies, we identified brain regions activated when experiencing fear in dreams and showed that frightening dreams modulated the response of these same regions to threatening stimuli during wakefulness. Specifically, in Study 1, we performed serial awakenings in 18 participants recorded throughout the night with high‐density electroencephalography (EEG) and asked them whether they experienced any fear in their dreams. Insula and midcingulate cortex activity increased for dreams containing fear. In Study 2, we tested 89 participants and found that those reporting higher incidence of fear in their dreams showed reduced emotional arousal and fMRI response to fear‐eliciting stimuli in the insula, amygdala and midcingulate cortex, while awake. Consistent with better emotion regulation processes, the same participants displayed increased medial prefrontal cortex activity. These findings support that emotions in dreams and wakefulness engage similar neural substrates, and substantiate a link between emotional processes occurring during sleep and emotional brain functions during wakefulness.

1 INTRODUCTION

Converging evidence from human and animal research suggests functional links between sleep and emotional processes (Boyce, Glasgow, Williams, & Adamantidis, 2016; Perogamvros & Schwartz, 2012; Wagner, Hallschmid, Rasch, & Born, 2006; Walker & van der Helm, 2009). Chronic sleep disruption can lead to increased aggressiveness (Kamphuis, Meerlo, Koolhaas, & Lancel, 2012) and negative mood states (Zohar, Tzischinsky, Epstein, & Lavie, 2005), whereas affective disorders such as depression and post‐traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) are frequently associated with sleep abnormalities (e.g., insomnia and nightmares). Experimental evidence indicates that acute sleep deprivation impairs the prefrontal control over limbic regions during wakefulness, hence, exacerbating emotional responses to negative stimuli (Yoo, Gujar, Hu, Jolesz, & Walker, 2007). Neuroimaging and intracranial data further established that, during human sleep, emotional limbic networks are activated (e.g., Braun et al., 1997; Corsi‐Cabrera et al., 2016; Maquet et al., 1996; Nofzinger, Mintun, Wiseman, Kupfer, & Moore, 1997; Schabus et al., 2007). Together these findings indicate that sleep physiology may offer a permissive condition for affective information to be reprocessed and reorganized. Yet, it remains unsettled whether such emotion regulation processes also happen at the subjective, experiential level during sleep, and may be expressed in dreams. Several influential theoretical models formalized this idea. For example, the threat simulation theory postulated that dreaming may fulfill a neurobiological function by allowing an offline simulation of threatening events and rehearsal of threat‐avoidance skills, through the activation of a fear‐related amygdalocortical network (Revonsuo, 2000; Valli et al., 2005). Such mechanism would promote adapted behavioral responses in real life situations (Valli & Revonsuo, 2009). By contrast, other models suggested that dreaming would facilitate the resolution of current emotional conflict (Cartwright, Agargun, Kirkby, & Friedman, 2006; Cartwright, Luten, Young, Mercer, & Bears, 1998), the reduction of next‐day negative mood (Schredl, 2010) and extinction learning (Nielsen & Levin, 2007). Although these two main theoretical lines differ, because one focuses on the optimization of waking affective reactions (Perogamvros & Schwartz, 2012; Revonsuo, 2000) and the other on the resolution of current emotional distress (e.g., fear extinction; Nielsen & Levin, 2007), both converge to suggest that experiencing fear in dreams leads to more adapted responses to threatening signals during wakefulness (Scarpelli, Bartolacci, D'Atri, Gorgoni, & De Gennaro, 2019). The proposed mechanism is that memories from a person's affective history are replayed in the virtual and safe environment of the dream so that they can be reorganized (Nielsen & Levin, 2007; Perogamvros & Schwartz, 2012). From a neuroscience perspective, one key premise of these theoretical models is that experiencing emotions in dreams implicates the same brain circuits as in wakefulness (Hobson & Pace‐Schott, 2002; Schwartz, 2003). Preliminary evidence from two anatomical investigations showed that impaired structural integrity of the left amygdala was associated with reduced emotional intensity in dreams (Blake, Terburg, Balchin, van Honk, & Solms, 2019; De Gennaro et al., 2011).

Like during wakefulness, people experience a large variety of emotions in their dreams, with rapid eye movement (REM) dreaming being usually more emotionally loaded than non‐rapid eye movement (NREM) dreams (Carr & Nielsen, 2015; Smith et al., 2004). While some studies found a relative predominance of negative emotions, such as fear and anxiety, in dreams (Merritt, Stickgold, Pace‐Schott, Williams, & Hobson, 1994; Roussy et al., 2000), others reported a balance of positive and negative emotions (Schredl & Doll, 1998), or found that joy and emotions related to approach behaviors may prevail (Fosse, Stickgold, & Hobson, 2001; Malcolm‐Smith, Koopowitz, Pantelis, & Solms, 2012). When performing a lexicostatistical analysis of large data sets of dream reports, a clear dissociation between dreams containing basic, mostly fear‐related, emotions and those with other more social emotions (e.g., embarrassment, excitement, frustration) was found, highlighting distinct affective modes operating during dreaming, with fear in dreams representing a prevalent and biologically‐relevant emotional category (Revonsuo, 2000; Schwartz, 2004). Thus, if fear‐containing dreams serve an emotion regulation function, as hypothesized by the theoretical models, the stronger the recruitment of fear‐responsive brain regions (e.g., amygdala, cingulate cortex, and insula; see Phan, Wager, Taylor, & Liberzon, 2002) during dreaming, the weaker the response of these same regions to actual fear‐eliciting stimuli during wakefulness should be. This compensatory or homeostatic mechanism may also be accompanied by an enhanced recruitment of emotion regulation brain regions (such as the medial prefrontal cortex, mPFC, which is implicated in fear extinction) during wakefulness (Dunsmoor et al., 2019; Phelps, Delgado, Nearing, & LeDoux, 2004; Quirk, Likhtik, Pelletier, & Pare, 2003; Yoo et al., 2007).

Here, we collected dream reports and functional brain measures using high‐density EEG (hdEEG) and functional MRI (fMRI) across two studies to address the following questions: (a) do emotions in dreams (here fear‐related emotions) engage the same neural circuits as during wakefulness and (b) is there a link between emotions experienced in dreams and brain responses to emotional stimuli during wakefulness. By addressing these fundamental and complementary topics, we aim at clarifying the grounding conditions for the study of dreaming as pertaining to day/night affective homeostasis.

Are atheists unprejudiced? Forms of nonbelief and prejudice toward antiliberal and mainstream religious groups

Uzarevic, F., Saroglou, V., & Muñoz-García, A. (2019). Are atheists unprejudiced? Forms of nonbelief and prejudice toward antiliberal and mainstream religious groups. Psychology of Religion and Spirituality, Oct 2019, http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/rel0000247

Abstract: Building on the ideological-conflict hypothesis, we argue that, beyond the religion–prejudice association, there should exist an irreligion–prejudice association toward groups perceived as actively opposing the values of nonbelievers (antiliberal targets) or even as simply being ideologically different: religionists of mainstream religions. Collecting data from three secularized Western European countries (total N = 1,158), we found that, though both believers and nonbelievers disliked moral and religious antiliberals (antigay activists and fundamentalists), atheists and agnostics showed prejudicial discriminatory attitudes toward antiliberals, but also toward mere Christians, and atheists did so also toward Buddhists. Prejudice toward antiliberal and mainstream religious targets was predicted uniquely by antireligious critique, occasionally in addition to high existential quest for the antiliberal targets, but in addition to low existential quest and low belief in the world’s benevolence for mainstream religionists. Future studies should determine whether the effects are similar, more pronounced, or attenuated in very religious societies.

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Check also Are atheists undogmatic? Filip Uzarevic, Vassilis Saroglou, Magali Clobert. Personality and Individual Differences 116:164-170, October 2017. DOI: 10.1016/j.paid.2017.04.046

Abstract: Previous theory and evidence favor the idea that religious people tend to be dogmatic to some extent whereas non-religious people are undogmatic: the former firmly hold beliefs, some of which are implausible or even contrary to the real world evidence. We conducted a further critical investigation of this idea, distinguishing three aspects of rigidity: (1) self-reported dogmatism, defined as unjustified certainty vs. not standing for any beliefs, (2) intolerance of contradiction, measured through (low) endorsement of contradictory statements, and (3) low readiness to take a different from one's own perspective, measured through the myside bias technique. Non-believers, at least in Western countries where irreligion has become normative, should be lower on the first, but higher on the other two constructs. Data collected from three countries (UK, France, and Spain, total N = 788) and comparisons between Christians, atheists, and agnostics confirmed the expectations, with agnostics being overall similar to atheists.

1.Introduction

Are nonreligious people open-minded, flexible, and undogmatic? Previous research has investigated the links between religiosity, or specific forms of it, and social cognitive tendencies reflecting various aspects of closed-mindedness. The results regarding religious fundamentalism are clear and consistent (Rowatt, Shen, LaBouff, & Gonzalez, 2013). However, even common religiosity, that is being high vs. low on common religious attitudes, beliefs, and practices, often reflects closed-minded ways of thinking to some extent.

Indeed, religiosity is, to a modestdegree, characterized by dogmatism, defined as an inflexibility of ideas, unjustified certainty or denial of evidence contrary to one's own beliefs (Moore&Leach,2016;Vonk & Pitzen, 2016), the need for closure, i.e. the need for structure, order, and answers (Saroglou, 2002), and, in terms of broader personality traits, low openness to experience, in particular low openness to values (Saroglou, 2010). Experimental work provides some causal evidence, that religious beliefs increase when people are confronted with disorder, ambiguity, uncertainty, a lack of control, or a threat to self-esteem (Sedikides & Gebauer, 2014). Not surprisingly thus, religiosity, though to a lesser extent and less consistently than fundamentalism, is often found to predict prejudice. This is certainly the case against moral (e.g., gay persons) and religious outgroups and atheists, but also against ethnic or racial outgroups, at least in monotheistic religious contexts (see Clobert, Saroglou, & Hwang, 2017, for limitations in the East) and when prejudice against a speci fic target is not explicitly socially/religiously prohibited (Batson, Schoenrade, & Ventis, 1993; Ng & Gervais, 2017; Rowatt, Carpenter, & Haggard, 2014).

From this line of research, it is often concluded that non-believers tend to be undogmatic, flexible, open-minded, and unprejudiced, or, to phrase it reversely, express closed-minded tendencies to a lesser degreethan religious believers (Streib&Klein,2013;Zuckerman,Galen,& Pasquale,2016). Beyond the above mentioned evidence whichhastypically been derivedfromanalysesin which religiosity is treated as a continuum, thus assuming linearity from the low to the high end of the religiosity continuum, sociological work based on comparisons between groups who provide self-identification intermsof conviction/affiliation also suggests that atheists are indeed the lowest in the above-mentioned kinds of prejudice(Norris & Inglehart, 2004).

Can psychological research thus clearly and unambiguously affirm that atheists are undogmatic and flexible, at least to a greater degree than their religious peers? We argue that such a conclusion is premature. In the present work, we investigate specific domains of cognition where non-believers may show higher inflexibility in thinking, at least in secularized cultural contexts like those in Western Europe. We also examine whether the above holds for all non-religious persons (for brevity hereafter: non-believers) or only for the subtype who self-identify as atheists. Finally, we will examine the above questions using both self-reported and implicit measures of closed-mindedness. Below, we will first develop our rationale and then detail the study expectations.

Theories link threat with right-wing political beliefs; our findings show that political beliefs and perceptions of threat are linked, but that the relationship is nuanced

Worldview conflict and prejudice. Mark J.Brandt, Jarret T.Crawford. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, October 31 2019. https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.aesp.2019.09.002

Ungated, old version: Brandt, M. J., & Crawford, J. T. (Accepted/In press). Worldview conflict and prejudice. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, 1-99. Aug 27 2019. https://pure.uvt.nl/ws/portalfiles/portal/30699390/2019.BrandtCrawford.Worldviewconflictprejudice.Advances.pdf

Abstract: People are motivated to protect their worldviews. One way to protect one's worldviews is through prejudice toward worldview-dissimilar groups and individuals. The traditional hypothesis predicts that people with more traditional and conservative worldviews will be more likely to protect their worldviews with prejudice than people with more liberal and progressive worldviews, whereas the worldview conflict hypothesis predicts that people with both traditional and liberal worldviews will be protect their worldviews through prejudice. We review evidence across both political and religious domains, as well as evidence using disgust sensitivity, Big Five personality traits, and cognitive ability as measures of individual differences historically associated with prejudice. We discuss four core findings that are consistent with the worldview conflict hypothesis: (1) The link between worldview conflict and prejudice is consistent across worldviews. (2) The link between worldview conflict and prejudice is found across various expressions of prejudice. (3) The link between worldview conflict and prejudice is found in multiple countries. (4) Openness, low disgust sensitivity, and cognitive ability—traits and individual differences historically associated with less prejudice—may in fact also show evidence of worldview conflict. We discuss how worldview conflict may be rooted in value dissimilarity, identity, and uncertainty management, as well as potential routes for reducing worldview conflict.

Keywords: WorldviewsIdeologyPartisanshipPoliticsReligionReligious fundamentalismPrejudiceDiscriminationAffective polarization

Individuals with high grandiose narcissism based their well‐being partly on intelligence and considered intelligence important for success in different life domains, especially for social relations

What Do Highly Narcissistic People Think and Feel about (Their) Intelligence? Marcin Zajenkowski  Anna Z. Czarna  Kinga Szymaniak  Michael Dufner. Journal of Personality, October 26 2019. https://doi.org/10.1111/jopy.12520

Abstract
Objective The current research comprehensively examined how grandiose and vulnerable narcissism are linked to intelligence and intelligence‐related beliefs and emotions.
Method In four studies (total N = 1141) we tested the associations between both forms of narcissism, subjectively and objectively assessed intelligence, basic personality traits, test‐related stress, beliefs about intelligence and well‐being.
Results Both forms of narcissism (grandiose and vulnerable) were unrelated to objective intelligence. Grandiose narcissism was associated with high self‐perceived intelligence (Studies 1–3) and explained more variance in self‐perceived intelligence than objective intelligence and the Big Five personality traits. It was correlated with reduced distress in the context of IQ testing and low engagement in cognitive performance (Study 2). Individuals with high grandiose narcissism based their well‐being (Study 3) partly on intelligence and considered intelligence important for success in different life domains, especially for social relations (Study 4). Vulnerable narcissism was unrelated to self‐perceived intelligence (Studies 1–3) and went along with increased distress in the context of IQ testing (Study 2).
Conclusions The results indicate that the topic of intelligence is of key importance for people with high grandiose narcissism psychological functioning and it also has some relevance for individuals with high vulnerable narcissism.

Unemployed individuals who do not suffer from material deprivation may not experience a life satisfaction decrease and may even experience a life satisfaction increase

A Pecuniary Explanation for the Heterogeneous Effects of Unemployment on Happiness. Jianbo Luo. Journal of Happiness Studies, October 30 2019. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10902-019-00198-4

Abstract: Why unemployment has heterogeneous effects on subjective well-being remains a hot topic. Using German Socio-Economic Panel data, this paper finds significant heterogeneity using different material deprivation measures. Unemployed individuals who do not suffer from material deprivation may not experience a life satisfaction decrease and may even experience a life satisfaction increase. Policy implications for taxation and unemployment insurance are discussed.

Keywords Unemployment Subjective well-being Heterogeneity Material deprivation Minimum required income

We explore two key contexts of humility, intellectual and cultural

Humility. Daryl R. Van Tongeren et al. Current Directions in Psychological Science, July 2, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721419850153

Abstract: We review humility, a trait characterized by (a) an ability to accurately acknowledge one’s limitations and abilities and (b) an interpersonal stance that is other-oriented rather than self-focused. We explore two key contexts of humility, intellectual and cultural; explain why humility is important; and identify open questions for future research.

Keywords humility, humble, modest, modesty

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Research on humility has been growing rapidly (see Worthington, Davis, & Hook, 2017). Although research in social psychology has long documented the many ways in which humans are egoistic, selfishly motivated, and self-protective (Van Tongeren & Myers, 2017), recent work on humility has examined personality characteristics associated with acknowledging and owning one's biases and limitations (Haggard et al., 2018), openness (Hook, Davis, Owen, Worthington, & Utsey, 2013), and prioritizing the well-being of others (Davis et al., 2013). The purpose of this article is to review the research on humility, identify open questions for further inquiry, and catalyze future research in this important area of psychological science.

What Is Humility?

Although some lay conceptualizations of humility involve characteristics such as lowliness or self-abasement (Weidman, Cheng, & Tracy, 2018), these have not been core features of psychological conceptualizations of humility. Rather, a recent review of humility measures (McElroy-Heltzel, Davis, DeBlaere, Worthington, & Hook, 2019) revealed that most researchers conceptualize humility as involving both intrapersonal and interpersonal processes, although there is somewhat more agreement among scholars about the intrapersonal aspect of the definition. Intrapersonally, humility involves the degree to which someone seems to have a relatively accurate view of self. Expressions of this aspect of humility might include the ability to acknowledge and own one's limitations (Haggard et al., 2018), recognize the fallibility of one's beliefs, and have a clearer sense of one's strengths and weaknesses. Interpersonally, humility involves the degree to which one has an orientation toward the needs and well-being of others (Davis et al., 2011). People might judge this aspect of humility through interpersonal behaviors that indicate the restraint of the ego, modest self-presentation, and respectful interpersonal interaction.

Early research focused on potential problems defining and measuring humility (Davis, Worthington, & Hook, 2010), given concerns that self-reports of high humility might paradoxically indicate a lack of humility. Over time, several teams began to use a personality-judgment approach that treats multimethod measurement strategies as the gold standard (Baumeister, Vohs, & Funder, 2007). Using this approach, researchers have published many measures of humility, with most including both intrapersonal and interpersonal content (McElroy-Heltzel et al., 2019). Measurement approaches have included selfreports (e.g., Ashton et al., 2004; Leary et al., 2017), otherreports (e.g., Davis et al., 2011; McElroy et al., 2014; Owens, Johnson, & Mitchell, 2013), implicit measures (e.g., Rowatt et al., 2006), and behavioral measures (e.g., Van Tongeren, Stafford, et al., 2016). The vast majority of studies have focused on humility as a trait, which is the focus of this review.

Furthermore, relative to other virtues, such as forgiveness or gratitude, in which the context is more specified, humility-relevant behavior may occur in a range of situations. Measures have sometimes focused on contexts theorized to evoke egotism or defensiveness, which make the practice of humility more difficult. In the study of humility, two contexts have garnered initial attention. One context involves encountering the ideas of other people. Intellectual humility refers to humility about one's ideas, beliefs, or viewpoints (Davis et al., 2016). Within this context, intrapersonally, intellectual humility involves awareness and ownership of the limitations and biases in one's formation and maintenance of knowledge (Haggard et al., 2018) and a willingness to revise one's views in light of strong evidence (Leary et al., 2017; McElroy et al., 2014). Interpersonally, it involves regulating egoistic motives so that one can present one's ideas in a modest and respectful manner, admit when one is wrong, present one's beliefs in ways that are nondefensive, and show that one cares more about learning and preserving relationships than about being "right" or demonstrating intellectual superiority. Importantly, intellectual humility is not being ambivalent or lacking personal conviction. Rather, it is a way of holding one's beliefs, however convinced one might be.with perspective taking and respect for others, viewpoints.

A second context involves intercultural relationships. Belonging to a cultural group tends to reinforce biases related to loyalty and commitment. Cultural humility refers to humility about one's cultural beliefs, values, and attitudes. Intrapersonally, cultural humility involves an awareness of the limitations of one's own cultural worldview, curbing the natural tendency to view one's own values and culture as superior. Interpersonally, cultural humility involves an openness and willingness to learn about the cultural orientation of other people (Hook et al., 2013). Cultural humility can involve various aspects of cultural identity, including the political (i.e., political humility) or religious (i.e., religious humility) beliefs and practices of other individuals. In therapeutic settings (Hook et al., 2013), clients who rated their therapists as high in cultural humility reported a stronger therapeutic alliance and better improvement in therapy (Hook et al., 2013). Clients also reported experiencing fewer racial offenses or microaggressions when they had a therapist with higher cultural humility (Hook, Farrell, et al., 2016). In general, individuals (laypersons and counselors alike) with cultural humility are more likely to consider the importance of cultural backgrounds, understand their own cultural limits and privilege, and take a genuine interest in learning from the cultures of others.

When Media Violence Awakens our Better Nature: The Effect of Unpleasant Violence on Reactivity toward and Enjoyment of Media Violence

When Media Violence Awakens our Better Nature: The Effect of Unpleasant Violence on Reactivity toward and Enjoyment of Media Violence. T. Franklin Waddell, Erica Bailey, Marcela Weber, James D. Ivory & Edward Downs. Journal of Broadcasting & Electronic Media, Oct 29 2019. https://doi.org/10.1080/08838151.2019.1677444

Abstract: The effects of violent media on aggression-related outcomes is an ongoing debate, often focusing on the effects of violence portrayals that are sanitized for the viewer. However, narratives that focus on the real world consequences of violence are also known to receive critical acclaim and broad exposure. Do unpleasant portrayals of violence affect viewers’ subsequent reactivity to violence? Results from two laboratory studies show that prior exposure to unpleasant violence increases donation behavior to assist victims of real world violence (N = 60) and decreases enjoyment of fictional media violence (N = 109). The implications of these findings are discussed.

Beyond sex differences, factors such as early environmental cues of relationship instability, individuals’ motivation for engaging in casual sex, and higher number of their casual sex partners contribute to the positive view of casual sex

Beyond Sex Differences: Predictors of Negative Emotions Following Casual Sex. Jessica A. Hehman, Catherine A. Salmon. Evolutionary Psychological Science, October 30 2019. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40806-019-00217-w

Abstract: Recently, much attention has been focused on understanding casual sex, or hooking up, among college students. The current study uses an adaptationist approach to go beyond sex differences in casual sex behavior, examining predictors of emotional reactions and including a community sample (39 females, 84 males) in addition to a typical college sample (103 females, 62 males). If males and females possess different emotional mechanisms designed to evaluate the consequences of sexual behavior, we would expect sex differences in emotional reactions as well as in motivations for engaging in casual sex. Individual differences in motivation may influence whether emotional reactions to casual sex are positive or negative. Early environmental cues of relationship stability may also have an impact on emotional responses. Results indicate that in addition to sex differences, factors such as early environmental cues of relationship instability, individuals’ motivation for engaging in casual sex, and the number of their casual sex partners contribute to the positive or negative nature of their response to casual sex experiences. In addition, results from the community sample suggest that there may be life stage-specific effects.

Keywords: Casual sex Sex differences Motivation Father absence Life stage-specific effects

Alcohol-related harms have been decreasing for more recent cohorts of young adults over the past three decades, which is consistent with previously-reported declines in alcohol consumption among this age group

Visontay, Rachel, Louise Mewton, Matthew Sunderland, Katrina Prior, and Tim Slade. 2019. “Declining Alcohol-related Harms in Young Adults: A Cross-temporal Meta-analysis Using the AUDIT.” PsyArXiv. October 30. doi:10.31234/osf.io/829p4

Abstract
Background: Recent studies suggest that alcohol use has been decreasing among both adolescents and young adults. In the current paper, we aim to test whether this trend extends to a decline in the harmful consequences of alcohol use (i.e. alcohol-related harms).
Methods: We systematically searched the literature for articles examining alcohol-related harms and alcohol consumption in adolescent (12-17 years) and young adult (18-24 years) samples using the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test (AUDIT) and AUDIT Alcohol Consumption subscale (AUDIT-C), respectively. Insufficient data was available for AUDIT and AUDIT-C scores in adolescents as well as AUDIT-C scores for young adults. As such, we applied cross-temporal meta-analysis to the extracted data for AUDIT scores in young adults only.
Results: A decrease was found in young adults’ AUDIT scores measured between 1989-2015, representing a .73 standard deviation change over this period. Variance did not change over this time. Interpretation of the study findings is limited by small sample size and the breadth of the AUDIT instrument.
Conclusions: Results indicate that alcohol-related harms have been decreasing for more recent cohorts of young adults over the past three decades, which is consistent with previously-reported declines in alcohol consumption among this age group. Several factors such as delayed initiation to alcohol consumption, greater awareness and understanding of alcohol-related harm, increased digital socialising, and health promotion efforts may be driving these reductions.

Money is generally seen as good, but what about when it is morally tainted?

The Dilemma of Dirty Money. Arber Tasimi, James J. Gross. Current Directions in Psychological Science, October 29, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721419884315

Abstract: Money is generally seen as good, but what about when it is morally tainted? Does this affect whether people want money or how they would spend it? In this article, we review a nascent literature on “dirty money” and then organize these findings using a framework that formalizes the idea that dirty money creates a valuation conflict because it is both “good” (the money part) and “bad” (the dirty part). To show how this conflict is adjudicated, we draw on the self-control literature, which provides a way to think about how dueling impulses come into being and wax and wane over time until one prevails. We conclude by outlining promising directions for future research and considering their broader implications for the field.

Keywords affective science, decision-making, development, individual differences, money, morality, value-based choice

Cumulative technological evolution: There is a brain network for tool-use action observation (the tool-use observation network), mostly situated in the left hemisphere, & distinct from the non-tool-use observation network

To Watch is to Work: a Review of NeuroImaging Data on Tool Use Observation Network. Emanuelle Reynaud, Jordan Navarro, Mathieu Lesourd, François Osiurak. Neuropsychology Review, October 29 2019. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11065-019-09418-3

Abstract: Since the discovery of mirror neurons in the 1990s, many neuroimaging studies have tackled the issue of action observation with the aim of unravelling a putative homolog human system. However, these studies do not distinguish between non-tool-use versus tool-use actions, implying that a common brain network is systematically involved in the observation of any action. Here we provide evidence for a brain network dedicated to tool-use action observation, called the tool-use observation network, mostly situated in the left hemisphere, and distinct from the non-tool-use action observation network. Areas specific for tool-use action observation are the left cytoarchitectonic area PF within the left inferior parietal lobe and the left inferior frontal gyrus. The neural correlates associated with the observation of tool-use reported here offer new insights into the neurocognitive bases of action observation and tool use, as well as addressing more fundamental issues on the origins of specifically human phenomena such as .

Keywords: Tool use Action observation Left inferior parietal cortex Meta-analysis

The past decade contained almost half the cases (13%) that existed at the 80s peak of serial homicide (27%); technology, shifts in offending behavior, proactive law enforcement action, & vigilance of society contributed

Yaksic, Enzo, Clare Allely, Raneesha De Silva, Melissa Smith-Inglis, Daniel Konikoff, Kori Ryan, Dan Gordon, et al. 2019. “Detecting a Decline in Serial Homicide: Have We Banished the Devil from the Details?.” SocArXiv. February 11. doi:10.1080/23311886.2019.1678450

Abstract
Objectives: The likelihood that serial murderers are responsible for most unresolved homicides and missing persons was examined by investigating the accounting of the phenomenon in the context of a declining prevalence.
Methods: A mixed methods approach was used, consisting of a review of a sample of unresolved homicides, a comparative analysis of the frequency of known serial homicide series and unresolved serial homicide series, and semi-structured interviews of experts.
Results: The past decade contained almost half the cases (13%) that existed at the 1980s peak of serial homicide (27%). Only 282 (1.3%) strangled females made up the 22,444 unresolved homicides reviewed. Most expert respondents thought it unreasonable that any meaningful proportion of missing persons cases are victims of serial homicide.
Conclusions: Technology, shifts in offending behavior, proactive law enforcement action, and vigilance of society have transformed serial killing and aids in viewing offenders as people impacted by societal shifts and cultural norms. The absence of narrative details inhibited some aspects of the review. An exhaustive list of known unresolved serial homicide series remained elusive as some missing persons are never reported. Future research should incorporate those intending to murder serially, but whose efforts were stalled by arrest, imprisonment, or death.

In addition, individuals who perceived themselves as being more attractive tended to have a higher sexual desire and higher relationship quality

Extradyadic behaviors and gender: How do they relate with sexual desire, relationship quality, and attractiveness. Joana Arantes, Helena M. Oliveira and Fátima Barros. Front. Psychol., Oct 29 2019, doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02554

Abstract: Recent years have seen an increasing number of studies on relationship infidelity (Fisher, 2018; Pinto & Arantes, 2017; Silva, Saraiva, Albuquerque & Arantes, 2017; Pazhoohi et al., 2017). However, much is still to learn about the impact of these extradyadic behaviors on subsequent relationships that an individual may have. Our main goal was to study the association between past extradyadic behaviors – inflicted and suffered – and current relationship quality, sexual desire and attractiveness. Specifically, we aimed to: i) Understand if past extradyadic behaviors are related to current relationship quality, sexual desire, and self-perceived and partner’s attractiveness; ii) Identify possible gender differences in these variables. For that, 382 participants (260 females and 122 males) were recruited through personal and institutional e-mails, online social networks (e.g., Facebook), and the website of the Evolutionary Psychology Group from the University of Minho. All participants completed a demographic and relationship questionnaire, followed by questions related to extradyadic behaviors and self-perceived attractiveness, the Perceived Relationship Quality Components (PRQC) Inventory, the Sex Drive Scale (SDQ), and the Importance of Partner’s Physical Attractiveness Scale (IPPAS). For those currently involved in a relationship, results suggested that extradyadic behaviors (both suffered or inflicted) are linked with current low relationship quality and high sexual desire in the present. In addition, individuals who perceived themselves as being more attractive tended to have a higher sexual desire and higher relationship quality. Overall, men reported higher levels of extradyadic behaviors and sexual desire, gave more importance to physical attractiveness, and perceived their current relationship as having less quality than women. These results add to the literature by focusing on different variables that play an important role in romantic relationships, and have important implications.

Keywords: extradyadic behaviors, sexual desire, relationship quality, attractiveness, gender

Real-life revenge may not effectively deter norm violations, as a response that must take place almost immediately and in the same domain to be effective

Real-life revenge may not effectively deter norm violations. Maartje Elshout, Rob M. A., Nelissen, Ilja van Beest, Suzan Elshout & Wilco W. van Dijk. The Journal of Social Psychology, Oct 28 2019. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224545.2019.1681351

ABSTRACT: The current article examined the characteristics of real-life revenge acts. A demographically diverse sample of avengers described autobiographical revenge acts and the preceding offense. They rated the severity of both acts, the time before taking revenge, and motives for the timing. Independent raters also rated the severity of both acts and coded the domains. Results revealed that real-life revenge is (1) by and large equally common as revealed by lab-based studies on revenge, but (2) is usually a delayed response, and (3) although similar to offenses in severity (according to independent parties), it is dissimilar in the domain. These characteristics contradict manifestations of revenge as studied in lab research (e.g., as a response that must take place immediately and in the same domain). These discrepancies suggest that not all real-life instances of revenge are optimally suited to serve a deterrence function and that other motives may underlie more destructive revenge acts.

KEYWORDS: Revenge, vengeance, retaliation, violence, aggression

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Delay

Only 14.4% of avengers took revenge immediately. The majority of avengers took revenge after at least a day had passed and the largest group took revenge between 1 week and 1 month after the offense. The delay was influenced by (low) immediate revenge possibility and planning tendencies. The results on time between the offense and revenge act are in line with theoretical reflections on revenge arguing that revenge usually takes place after some time has passed (Frijda, 2007; Kim & Smith, 1993), in part because it requires planning (Bar-Elli & Heyd, 1986).
In lab research, revenge acts usually take place right after the offense, in line with its supposed role as a deterrence mechanism. However, the current findings suggest that revenge is typically delayed, which makes it poorly geared toward deterring future offenses as this requires a certain level of instantaneousness for the offense to be associated with the punishment.

We now know that disgust sensitivity is heritable, and that parental modeling does not appear to shape it; but idiosyncratic experience does shape it

Tybur, Joshua M., and Annika Karinen. 2019. “Measurement and Theory in Disgust Sensitivity.” PsyArXiv. October 29. doi:10.31234/osf.io/64fvp

Abstract: This chapter covers the 20+ year history of disgust sensitivity research by summarizing and contrasting different disgust sensitivity instruments and discussing how these instruments are used and interpreted.

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Surveys conducted in the United States show that people report disgust toward actions and objects that inhabit some of the most important corners of our lives. We are disgusted by the prospect of eating certain foods, the sights and smells of other people’s bodies, the thought of sexual contact with most of the people on earth, and considerations of others’ moral shortcomings (Haidt et al., 1994; Tybur et al., 2009). International surveys indicate that disgust’s relevance to food choice, mating, and morality is not a quirk of US culture (Curtis and Biran, 2001; Haidt et al., 1997; cf. Kollareth and Russell, in 2017). Despite disgust’s far-reaching consequences, only scarce work was devoted to understanding the emotion through most of the twentieth century (Rozin et al., 2009). In the 1990s, however, the dearth of research to the topic caught the attention of a handful of scientists, who described disgust as both the ‘forgotten emotion of psychiatry’ (Phillips et al., 1998) and as a scarcely investigated – yet key – cog in the mechanisms that underlie our moral psychology (Haidt et al., 1993; Haidt et al., 1997). Calls for greater interest in disgust were heard across the behavioral sciences, with researchers using the science of disgust to better understand political attitudes (Inbar et al., 2012), food preferences (Fessler et al., 2003), health behavior (Reynolds et al., 2014), personality (Tybur and De Vries, 2013), psychopathology (Olatunji and Sawchuk, 2005), aggression (Pond et al., 2012), and moral judgments (Chapman and Anderson, 2013, 2014).

Although much of this work on disgust has focused on understanding the psychological processes underlying disgust and their resulting effects on behavior (e.g., Tybur and Lieberman, 2016), the majority of disgust research has focused on individual differences. Largely using self report instruments, researchers have tested how disgust sensitivity (DS) – that is, reported intensity of disgust toward the types of things that arouse at least a little disgust in most healthy adults – relates to the variety of topics detailed earlier. Results from these studies portray the disgust sensitive individual as someone who is averse toward new experiences (Tybur and De Vries, 2013), politically conservative (Inbar et al., 2012), prone to moral judgment (Chapman and Anderson, 2014), and more likely to have anxiety disorders (Olatunji and Sawchuk, 2005). Relative to the prodigious measurement of DS, though, little work has critically analyzed the validity of the multiple DS instruments used in the literature and the nature of DS as a construct. This chapter aims to provide a survey of the DS literature and, in doing so, comment on the dimensionality of DS, the mechanistic roots of DS, the developmental origins of DS, and a theoretical framework that can organize the literature.


Concluding thoughts

Researchers have been excited to find that DS relates to phenomena such as political ideology and psychopathology. Such findings promise to provide novel understandings of why individuals adopt liberal vs. conservative political positions, or why they experience potentially debilitating anxieties about washing and cleansing. The potential knowledge gleaned from these studies is constrained by our understanding of DS itself, though. Much recent progress has been made in understanding disgust as an emotion, and in understanding the dimensionality of DS, relation with personality, and heritability. Every slice of new information about DS can raise further questions. We now know that DS is heritable, and that parental modeling does not appear to shape DS. But what are the genetic and environmental sources shaping DS? Pathogen DS appears to relate to behavioral avoidance of pathogen cues, but perhaps not facial responses to pathogen cues. Do null relations with facial response reflect a disjunction between experienced and expressed disgust, or do they reflect underpowered studies? And, further, what differentiates pathogen DS from other variables used in the behavioral immune system literature, and what differentiates sexual DS from sociosexuality? Questions like these suggest that DS research has entered a second generation of sorts – it has matured from a new venture that shows promise for understanding a variety of phenomena to a multidisciplinary undertaking dedicated to understanding dimensionality, development, and cross-cultural variation. We hope that this chapter has sketched out promising directions for this second generation of research, and that future overviews of DS can provide answers to some of the questions posed.

Participants (n = 828) reported how they perceived sexual & romantic fantasizing; despite the current sentiment on socially & morally unacceptable physical acts, fantasizing towards themselves are not perceived as unacceptable

Perceived Acceptability of Sexual and Romantic Fantasizing. Tara M. Busch. Sexuality & Culture, October 29 2019. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12119-019-09668-6

Abstract: To better understand the social norms surrounding fantasizing behavior, the current research aimed to assess how acceptable various types of fantasizing (romantic or sexual) are perceived. Understanding and abiding by social norms helps people avoid criticism, social sanctions, and ostracism. Thus, better understanding the social norms surrounding various types of fantasies can help people better navigate their social worlds, especially with respect to sexuality, dating, and relationships. Participants (n = 828) reported how acceptable, violating, and bothersome they perceived sexual and romantic fantasizing to be towards themselves and others. Results suggest that despite the current sentiment on socially and morally unacceptable physical acts, mental acts of fantasizing are not perceived as unacceptable or violating. No gender differences arose between men and women’s perceptions of fantasy acceptability. Demographic differences in perceived fantasy acceptability by race, sexual orientation, relationship status, and age are discussed. These findings deepen the understanding of how society views fantasizing behavior and help begin to define boundaries for acceptable versus violating thoughts.

Keywords: Sexual fantasies Romantic fantasies Fantasizing Social norms Moral issue

Male husbands: These results reflect the stress associated with being the sole breadwinner, & more significantly, with gender norm deviance due to husbands being outearned by their wives

Spousal Relative Income and Male Psychological Distress. Joanna Syrda. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, October 28, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167219883611

Abstract: Using Panel Study of Income Dynamics 2001-2015 dataset (6,035 households, 19,688 observations), this study takes a new approach to investigating the relationship between wife’s relative income and husband’s psychological distress, and finds it to be significantly U-shaped. Controlling for total household income, predicted male psychological distress reaches a minimum at a point where wives make 40% of total household income and proceeds to increase, to reach highest level when men are entirely economically dependent on their wives. These results reflect the stress associated with being the sole breadwinner, and more significantly, with gender norm deviance due to husbands being outearned by their wives. Interestingly, the relationship between wife’s relative income and husband’s psychological distress is not found among couples where wives outearned husbands at the beginning of their marriage pointing to importance of marital selection. Finally, patterns reported by wives are not as pronouncedly U-shaped as those reported by husbands.

Keywords male psychological distress, spousal relative income, marriage, gender, panel data estimation

Self-driving cars are sensitive to color patches attacks, patches artfully made to interfere with optical estimation

Attacking Optical Flow. Anurag Ranjan, Joel Janai, Andreas Geiger, Michael J. Black. arXiv, Oct 22 2019. https://arxiv.org/pdf/1910.10053.pdf

Abstract: Deep neural nets achieve state-of-the-art performanceon the problem of optical flow estimation. Since optical flow is used in several safety-critical applications like self-driving cars, it is important to gain insights into the robustness of those techniques. Recently, it has been shown thatadversarial attacks easily fool deep neural networks to misclassify objects. The robustness of optical flow networks to adversarial attacks, however, has not been studied so far. In this paper, we extend adversarial patch attacks to optical flow networks and show that such attacks can compromise their performance. We show that corrupting a small patch of less than 1% of the image size can significantly affect optical flow estimates. Our attacks lead to noisy flow estimatesthat extend significantly beyond the region of the attack, inmany cases even completely erasing the motion of objects in the scene. While networks using an encoder-decoder architecture are very sensitive to these attacks, we found that networks using a spatial pyramid architecture are less affected. We analyse the success and failure of attacking both architectures by visualizing their feature maps and comparing them to classical optical flow techniques which are robust to these attacks. We also demonstrate that such attacks are practical by placing a printed pattern into real scenes.

Volitional Control of Piloerection: Objective Evidence and Its Potential Utility in Neuroscience Research

Katahira, Kenji, Ai Kawakami, Akitoshi Tomita, and Noriko Nagata. 2019. “Volitional Control of Piloerection: Objective Evidence and Its Potential Utility in Neuroscience Research.” PsyArXiv. October 29. doi:10.31234/osf.io/dpvsb

Abstract: The ability of volitional control of piloerection has been reported in a rare subset of individuals. This ability may be useful to study involuntary emotional piloerection, as research on this phenomenon has suffered from low reproducibility. However, objective evidence at a group-level and stability under experimental constraints remain to be examined. The present study aimed to validate existing findings of voluntary generated piloerection (VGP) and to examine its potential contribution to neuroscientific research based on objective evidence of this ability. In Study 1, to confirm the characteristics of VGP reported in previous studies and identify individuals with VGP capability, an online survey of VGP candidates found through a large-scale screening was conducted. In Study 2, a total of 18 VGP holders participated in a mail-based piloerection measurement experiment, and the nature of VGP was examined based on the objective evidence obtained by image-based analysis (GooseLab). The results of the web survey largely recapitulated the characteristics of VGP reported in previous studies, and objective measurements revealed the utility of this ability in neuroscientific research. For some participants, VGP appeared to be emotionally promoted, which suggests that VGP shares the emotional nature of involuntary piloerection. The findings from this study demonstrated the possible contribution of VGP to elucidating the mechanism of involuntary emotional piloerection and the neural basis of piloerection itself.

Be Cautious with the Precautionary Principle: Evidence from Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident Suggests that the increase in mortality from higher electricity prices outnumbers the accident itself

Be Cautious with the Precautionary Principle: Evidence from Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Accident. Matthew J. Neidell, Shinsuke Uchida, Marcella Veronesi. NBER Working Paper No. 26395, October 2019. https://www.nber.org/papers/w26395

Abstract: This paper provides a large scale, empirical evaluation of unintended effects from invoking the precautionary principle after the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear accident. After the accident, all nuclear power stations ceased operation and nuclear power was replaced by fossil fuels, causing an exogenous increase in electricity prices. This increase led to a reduction in energy consumption, which caused an increase in mortality during very cold temperatures. We estimate that the increase in mortality from higher electricity prices outnumbers the mortality from the accident itself, suggesting the decision to cease nuclear production has contributed to more deaths than the accident itself.

Long-Term Effects of California's 2004 Paid Family Leave Act: It reduced the number of children born; also, we find little evidence that PFLA increased women’s employment, wage earnings, or attachment to employers

The Long-Term Effects of California's 2004 Paid Family Leave Act on Women's Careers: Evidence from U.S. Tax Data. Martha J. Bailey, Tanya S. Byker, Elena Patel, Shanthi Ramnath. NBER Working Paper No. 26416, October 2019. https://www.nber.org/papers/w26416

Abstract: This paper uses IRS tax data to evaluate the short- and long-term effects of California’s 2004 Paid Family Leave Act (PFLA) on women’s careers. Our research design exploits the increased availability of paid leave for women giving birth in the third quarter of 2004 (just after PFLA was implemented). These mothers were 18 percentage points more likely to use paid leave but otherwise identical to multiple comparison groups in pre-birth demographic, marital, and work characteristics. We find little evidence that PFLA increased women’s employment, wage earnings, or attachment to employers. For new mothers, taking up PFLA reduced employment by 7 percent and lowered annual wages by 8 percent six to ten years after giving birth. Overall, PFLA tended to reduce the number of children born and, by decreasing mothers’ time at work, increase time spent with children.

Digital Detox: The Effect of Smartphone Abstinence on Mood, Anxiety, and Craving

Wilcockson, Thomas, Ashley Osborne, and David A. Ellis, Dr. 2019. “Digital Detox: The Effect of Smartphone Abstinence on Mood, Anxiety, and Craving.” PsyArXiv. October 28. doi:10.1016/j.addbeh.2019.06.002

Abstract: Whether behavioural addictions should be conceptualised using a similar framework to substance-related addictions remains a topic of considerable debate. Previous literature has developed criteria, which allows any new behavioural addiction to be considered analogous to substance-related addictions. These imply that abstinence from a related object (e.g., smartphones for heavy smartphone users) would lead to mood fluctuations alongside increased levels of anxiety and craving. In a sample of smartphone users, we measured three variables (mood, anxiety, and craving) on four occasions, which included a 24-hour period of smartphone abstinence. Only craving was affected following a short period of abstinence. The results suggest that heavy smartphone usage does not fulfil the criteria required to be considered an addiction. This may have implications for other behavioural addictions.

Mothers’ genetics were associated with children’s attainment over and above children's own genetics, via cognitively stimulating parenting—an environmentally mediated effect

Using DNA From Mothers and Children to Study Parental Investment in Children’s Educational Attainment. Jasmin Wertz et al. Child Development, October 27 2019. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13329

Abstract: This study tested implications of new genetic discoveries for understanding the association between parental investment and children’s educational attainment. A novel design matched genetic data from 860 British mothers and their children with home‐visit measures of parenting: the E‐Risk Study. Three findings emerged. First, both mothers’ and children’s education‐associated genetics, summarized in a genome‐wide polygenic score, were associated with parenting—a gene–environment correlation. Second, accounting for genetic influences slightly reduced associations between parenting and children’s attainment—indicating some genetic confounding. Third, mothers’ genetics were associated with children’s attainment over and above children's own genetics, via cognitively stimulating parenting—an environmentally mediated effect. Findings imply that, when interpreting parents’ effects on children, environmentalists must consider genetic transmission, but geneticists must also consider environmental transmission.

Discussion

The investments parents make to raise their offspring are thought to be a major contributor to children’s educational success, making parental investment a cornerstone of psychological, sociological, and economic models that seek to explain how educational inequalities are created and perpetuated (Cheng, Johnson, & Goodman, 2016; Feinstein, Duckworth, & Sabates, 2004; Kalil, 2015). However, findings from behavioral‐genetic studies have challenged causal interpretations of parental influence by showing genetic influences on parenting; a gene–environment correlation. Here we tested implications of gene–environment correlations for parental investment in children’s educational attainment using a novel design—in a prospective‐longitudinal study, we collected genotype data from both mothers and children and matched these genetic data with home‐visit measures of parenting behavior. We report three main findings.

First, we found evidence for gene–environment correlations. Both mothers’ and children’s education‐associated genetics, summarized in genome‐wide polygenic scores, were associated with the kind of parenting that is known to be linked with children’s later educational success. By collecting genetic data from both mothers and their offspring, we were able to show that different forms of gene–environment correlations operate in the same family, at the same time. Both active and evocative gene–environment correlations were implicated in the cognitive stimulation and the warm, sensitive parenting that children experienced and in the kinds of households (chaotic; safe and tidy) in which children grew up. Second, we found evidence for slight genetic confounding. The estimated effects of mothers’ parenting on children’s educational attainment were significantly reduced after accounting for education‐associated genetics, consistent with a view of genes as confounding part of the link between parenting and child attainment. However, the magnitude of confounding as measured using the polygenic score was small. Third, we found evidence for genetic nurture. Parenting behavior—particularly mothers’ cognitive stimulation of their children—explained why mothers’ genetics were associated with their children’s educational attainment (independently of children's own genetics). This finding extends recent reports of associations between parental genetics and children’s educational attainment (Bates et al., 2018; Belsky et al., 2018; Kong et al., 2018; Liu, 2018) by showing, for the first time, that parents’ education‐associated genetics shape the features of the family environment that predict the next generation’s educational success.

Our findings need to be interpreted in light of several limitations. First, our approach to estimating genetic nurture relies on the assumption that mothers’ and children’s polygenic scores are measured with identical error. To the extent that this assumption is violated, our estimates of genetic nurture could be upwardly or downwardly biased, depending on whether error is greater in mothers’ versus children’s polygenic scores. However, the assumption is probably defensible, because mothers’ and children’s polygenic scores are identical measurements, that is, sums of the same genotypes transformed using the same weights. Second, although the education polygenic score that we used is based on the largest‐ever social science GWAS, a limitation of this GWAS is that it still reflects only a portion of all genetic influences on educational attainment (approximately one third; Lee et al., 2018). To the extent that the polygenic score is an underestimate of the total genetic influence on educational attainment, our estimates of gene–environment correlations, genetic confounding, and possibly genetic nurture are likely to be underestimates of the true effects. At this point, our findings provide “proof‐of‐principle” of these processes, and the implications they raise can continue to be tested as refined polygenic scores become available. Third, we tested genetic confounding and genetic nurture only for children’s educational attainment, not for other child outcomes. We focused on educational attainment because it is a central determinant of future health, wealth, and well‐being (Cutler & Lleras‐Muney, 2010; Hout, 2012; Oreopoulos & Salvanes, 2011), and because the polygenic score for educational attainment is based on the largest GWAS of a social‐behavior phenotype (Lee et al., 2018). As increasingly larger GWAS are conducted for more developmental outcomes, the same design we present here can be used to test genetic confounding and genetic nurture for other outcomes. Fourth, our study members are still young and most of them have not yet completed their final educational degree. Our measure of educational attainment is therefore only a proxy measure. However, UK students’ qualifications obtained by age 18 are good indicators of their educational pathways beyond age 18 (UK Department for Education, 2018). Furthermore, polygenic‐score associations with educational attainment are very similar between our study and studies of adults (Belsky et al., 2018; Lee et al., 2018), and findings of genetic nurture have been observed in studies of adults who have completed their education (Bates et al., 2018; Belsky et al., 2018; Kong et al., 2018; Lee et al., 2018). Fifth, our labeling of correlations between parents’ genetics and parenting as “active gene–environment correlation” may elicit skepticism among some readers, because correlations between genetics and parenting are typically examined from the perspective of the child and are then referred to as “passive” gene–environment correlations. We would argue that a correlation between parents’ genes and parenting qualifies as active gene–environment correlation, which has been defined as a person contributing to their own environment, and actively seeking an environment related to their genetic propensities (Plomin et al., 1977). Specifically, the aspects of parenting we examine—the cognitively stimulating activities that parents and children engage in together; the warmth and sensitivity of the parent–child relationship; the chaos in the household; and the safety and tidiness of the home—all represent environmental exposures for the parent and the child, that are actively created and shaped by parents to match their genetic dispositions. This interpretation of active gene–environment correlation also follows the concept of niche construction in animal ecology, whereby organisms actively modify their own and each others’ environments; for example by building nests for their offspring (Odling‐Smee, Laland, & Feldman, 2003). Sixth, there is a wide variety of measures available to study parenting and our findings may not generalize to all of these other measures. However, we recently reported very similar associations to the ones observed in our study in an independent sample, using measures of parenting that were derived using what some researchers view as the “gold standard” of parenting assessment—observer ratings of videotaped parent–child interactions (Wertz et al., 2019). The replication across two independent cohorts and different measurements of parenting bolsters the substance of our findings. Seventh, we did not have genetic data from fathers, which means that we were unable to control for fathers’ education polygenic scores when estimating associations between mothers’ and children’s education polygenic scores and parenting. To the extent that fathers’ genes are correlated with parenting, the associations we observed in our study may partly reflect effects of fathers’ genetics, because biological fathers’ and children’s genes are correlated (due to genetic inheritance) and because mothers’ and fathers’ genetics may be correlated (due to assortative mating, i.e., the tendency to select partners with characteristics similar to one’s own). Eigth, even though our research is genetically informative, it is still observational, and hence cannot establish causal relationships between genetics, parenting, and children’s educational attainment. What it can do is (a) point to pathways through which genetic influences may contribute to intergenerational transmission; (b) elucidate processes of gene–environment interplay in parenting and child development; (c) shed light on possible developmental and social mechanisms that link parent and child education‐associated genetics with future attainment; and (d) provide an example of how to integrate new genomic discoveries into developmental psychology to study questions relevant to child development. Against this background, we conclude by discussing the implications of our findings about gene–environment correlations, genetic confounding, and genetic nurture for a more thorough understanding of the developmental processes that shape children’s attainment.

Our findings of gene–environment correlation replicate and extend our prior work on genetic associations with parenting (Wertz et al., 2019). We replicated findings from a previous analysis in a New Zealand cohort, in which we showed that parents’ education polygenic scores were associated with the warm, sensitive, stimulating parenting they provided to their children (Wertz et al., 2019). Here we report the same pattern of results in an independent cohort of British mothers, indicating that genetic correlations with parenting are robust against differences in context and measurements of parenting. We extend this prior work by incorporating children’s polygenic scores in our analyses, finding that children’s genetics are associated with the parenting they receive. Together with other recent studies (Dobewall et al., 2018; Krapohl et al., 2017; Selzam et al., 2018), these findings provide molecular‐genetic evidence for a bidirectional model of parent–child relations, in which parenting is partly a response to children’s characteristics (Bell, 1968; Crouter & Booth, 2003; Pardini, 2008; Sameroff, 2010).

Findings of gene–environment correlations with parenting imply that the family environments children experience while growing up are partly a function of their own and their parents’ genetics. For example, we found that children of parents who carried a higher number of education‐associated variants were exposed to greater cognitive stimulation in the home compared to children of parents who carried fewer of these variants. Because biological parents and children share genes, family environments shaped by parents’ genes will tend to match and reinforce children’s genetic dispositions (Knafo & Jaffee, 2013; Scarr & McCartney, 1983; Tucker‐Drob & Harden, 2012). Such a match can positively influence children’s development; for example, when a child with a high education polygenic score is born into a family that provides cognitive stimulation. However, the same match also implies that a children with lower education polygenic scores will tend not to experience exactly the kind of stimulating and supportive parenting that could make a difference for their attainment. Thus, for better and for worse, correlations between genes and environments can reduce the availability of experiences that alter individuals’ developmental trajectories. This also applies to the reproduction of educational success across generations. To the extent that educational outcomes are influenced by genetics, genes will tend to be a force for intergenerational stability in educational attainment, both via direct genetic transmission and via indirect effects of genes on caregiving environments that shape future generations’ behaviors. This tendency means that is it important to improve children’s access to interventions that may be able to break reinforcing links between genes and environments, such as high‐quality early skill‐building programs (Heckman, 2006).

Given how much attention critics of parenting effects devote to the possibility of genetic confounding (Harris, 1998; Rowe, 1993; Sherlock & Zietsch, 2018), it may seem surprising that our estimates of genetic confounding were so small. There are two possible explanations for this finding: either genetics do little to confound associations between parenting and children’s educational attainment, or we have underestimated the true magnitude of genetic confounding. The observation that polygenic‐score associations with educational attainment are substantially lower than heritability estimates of educational attainment (Branigan, McCallum, & Freese, 2013) suggests that our findings underestimate genetic confounding. Currently, even the best and biggest efforts to capture the genetic variants associated with educational attainment are still missing a substantial part of its heritability (Manolio et al., 2009; National Human Genome Research Institute, 2018). Until more of this “missing heritability” can be accounted for at the molecular‐genetic level, the safest way to rule out genetic confounding is to continue to use family‐based designs, such as discordant‐twin designs (McGue, Osler, & Christensen, 2010; Vitaro, Brendgen, & Arseneault, 2009), parent–child adoption designs (Leve et al., 2013) or children‐of‐twin designs (D’Onofrio et al., 2003), that can estimate associations between parenting and children’s educational attainment free from genetic influences shared between parents and children (Turkheimer & Harden, 2014).

Debates about parental influences on children’s development tend to contrast the effects of parents’ genes—assumed to influence children via genetic transmission—with the effects of parenting—assumed to influence children via environmental ways. Our finding of genetic nurture draws a more nuanced picture, by showing that mothers’ genetics were associated with children’s attainment over and above genetic transmission, via parenting. This finding has three implications. First, over and above a persons’ own genetics, their development will be shaped by the genetics of significant others. We demonstrate this here for effects of parents’ genetics on children’s outcomes, but this observation likely extends beyond parents to everyone who creates environments inhabited by people: family members; individuals residing outside the family context, such as peers and partners (Conley et al., 2016; Domingue et al., 2018); even people to whom a child may be exposed to only indirectly, such as the grandparents who raised a child’s parents (Hällsten & Pfeffer, 2017; Kong et al., 2018; Liu, 2018). The existence of a “social genome” broadens the scope of the study of genetics, from an individual’s genes and their effects on an individual’s phenotype, to the genomes of the individuals making up an individual’s social context (Domingue & Belsky, 2017). Second, much has been written about the need to integrate genetics into parenting research and socialization theory, but there is also a need to integrate environments into how we think about and collect genetic data. Correlations between genes and environments are a challenge not only for socialization research, but also for genetics research: Although DNA sequence cannot be modified by the environment, our findings show that environments still pose a threat to causal inference, because associations between a person’s DNA and developmental outcomes may partly reflect effects of environments created through genes of other individuals (Bates et al., 2018; Kong et al., 2018). As much as genetic confounding needs to be considered when estimating environmental effects, “environmental confounding” needs to be taken into account when estimating genetic effects (Krapohl et al., 2017; Young et al., 2018). Third, environments are part of the pathway from genotype to phenotype (Kandler & Zapko‐Willmes, 2017; Scarr & McCartney, 1983). Specifically, we found that genetic influences on children’s educational attainment partly manifested through parenting; an environmentally mediated genetic effect. The finding shows that new GWAS discoveries are not inimical to socialization theories, because these genetics partly work through factors that socialization researchers have studied for decades, such as the home environment. Combining genetic data with measures of individuals’ social environments is key to tracing how genetics affect life outcomes. By joining forces in this way, genetics and socialization researchers will be able to strengthen causal estimates and obtain a more complete understanding of the processes shaping children’s attainments.

Mexican Cartel Wars Fight for the Opioid U.S Market: Homicide rates increase along with the number of active cartels per municipality, with higher increases when a second, third, fourth and fifth cartel become active

Mexican Cartel Wars: Fighting for the Opioid U.S. Market. Fernanda Sobrino. October 25, 2019. https://www.fersobrino.com/files/DraftPaper.pdf

Abstract: The number of major Drug Trafficking Organizations in Mexico increased fromfour to nine over the last two decades. This was accompanied by an increase in drugtrade related violence. This paper examines the relationship between competition and violence in illegal drug markets. In particular, I exploit an external demand shock to the heroin market. The 2010 OxyContin reformulation made the pill harder to abuse and led some opioid abusers to switch to heroin. I construct a novel data set of cartel presence across Mexican municipalities by scraping Google News and using natural language processing. I exploit within municipality variation by combining agro-climatic conditions to grow opium poppy with heroin prices in the United States across time. Event study estimates suggest that cartel presence increases substantially after 2010 in municipalities well suited to grow opium poppy. Homicide rates increase along with the number of active cartels per municipality, with higher increases when a second, third, fourth and fifth cartel become active in the territory. These results suggest that some of the increase in violence that Mexico experienced in the last fifteen years could be attribute to criminal groups fighting for market shares of heroin and not only to changes in government enforcement.

Postnatal depressive symptoms in women display marked similarities across continents

Postnatal depressive symptoms display marked similarities across continents. Rikke Wesselhoeft et al. Journal of Affective Disorders, Volume 261, 15 January 2020, Pages 58-66. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2019.09.075

Highlights
•    This is the first study to examine postnatal depressive symptoms in women from three continents.
•    There is a cross-continental consistency of postnatal depressive symptoms that contain three factors: anhedonia, anxiety and depression.
•    Postnatal depressive symptoms are associated with low education level across continents.

Abstract
Background: Postnatal depressive symptoms measured by the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS) are reported to display measurement variance regarding factor structure and the frequency of specific depressive symptoms. However, postnatal depressive symptoms measured by EPDS have not been compared between women representing three continents.

Methods: A cross-sectional study including birth cohort samples from Denmark, Vietnam and Tanzania. Women were included during pregnancy at routine care sites. Depressive symptoms were self-reported 40–90 days postpartum using the EPDS. Exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses and generalized additive regression models were performed.

Results: A total of N = 4,516 participated in the study (Denmark N = 2,069, Vietnam N = 1,278, Tanzania N = 1,169). Factor analyses identified three factors (anhedonia, anxiety and depression) that were almost identical in the three study populations. The only variation between countries was that the item ‘self-harm’ loaded differently. Women from Tanzania and Denmark were more likely to have an EPDS total score above cut-off 12 (12.6% and 6.4%), compared to women from Vietnam (1.9%) (p<0.001). A low level of education was associated with significantly more depressive symptoms after adjusting for country (p<0.001).

Limitations: EPDS data was collected at a later time point in the Danish sample.

Conclusions: Postnatal depressive symptoms constitute a three-factor model across cultures including the factors anhedonia, anxiety and depression. The frequency of postnatal depressive symptoms differs between high-, medium-, and low-income countries. However, clinicians should bear in mind that low-educated women worldwide are more likely to experience postnatal depressive symptoms.

Significant correlations were found between social comparisons made on SNS (i.e., general and upward comparisons) & depression; social comparisons were more strongly related to depression than was time spent there

Is social network site usage related to depression? A meta-analysis of Facebook–depression relations. Sunkyung Yoon et al. Journal of Affective Disorders, Volume 248, 1 April 2019, Pages 65-72. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jad.2019.01.026

Highlights
•    Significant correlations between SNS-usage variables (i.e., time spent on social networking sites (SNS) and SNS checking frequency) and depression were found.
•    Significant correlations were found between social comparisons made on SNS (i.e., general and upward comparisons) and depression was found.
•    Social comparisons on SNS were more strongly related to depression than was time spent on SNS.

Abstract
Background: Facebook depression is defined as feeling depressed upon too much exposure to Social networking sites (SNS). Researchers have argued that upward social comparisons made on SNS are the key to the Facebook depression phenomenon. To examine the relations between SNS usage and depression, we conducted 4 separate meta-analyses relating depression to: (1) time spent on SNS, (2) SNS checking frequency, (3) general and (4) upward social comparisons on SNS. We compared the four mean effect sizes in terms of magnitude.

Methods: Our literature search yielded 33 articles with a sample of 15,881 for time spent on SNS, 12 articles with a sample of 8041 for SNS checking frequency, and 5 articles with a sample of 1715 and 2298 for the general and the upward social comparison analyses, respectively.

Results: In both SNS-usage analyses, greater time spent on SNS and frequency of checking SNS were associated with higher levels of depression with a small effect size. Further, higher levels of depression were associated with greater general social comparisons on SNS with a small to medium effect, and greater upward social comparisons on SNS with a medium effect. Both social comparisons on SNS were more strongly related to depression than was time spent on SNS.

Limitations: Limitations include heterogeneity in effect sizes and a small number of samples for social comparison analyses.

Conclusions: Our results are consistent with the notion of ‘Facebook depression phenomenon’ and with the theoretical importance of social comparisons as an explanation.