Commitment readiness: People vary in their sense of when they think the time is right to be involved in a committed relationship

It’s About Time: Readiness, Commitment, and Stability in Close Relationships. Christopher R. Agnew, Benjamin W. Hadden, Kenneth Tan. Social Psychological and Personality Science, February 20, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550619829060

Abstract: Timing matters in relationships. People vary in their sense of when they think the time is right to be involved in a committed relationship. We propose and examine the construct of commitment readiness and its role in predicting important relationship outcomes including commitment level, maintenance processes, and stability among involved intimates. Data from five independent samples obtained with various methods revealed, as hypothesized, that readiness (a) predicts commitment, maintenance processes, and actions toward ending a relationship; (b) serves to moderate commitment in predicting maintenance processes (self-disclosure, accommodation, sacrifice); and (c) serves to moderate commitment in predicting leave behavior, with those reporting both higher commitment and higher readiness being more likely to enact maintenance behaviors and least likely to enact leave behavior. We discuss the importance of considering one’s readiness for commitment within ongoing involvements.

Keywords: relationship receptivity, relationship timing, commitment readiness, commitment level, investment model

General Discussion

Among currently involved individuals, we examined commitment readiness,
the extent to which a person feels that the time
is right for a committed involvement and found evidence in
support of hypotheses. Higher readiness was associated with
higher commitment to a relationship, cross-sectionally, longitudinally, and day-to-day within individuals. Moreover, by
controlling for commitment at one time point, results speak
to the temporal precedence of readiness in shaping future
increases in commitment. Further, these findings were independent of investment model variables, such that the prospective effects of readiness on commitment are unique from
satisfaction, alternatives, and investments.
Readiness also predicted maintenance beyond commitment,
between individuals, and on a daily basis. Readiness was
uniquely associated with more self-disclosure. Although not
associated with overall accommodation, readiness was associated with less neglect and exit strategies. It was also associated
with less loyalty, suggesting that although individuals who
were more ready engaged in less destructive responses to conflict, they do not passively wait for things to get better. Readiness also largely bolstered the effects of commitment on
maintenance.
With data from three longitudinal studies, readiness was
also associated with lower likelihood of leaving one’s relationship, and readiness moderated the effects of commitment level
on leave behavior. This moderation emerged such that high
readiness bolstered the effect of commitment on leave behavior, whereas low readiness appears to undermine the effects
of commitment on leave behavior. These findings suggest that
although commitment to a specific partner is necessary for successfully maintaining a relationship, individuals are aided also
by feeling ready at a given time for commitment.
Consistent with relationship receptivity theory, readiness
serves both to increase commitment level across time and to
augment the effect of commitment on maintenance cognitions
and behaviors, including stay/leave behavior months later.
Experiencing high levels of both commitment and readiness
promotes maintenance, whereas lacking in either ingredient
appears to undermine stability. Although readiness is theoretically and empirically separable from level of commitment, one
might expect that being in a relationship elevates one’s sense of
readiness, possibly as a function of self-perception. One might
also expect that how successful a relationship is—how satisfying, and so on—might inform a sense that one is ready to maintain a commitment to that relationship. However, even if a
relationship might be particularly rewarding in and of itself,
it might still detract from other aspects of one’s life by taking
time from personal pursuits (e.g., VanderDrift & Agnew,
2014). Tension between the relationship and other domains
of life should play into how ready one feels for commitment.
Strengths of these studies include the use of measures of
both maintenance cognitions and behaviors, as well as actual
leave behavior. Further, by using a mixture of crosssectional, daily diary, and longer longitudinal studies, we were
able to investigate the scope of how readiness shapes relationship functioning. Readiness appears to be important for both
day-to-day relationship maintenance and for prospectively predicting stability. Limitations include samples consisting largely
of young adults who generally reported high levels of readiness, limiting both the age range and variability in readiness
among participants. We also concentrated on the individual
level and obtained measures of readiness from only one member of a dyad. A dyadic study would provide valuable data on
how actor and partner effects of readiness might be associated
with maintenance behaviors and stability. Moreover, one could
examine whether individuals accurately perceive partners’ levels of readiness and whether successful enactment of maintenance behaviors by one partner leads both the partner and
oneself to feeling more ready the next day.
Future research on readiness could go in a number of directions. One could examine associations between how ready an
individual thinks they are and their knowledge of factors that
have been shown to be strongly linked to relationship stability.
It is possible that some people who report that they are ready
for commitment have little idea of the kinds of cognitions and
behaviors necessary to sustain an involvement. One might
expect, then, that a sense of readiness would need to be paired
with a realistic sense of what it actually takes to keep a relationship going for readiness effects to be robust. Relatedly, the perception that one is capable of enacting the kinds of prosocial
behaviors shown to sustain relationships (Rusbult & Agnew,
2010) may also influence the extent to which one’s readiness
is associated with consequential outcomes. Experimental
manipulation of readiness, including priming it, is also ripe for
research. Moreover, gathering perceptions from social network
members of involved intimates may also shed light on whether
a given member of a couple is truly ready for commitment. Discrepancies in perceived readiness between a person involved in
a relationship and how their network perceives them might
yield findings consistent with past research showing that
“outsiders” possess perceptions that are particularly diagnostic
of relationship outcomes (Agnew, Loving, & Drigotas, 2001).
Finally, readiness appears to be an important yet heretofore
neglected construct. Therefore, its antecedents surely matter.
What gives rise to a sense of being ready for a committed relationship? Relationship receptivity theory provides several suggestions for answering this important question, but answers
await future research.

Philosophy seems to attract less happy students and then makes them less happy; bad scores on positive relations with others, personal growth, using strengths, savoring, gratitude

Are Philosophers Happy? Dan Weijers. University of Waikato, Auckland. Dec 10 2019. https://researchcommons.waikato.ac.nz/bitstream/handle/10289/13326/Are%20philosophers%20happy.pdf

 Philosophers reported statistically significantly “worse” scores on all of these (and better on none):

 Positive relations with others

 Personal growth

 Environmental mastery

 Using strengths

 Pleasure and meaning paths to happiness

 Gratitude

 Savoring (sensing, absorption, behavioral expression, counting blessings)

 Flow

Gay men are disliked more than lesbian women in all countries tested; significant association between gender norm endorsement & sexual prejudice across countries (but is absent or reversed in China)

Predictors of Attitudes Toward Gay Men and Lesbian Women in 23 Countries. Maria Laura Bettinsoli, Alexandra Suppes, Jaime L. Napier. Social Psychological and Personality Science, December 23, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550619887785

Abstract: Dominant accounts of sexual prejudice posit that negative attitudes toward nonheterosexual individuals are stronger for male (vs. female) targets, higher among men (vs. women), and driven, in part, by the perception that gay men and lesbian women violate traditional gender norms. We test these predictions in 23 countries, representing both Western and non-Western societies. Results show that (1) gay men are disliked more than lesbian women across all countries; (2) after adjusting for endorsement of traditional gender norms, the relationship between participant gender and sexual prejudice is inconsistent across Western countries, but men (vs. women) in non-Western countries consistently report more negative attitudes toward gay men; and (3) a significant association between gender norm endorsement and sexual prejudice across countries, but it was absent or reversed in China, India, and South Korea. Taken together, this work suggests that gender and sexuality may be more loosely associated in some non-Western contexts.

Keywords: sexual prejudice, homonegativity, LGB, gender, gender norms

Vegetarians are more pro-social than omnivores, tend to have more liberal political views, & do not appear to be as well-adjusted as omnivores (which may be the result of status as a social minority)

Vegetarianism as a Social Identity. John B Nezlek, Catherine A Forestell. Current Opinion in Food Science, December 20 2019. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cofs.2019.12.005

Abstract: Food choice can be a way for people to express their ideals and identities. In particular, for those who identify as vegetarian, this label is more than just a set of dietary preferences. Choosing to follow a plant-based diet shapes one’s personal and social identity and is likely to influence a person’s values, attitudes, beliefs, and well-being. The available data suggest that vegetarians are more pro-social than omnivores and tend to have more liberal political views. Nevertheless, vegetarians do not appear to be as well-adjusted as omnivores, which may be the result of their status as a social minority. Despite the attention vegetarianism has received, more research is needed to understand the antecedents, correlates, consequences, and socio-cultural contexts of vegetarianism.

Conclusions, limitations, and future directions

There is little doubt that vegetarianism is a social identity and that it is more than a mere dietary choice. Moreover, similar to other social identities being a vegetarian has implications for the values, beliefs, and attitudes people hold. In turn the values, beliefs, and attitudes vegetarians hold have implications for their behavior (broadly defined) and for their well-being.

Nevertheless, the existing research suffers from important limitations. Conceptually, not enough attention has been paid to possible differences among types of vegetarians, including differences in why people are vegetarians. Some research suggests that vegans are meaningfully different from other types of vegetarians [e.g., 18, 39, 41], but more attention needs to be paid to possible differences between vegetarians who have similar eating habits but different reasons for being vegetarians. For example, two people may be lactoovo vegetarians, but one may do so for health reasons whereas another does so for ecological reasons. Although Plante et al. [24] found that different motives can lead to different behavioral outcomes, they suggest that future research should investigate possible moderator variables (e.g., length of time identifying as a vegetarian), establish better validated measures of vegetarian motivations, and employ behavioral outcomes rather than relying solely on self-report.

The empirical database is also limited geographically. Most of the research on vegetarianism as a social identity has been done in Western and Northern Europe (e.g., Germany and the Netherlands), the US and Canada, and Australasia. Relatively little has been done in Latin America, Southern, Central, or Eastern Europe, Asia (Western, Central, or Eastern), parts of Oceania other than Australasia, and Africa. Given that existing research suggests that being a vegetarian is associated with holding more pro-social socio-political attitudes and with reduced mental health in Western cultures, it is important to determine if such relationships exist outside of the capitalist democracies that have been studied to date. For example, Jin, Kandula, Kanaya, and Talegwkar [46] found that South Asian immigrants to the US who were vegetarians were less likely to be depressed than their relatives who were omnivores. This may have been because vegetarians were not social minorities in the communities in which these immigrants resided.

Contrary to the trends in some of the countries in which vegetarianism as a social identity has been studied, meat consumption is on the rise in some countries that have enjoyed recent improvements in their economies [47]. Although a decrease in meat consumption may not indicate an increase in vegetarianism, despite the risks involved in using trends in meat consumption as proxies for trends in vegetarianism, it seems unlikely that an increase in meat consumption could be accompanied by an increase in vegetarianism. Such trends suggest that understanding vegetarianism and its antecedents, correlates, and consequences needs to take into account the socio-cultural contexts within which people are living.

Reducing meat consumption has become an important sustainability goal, and there has been an increase in campaigns across the globe to dissuade consumers from consuming animal-based products, particularly eating meat. The effectiveness of such advocacy may depend on the social identity of the advocates and how they communicate their message [48]. Thus it will be important to consider social identity theory to develop effective messages to increase meat-eaters’ willingness to reduce meat consumption.

Related to changing attitudes about meat consumption is what the popular press sometimes refers to as “vegetarian activism.” Given differences in the centrality of diet based identities [18], a more accurate term would probably be “vegan activism.” although even this distinction cannot be supported by any research. Putting aside definitional issues, there is virtually no research on vegetarian activism per se. Nevertheless, there is a body of research showing that minorities can influence majorities [49], and given this, it is possible that vegetarians can influence the dietary practices of omnivores [48], although how successful such efforts will be remains to be seen.

Finally, there are issues of causation. Why do people decide to become vegetarians? How do such decisions unfold? What are the causal relationships among the values, beliefs and attitudes that define contemporary vegetarianism? In terms of substantive questions such as relationships between diet and well-being and between diet and pro-sociality, are people with lower well-being more likely to become vegetarians than people who are higher in well-being, and are more pro-social people likely to become vegetarians than people who are less pro-social? Such questions have not been the focus of systematic empirical research and cannot be answered conclusively. Although much is known, much more needs to be known.

Check also Gender Differences in Vegetarian Identity: How Men and Women Construe Meatless Dieting. Daniel L.Rosenfeld. Food Quality and Preference, November 28 2019, 103859. https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2019/11/could-they-be-lying-vegetarian-women.html

And Taste and health concerns trump anticipated stigma as barriers to vegetarianism. Daniel L.Rosenfeld, A. JanetTomiyama. Appetite, Volume 144, January 1 2020, 104469. https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2019/09/vegetarian-diets-may-be-perceived-as.html

And Relationships between Vegetarian Dietary Habits and Daily Well-Being. John B. Nezlek, Catherine A. Forestell & David B. Newman. Ecology of Food and Nutrition, https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2018/10/vegetarians-reported-lower-self-esteem.html

And Psychology of Men & Masculinity: Eating meat makes you sexy / Conformity to dietary gender norms and attractiveness. Timeo, S., & Suitner, C. (2018). Eating meat makes you sexy: Conformity to dietary gender norms and attractiveness. Psychology of Men & Masculinity, 19(3), 418-429. https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2018/06/psychology-of-men-masculinity-eating.html

And Baby Animals Less Appetizing? Tenderness toward Baby Animals and Appetite for Meat. Jared Piazza, Neil McLatchie & Cecilie Olesen. Anthrozoös, Volume 31, 2018 - Issue 3, Pages 319-335. https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2018/05/presenting-images-of-baby-animals.html

We perceive typefaces, type families, & type styles to have ideological qualities; there is also affective polarization (typefaces are seen favorably when perceiving them as sharing our ideological orientation)

What’s in a Font?: Ideological Perceptions of Typography. Katherine Haenschen & Daniel J. Tamul. Communication Studies, Dec 20 2019. https://doi.org/10.1080/10510974.2019.1692884

ABSTRACT: Although extensive political communication research considers the content of candidate messages, scholars have largely ignored how those words are rendered – specifically, the typefaces in which they are set. If typefaces are found to have political attributes, that may impact how voters receive campaign messages. Our paper reports the results of two survey experiments demonstrating that individuals perceive typefaces, type families, and type styles to have ideological qualities. Furthermore, partisanship moderates subjects’ perceptions of typefaces: Republicans generally view typefaces as more conservative than Independents and Democrats. We also find evidence of affective polarization, in that individuals rate typefaces more favorably when perceived as sharing their ideological orientation. Results broaden our understanding of how meaning is conveyed in political communication, laying the groundwork for future research into the functions of typography and graphic design in contemporary political campaigns. Implications for political practitioners are also discussed.

KEYWORDS: Political communication, ideology, partisanship, typeface, graphic design

Associations of physical attractiveness on sexual victimization were very strong; for example, highly attractive boys were five times more likely than other boys to have experienced child sexual abuse

Beauty is in the eye of the offender: Physical attractiveness and adolescent victimization. Jukka Savolainen, Jonathan R. Brauer, Noora Ellonen. Journal of Criminal Justice, December 24 2019, 101652. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcrimjus.2019.101652

Abstract
Objectives: This research considered physical attractiveness as a potentially victimogenic individual characteristic. Based on target congruence, the theoretical model predicts direct effects of physical attractiveness on violent victimization and, based on routine activities theory, indirect effects on both violent and non-violent victimization.

Method: Using data from the 2013 wave of the Finnish Youth Victimization Survey (n = 5095) we estimated a structural equation model to examine the hypothesized associations. Physical attractiveness was measured using a novel self-report instrument asking respondents to report how other people react to their physical appearance.

Results: We found consistent support for the theoretically expected pathways. The direct and indirect associations of physical attractiveness on sexual victimization were particularly strong. For example, highly attractive boys were five times more likely than other boys to have experienced child sexual abuse.

Conclusions: Scholars and practitioners should consider physical attractiveness as an individual characteristic that may substantially increase the risk of interpersonal victimization, both directly and through its impact on routine activities. More research is needed to understand the mechanisms producing the observed associations.

Keywords: Physical attractiveness Victimization Routine activities Target congruence Finland Youth Child sexual abuse

We focus on a plausible evolutionary continuity between non-human and human primates’ economic behaviour; they show some capacity to barter and even proto-monetary organization

Are the roots of human economic systems shared with non-human primates? Elsa Addessi, Sacha Bourgeois-Gironde. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, December 23 2019. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2019.12.026

Highlights
• Review of extant approaches to non-human primate economic behaviour in terms of several economic paradigms.
• We spell our definitional criteria for what can count of economic behaviour – an issue which is generally side-lined through the application of economic models to animal behaviour.
• We focus on a plausible evolutionary continuity between non-human and human primates’ economic behaviour.
• We report similar cognitive abilities and behavioural performances through a series of individual tasks. As far as individual decision-making is concerned, Prospect Theory is a predictive and biologically unifying model.
• We report behavioural differences between human and non-human primates and between distinct species of non-human primates in cooperative and competitive dyadic tasks (experimental games).
• We report and analyse laboratory and field-experiments showing symbolic activities linked to the use of intrinsically valueless tokens in trading activities.
• Some of these symbolic activities show the capacity to barter and even proto-monetary organization.
• We argue in favour of evolutionary precursors of complex human economic abilities present among non-human primates.
• We, however, point to the relative inability among non-human primates, to exert a joint control over combined cognitive computational and symbolic abilities, which may explain their non-having developing economic sophistication as well as humans.

Abstract: We review and analyze evidence for an evolutionary rooting of human economic behaviors and organization in non-human primates. Rather than focusing on the direct application of economic models that a priori account for animal decision behavior, we adopt an inductive definition of economic behavior in terms of the contribution of individual cognitive capacities to the provision of resources within an exchange structure. We spell out to what extent non-human primates’ individual and strategic decision behaviors are shared with humans. We focus on the ability to trade, through barter or token-mediated exchanges, as a landmark of an economic system among members of the same species. It is an open question why only humans have reached a high level of economic sophistication. While primates have many of the necessary cognitive abilities (symbolic and computational) in isolation, one plausible issue we identify is the limits in exerting cognitive control to combine several sources of information. The difference between human and non-human primates’ economies might well then be in degree rather than kind.

Teen childbearing leads to lower educational attainment, lower income, & greater use of welfare for individuals who come from counties with better socioeconomic conditions

Heterogeneous Consequences of Teenage Childbearing. Devon Gorry. Demography, volume 56, pages 2147–2168 (2019). https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13524-019-00830-1

Abstract: This study finds heterogeneous effects of teen childbearing on education and labor market outcomes across socioeconomic status and race. Using miscarriages to put bounds on the causal effects of teen childbearing, results show that teen childbearing leads to lower educational attainment, lower income, and greater use of welfare for individuals who come from counties with better socioeconomic conditions. However, there are no significant adverse effects for individuals who come from counties with worse socioeconomic conditions. Across race, teen childbearing leads to negative consequences for white teens but no significant negative effects for black or Hispanic and Latino teens.

V. Discussion

For teens from less educated and lower income counties and teens in minority groups, poor education and labor market outcomes are not a result of teen childbearing. Instead it is likely that teen childbearing is complimentary with poor labor market prospects and in these cases teen childbearing may encourage some young women in poor circumstances to get more education and attain better labor market outcomes than they otherwise would have.

It is important to understand this heterogeneity when targeting policy mechanisms directed at reducing teen childbearing. While previous work suggests that such policies may only have modest positive effects on teen outcomes, these results suggest that there could be large positive effects of reducing teen childbearing concentrated among teens who are relatively better off. However, teen pregnancy prevention policies will not help teens who come from poor socioeconomic backgrounds nor will they help black, Hispanic or Latino teens on average.

Thus, broad policies targeting all teen pregnancies may not help the populations that they intend to help most. Instead of focussing on reducing childbearing of poor and minority teens directly, results of this paper suggest that policymakers would be better off to first target the conditions that make teen childbearing an optimal choice.

Children: The genetic correlation between abuse & neglect was ρg = .73 (p = .02); common environmental variance increased as socioeconomic status (SES) decreased (p = .05)

Estimating the Heritability of Experiencing Child Maltreatment in an Extended Family Design. Katharina Pittner et al. Child Maltreatment, November 27, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1177/1077559519888587

Abstract: Child-driven genetic factors can contribute to negative parenting and may increase the risk of being maltreated. Experiencing childhood maltreatment may be partly heritable, but results of twin studies are mixed. In the current study, we used a cross-sectional extended family design to estimate genetic and environmental effects on experiencing child maltreatment. The sample consisted of 395 individuals (225 women; M age = 38.85 years, rangeage = 7–88 years) from 63 families with two or three participating generations. Participants were oversampled for experienced maltreatment. Self-reported experienced child maltreatment was measured using a questionnaire assessing physical and emotional abuse, and physical and emotional neglect. All maltreatment phenotypes were partly heritable with percentages for h 2 ranging from 30% (SE = 13%) for neglect to 62% (SE = 19%) for severe physical abuse. Common environmental effects (c 2) explained a statistically significant proportion of variance for all phenotypes except for the experience of severe physical abuse (c 2 = 9%, SE = 13%, p = .26). The genetic correlation between abuse and neglect was ρg = .73 (p = .02). Common environmental variance increased as socioeconomic status (SES) decreased (p = .05), but additive genetic and unique environmental variances were constant across different levels of SES.

Keywords: child maltreatment, genetics, etiology, families, risk factors, self-report

Discussion

This extended family study demonstrates that experiencing maltreatment during childhood is partly heritable. Heritability was not restricted to a specific type of maltreatment, and shared genetic factors contributed to abuse and neglect. Common and unique environmental factors explained a considerable proportion of phenotypic variance, and common environment had a greater effect on maltreatment in low-SES families.

Heritability estimates ranged from 30% for neglect to 62% for severe physical abuse. These findings suggest that child maltreatment is in part genetically mediated by child effects.

The finding that child factors contribute to maltreatment does not imply, however, that the responsibility for maltreatment perpetrated by parents lies with the child. It is the role of parents to respond appropriately to challenging child behavior, and they might need support to fulfill this role adequately in case of challenging child behaviors. Interventions may benefit from incorporating parent training that supports more effective strategies of responding to potentially challenging behavior. Results from earlier genetically informed studies (i.e., adoption and twin designs) provide support for an evocative role of externalizing problems in negative parenting and maltreatment (Marceau et al., 2013; O’Connor, Deater-Deckard, Fulker, Rutter, & Plomin, 1998; Schulz-Heik et al., 2010). The association between externalizing behavior and maltreatment may be bidirectional as maltreatment increases antisocial behavior over time, even when taking into account genetic effects (Jaffee, Caspi, Moffitt, & Taylor, 2004).

In the present study, we used a continuous variable of maltreatment ranging from “no maltreatment,” to “harsh parenting,” and to “maltreatment.” Most participants reported experiences of maltreatment at the lower end of the spectrum. Consequently, our findings may be restricted to more typical harsh parenting rather than maltreatment. However, we found that severe physical abuse seemed highly heritable, in contrast with an earlier twin study showing that harsh parenting, but not maltreatment, was heritable (Jaffee, Caspi, Moffitt, Polo-Tomas et al., 2004). Whereas Jaffee, Caspi, Moffitt, Polo-Tomas et al. (2004) assessed maltreatment up to the age of 5 years, the present study covered maltreatment to the end of adolescence, when individuals gain agency to shape their environment (Bergen, Gardner, & Kendler, 2007; Elkins, McGue, & Iacono, 1997), which may increase child-based genetic influences. Another explanation for the discrepancy might be that the present study used self-report, while in their twin study Jaffee, Caspi, Moffitt, Polo-Tomas et al. (2004) used mother report about the twins’ maltreatment histories, which may have led to an overestimation of shared environment because parents tend to perceive the environment of their children as more similar than the children themselves do (Wade & Kendler, 2000). Other studies using self-report measures also found experienced maltreatment to be partly heritable (Fisher et al., 2015; Schulz-Heik et al., 2009; South et al., 2015). Arguably, children may have a tendency to emphasize the difference between the way they themselves were treated and how their siblings were treated. However, since siblings completed the questionnaires independent of each other, it is unlikely that in our study, using self-report has strongly increased the similarity between siblings. Moreover, using a multi-informant approach that included parent reports when available, we see the same pattern of results with slightly higher estimates for heritability and common environment. This likely stems from a reduction of measurement error evident in the lower unique environment estimates.

Common and Unique Environment

The present findings suggest that similarity between siblings in terms of maltreatment experiences should not be attributed to genetic effects only but also to common environment. This points to the role of the family environment and is in line with studies showing that parental psychopathology, parenting stress, lack of social support, and larger family size are important risk factors for maltreatment. Low SES has repeatedly been shown to be associated with maltreatment (Euser et al., 2013; Sedlak et al., 2010; Slack, Holl, Mcdaniel, Yoo, & Bolger, 2004; Stith et al., 2009). In our study, SES was related to neglect. While some of these factors, such as family size, are difficult to change, addressing factors such as parenting stress and social support may have a particularly high payoff as they would benefit all children in the family.

For the etiology of maltreatment, it is important to not only understand what makes children growing up in the same family similar but also what makes them different in the experience of maltreatment—the unique environment (Plomin, 2011). We found an estimated influence of unique environment (including measurement error) of 29–42%, which concurs with previous studies (Fisher et al., 2015; Schulz-Heik et al., 2009). The importance of the unique environment points to the need for an individual child approach in addition to a family-centered approach when estimating risk. That is, it is important to improve the specific parent–child relationship. Nonetheless, specific unique environmental risk factors have remained elusive after taking measurement error into account (Deater-Deckard et al., 2001; Mullineauxa, Deater-Deckard, Petrillb, & Thompson, 2009). One suggested factor is that parents might perceive siblings as differently attractive or difficult, and thus trigger differential parenting (Burt, McGue, Iacono, & Krueger, 2006; Deater-Deckard, Smith, Ivy, & Petril, 2005; Feinberg & Hetherington, 2001; Reiss et al., 1995), which constitutes a potential target of intervention.

Genetic Correlation Between Abuse and Neglect

Our bivariate analysis indicates that the same common environmental factors are related to abuse and neglect. Approximately 50% of the genetic factors were overlapping, and the other 50% were uniquely related to abuse or neglect. This may suggest that some child factors put a child at risk of experiencing abuse but not of neglect and vice versa. Our findings illustrate why abuse and neglect often co-occur (Euser et al., 2013; Vachon, Krueger, Rogosch, & Cicchetti, 2015) notwithstanding etiological differences. Conversely, interventions may need to address abuse and neglect individually, even when they co-occur, since the heritable and unique environmental risk factors do not (fully) overlap.

Genotype × SES

Moreover, a genotype × SES interaction analysis demonstrated that in low-SES families, common environment explained more variance in experienced maltreatment than in high-SES families. Overall, low-SES families showed greater variance in experienced maltreatment, and our findings suggest that this can be attributed to common environment. Lower SES may add a range of common environmental factors negatively affecting child development. For instance, children from low-SES families experience more instability, more crowding at home, more pollution, and more danger in the neighborhood (Chen & Miller, 2013; Evans, 2004; Miller et al., 2009). Together, these factors may increase the risk of developing externalizing problems. On a population level, this suggests that fighting child poverty may have far-reaching preventive consequences.

Additive genetic variance, in absolute terms, remained stable across different levels of SES. Since overall variance decreased as SES increased, relative contribution of genetic variance component increased. Given the substantial effects of heritability this and previous studies have indicated, a more comprehensive exploration of environmental effects on heritability may uncover new intervention targets. A better understanding of the child traits mediating the heritable risk might offer insight into which environmental manipulations would be most effective in lowering heritable risk.

In order to interpret any variance component across a changing environment, it is important to consider changes in the other variance components. In a genotype-by-sex interaction study of physical activity behavior by Diego et al. (2015), the issue of the indeterminacy of environment-specific heritability was broached. The authors found that the heritability could be constant across an environmental contrast if the constituent variance components changed in the same direction and at the same rate. They also noted that it was theoretically possible that a nonconstant heritability across an environmental contrast could arise from a changing residual environment component in the face of a constant additive genetic variance. This concept is relevant to properly contextualizing our results with existing reports on the heritability of maltreatment. In particular, Schulz-Heik et al. (2009) and South, Schafer, and Ferraro (2015), respectively, reported a higher and lower proportion of the total phenotypic variance attributed to the shared environment relative to the heritability. Regarding our study, we can actually claim both scenarios because the shared environment variance component declined relative to a constant additive genetic variance from the low end of the SES spectrum to the high end.

Extended Family Design

For the current study, we decided to use an extended family design to add to the existing twin research. Extended family designs have more variability in genetic relatedness and common environment than twin designs. In addition, twins create a unique family constellation and parenting demands may be atypical when caring for two same-aged children (Olivennes, Golombok, Ramogida, & Rust, 2005). Consequently, results from twin studies may not be generalizable to typical family constellations.

Moreover, the extended family design decreases the confounding between genetic relatedness and shared environment compared to nuclear families (Almasy & Blangero, 2010; Diego, Kent, & Blangero, 2015). By including horizontal relationships (e.g., cousins, half-siblings), in addition to vertical relationships (e.g., grandparent–grandchild), a systematic correlation between genetic distance and age difference is eliminated. For instance, half-siblings and grandparent–grandchild pairs have the same genetic distance, but half-siblings tend to be similar in age whereas grandparent–grandchild pairs are not.

Limitations

A limitation of this study is the retrospective assessment of maltreatment; no conclusions about causality can therefore be drawn. For ethical reasons, research on maltreatment is generally incompatible with experimental designs except for intervention studies that combined with a prospective design can be highly informative. The present study assessed maltreatment retrospectively, and time between potential maltreatment and assessment varied. Moreover, estimates of unique environment should be interpreted with caution as it is impossible to disentangle unique environmental effects from measurement. It is interesting to note, however, that estimates of unique environment decreased when including parent reports for a multi-informant approach. This could point to a reduction in measurement error. Future research should strive to replicate these findings in a larger, representative sample and in other populations (e.g., non-Western). Estimates from quantitative genetic research are population-specific. Even if genetic variation is stable across populations (which we do not know), environmental variability will affect estimates for both heritability and environment because these estimates represent relative contributions (Plomin, 2018; Velden, 1997). Lastly, the present sample may have been too small to estimate moderator effects reliably (Glahn et al., 2010)—especially because the effect of SES on common environment was small and the moderation analysis was exploratory. Future studies should replicate the genotype × SES effect in larger samples as these findings suggest that environmental interventions can be particularly useful.

Implications

Ideally, interventions are based on empirically supported, theoretical frameworks of etiology. The current study suggests that such frameworks should incorporate the heritability of experiencing maltreatment and that interventions should address both heritable and environmental risk factors. More research is needed to determine how to best reduce those risk factors. Moreover, it would be useful to explore other environmental factors than SES and how they moderate heritability—preferably factors that can be the focus of interventions.

The associations between parenting and child personality were comparable in magnitude to those between factors such as socio-economic level, birth order, and child personality—that is, small

Longitudinal Relations Betwwen Parenting and Child Big Five Personality Traits. Mona Ayou. PhD Psychology Thesis, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, 2019. https://www.ideals.illinois.edu/bitstream/handle/2142/105686/AYOUB-DISSERTATION-2019.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

The goal of this research was to examine the relationships between parenting practices and child personality development. There is some lack of consensus on whether and to what extent parenting practices do affect child personality development. For example, social learning and attachment theories assume that parenting practices influence child personality development. Also, a third theory, the psychological resources principle, holds similar assumptions and provides specific predictions about relations between parenting and personality traits. In contrast, some perspectives derived from research in behavior genetics minimize the role of parenting practices on children’s personality development. In order to shed some empirical light on these issues, I examined the long-term relations between parenting and child Big Five personality traits through fitting cross-lagged panel models and bivariate latent growth models in two datasets. Unlike previous studies, I used large samples (N= 3850; N=674), examined multiple parenting measures, and used data from multiple raters. Results from cross lagged models showed a preponderance of insignificant relations between parenting and child personality. A different approach to interpreting the results is to focus on the magnitudes of the associations rather than their statistical significance. In this light, I found that the average regression coefficient between parenting and child personality was .04 in both studies. The average regression coefficient between child personality and parenting was .04 in Study 1 and .06 in Study 2. Results from growth models showed decreasing trends in parenting and child personality across time. The growth models also revealed a preponderance of null relations between parenting and child personality, and especially between changes in parenting and changes in child personality. Focusing on the magnitudes of the associations, we found that the average correlation between the initial levels of parenting and child personality was .08 in Study 1 and .10 in Study 2. The average correlation between initial levels of parenting and changes in child personality was .04 in Study 1 and .10 in Study 2. The average correlation between changes in child personality and initial levels of parenting was .04 in both studies. The average correlation between changes in parenting and changes in child personality was .08 in Study 1 and .13 in Study 2. In general, the obtained associations between parenting and child personality were comparable in magnitude to those between factors such as SES, birth order, and child personality—that is, small. The small associations between environmental factors and personality suggest that personality developmental in childhood and adolescence is driven by multiple factors, each of which makes a small contribution.

Items of Instruments in TRAIN Dataset

Parental Involvement
I have enough time and energy to
1) talk intensively about school day
2) take care that child is doing his/her homework
3) go through schoolwork with child
4) get involved in child school
5) go to parents’ evenings
6) study classwork with child

Parental Structure
I make sure that
1) my child goes to bed early on school days
2) my child does his homework at fixed times everyday
3) my child has breakfast in the morning
4) we get up together and have breakfast at the weekend
5) my child brushes his/her teeth in the morning and in the evening
6) my child packs the school bag for the next day in the evening
7) family eats together at least once a day
8) my child gets up on time in the morning on school days

Parental Cultural Stimulation
How often does it happen that you
1) go to the theater together with your child
2) go to the museum together with your child
3) go to classical concerts together with your child
4) go to an opera / ballet performance together
5) go to a book reading with your child

Parental Goals
In your opinion, how important that family teaches child
1) personal independence
2) performance and effort
3) order and discipline
4) versatile knowledge
5) political judgement
6) sound knowledge in main subjects
7) social responsibility
8) appropriate social manners
9) respect/respect for parents
10) mastery of cultural skills
11) willingness to learn
12) righteous and helpful behavior
13) knowledge for profession
14) moral judgment
15) Life


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Items of Instruments in CFP Dataset

Mother/Father Involvement
In the past year, you
1) helped child with homework or school project
2) encouraged child to study
3) helped child study for a test
4) checked to see that child had done his homework

Mother/Father Monitoring
Over the past three months,
1) knew what child was doing after school
2) knew how child spent his money
3) knew the parents of the child’s friends
4) knew who child’s friends are
5) if the child was going to get home late, he was expected to call
6) child told you who he/she was going to be with before he/she went out
7) when child went out at night, you knew where he/she was going to be
8) knew about the plans child had with friends
9) when child went out, you asked him/her where he/she was going
10) knew how child was doing in his/her schoolwork
11) knew where child was and what he/she was doing
12) talked with child about what was going on in his/her life
13) knew if child did something wrong
14) knew when child did something really well at school or other place

Mother/Father Family Routines
How often
1) talk to child about his/her homework
2) help child with his/her homework
3) child does his/her homework at the same time each day or night during the week
4) child takes part in regular activities after school
5) is there an adult at home when child comes back from school
6) child go to bed at the same time each night
7) your family eat a meal together
8) child does regular household chores

Mother/Father Parental Goals
How important is it that
1) child does well in school
2) child is popular
3) sets goals and accomplishes them
4) is good at sports
5) child does chores at home
6) attends church every week
7) respects and pays attention to his/her teachers
8) is courteous toward other people
9) plans for the future
10) develops his/her talents and abilities
11) respects and pays attention to you

Mother/Father Warmth
During the past year, how often did your mother/father
1) Ask you for your opinion about an important matter
2) Listen carefully to your point of view
3) Let you know she really cares about you
4) Act loving and affectionate toward you
5) Let you know that she appreciates you, your ideas, or things you do
6) Help you do something that was important to you
7) Have a good laugh with you about something that was funny
8) Act supportive and understanding toward you
9) Tells you she loves you
10) Talks about things that bother you
11) Ask you what you think before deciding on family matters that involve you
12) Gives you reasons for his/her decisions
13) Asks you what you think before making a decision about you
14) Lets you know he/she is pleased
15)Rewards with money or good things when you get good grades
16) Go to special events that involve you, like a play or sports
17) Understands why your parents make a rule
18) Discipline by reason, explaining, or talking to you

Mother/Father Hostility
During the past year, how often did your mother/father
1) Shouts or yells at you because he/she was mad at you
2) Ignores you when you tried to talk to him/her
3) Gives a lecture about how you should behave
4) Boss around a lot
5) Hit, push, grab or shove you
6) Did not listen, but does all talking himself/herself
7) Argue with you whenever they disagree about something
8) Insults or swears at you
9) Tells you he/she is right, and you are wrong about things
10)Calls you bad names
11) Threatens to hurt you by hitting you with his/her fist, an object, or something else
12) Get angry at you
13)Criticize you or your ideas

We have perceptual biases to see man-made objects; maybe extended exposure to manufactured environments in our cities has changed the way we see the world

A perceptual bias for man-made objects in humans. Ahamed Miflah Hussain Ismail, Joshua A. Solomon, Miles Hansard and Isabelle Mareschal. Proceedings of the Royal Society B, Volume 286, Issue 1914, November 6 2019. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2019.1492

Abstract: Ambiguous images are widely recognized as a valuable tool for probing human perception. Perceptual biases that arise when people make judgements about ambiguous images reveal their expectations about the environment. While perceptual biases in early visual processing have been well established, their existence in higher-level vision has been explored only for faces, which may be processed differently from other objects. Here we developed a new, highly versatile method of creating ambiguous hybrid images comprising two component objects belonging to distinct categories. We used these hybrids to measure perceptual biases in object classification and found that images of man-made (manufactured) objects dominated those of naturally occurring (non-man-made) ones in hybrids. This dominance generalized to a broad range of object categories, persisted when the horizontal and vertical elements that dominate man-made objects were removed and increased with the real-world size of the manufactured object. Our findings show for the first time that people have perceptual biases to see man-made objects and suggest that extended exposure to manufactured environments in our urban-living participants has changed the way that they see the world.

3. Discussion

We examined biases in people's classification of different types of natural images. In experiment 1, we found that when an ambiguous hybrid image was formed of structures from two different image categories, classification was biased towards the man-made categories (houses and vehicles) rather than towards the non-man-made categories (animals and flowers). This ‘man-made bias’ is not a bias towards any specific spatial frequency content. Additional experiments (see electronic supplementary material, §S5) revealed that the bias is (1) common across urban-living participants in different countries, and (2) not simply a response bias. The results of experiment 2 replicated and extended the results of experiment 1 to demonstrate that the bias was affected by the real-world size of man-made objects (but not animal size), with a stronger bias for larger man-made objects. Reduced biases for small man-made objects may be explained by shared feature statistics (e.g. curvature) between small (but not large) man-made objects and both small and large animals [22]. However, we highlight that the bias is not only for larger man-made objects, because we still obtained man-made biases even when small man-made objects were paired with animals. We propose that this man-made bias is the result of expectations about the world that favour the rapid interpretation of complex images as man-made. Given that the visual diet of our urban participants is rich in man-made objects, our results are consistent with a Bayesian formulation of perceptual biases whereby ambiguous stimuli result in biases towards frequently occurring attributes [5].

We stress that the man-made bias is not merely a manifestation of the relative insensitivity to tilted (i.e. neither vertical nor horizontal) contours, commonly known as the ‘oblique effect’ [23,24]. Our participants exhibited biases in favour of man-made objects even when cardinal orientations had been filtered out of them. This occurred despite the fact that the power spectra of houses and vehicles were largely dominated by cardinal orientations, whereas those of animals and flowers were largely isotropic (electronic supplementary material, §S6 and figure S6). Whereas the oblique effect was established using narrow-band luminance gratings on otherwise uniform backgrounds, it cannot be expected to influence the perception of broad-band, natural images, such as those used in our experiments. Indeed, if anything, detection thresholds for cardinally oriented structure tend to be higher than those for tilted structure, when those structures are superimposed against broad-band masking stimuli [25].

We note however that we do not claim that intercardinal filtering removes all easily detectable structures from the images in man-made categories. Indeed, houses and vehicles almost certainly contain longer, straighter and/or more rectilinear contours than flowers and animals. Therefore, we also performed a detection experiment to examine if increased sensitivity to structural features that might dominate man-made categories could account for the man-made biases by measuring detection thresholds (see electronic supplementary material, §S7). It revealed that houses and vehicles did not have lower detection thresholds (i.e. the minimum root mean square contrast required to reliably detect images from each category) than images from the non-man-made categories. This finding provides strong ammunition against any sensitivity-based model of the man-made bias. Whatever structure is contained in the unfiltered images of houses and vehicles, that structure proved to be, on average, no easier to detect than the structure contained in unfiltered images of animals and flowers.

The lack of a bias for animals and a difference in sensitivity between image categories appears to contradict past findings from Crouzet et al. [15], who report that the detection of animals precedes that of vehicles using a saccadic choice task. However, comparing contrast sensitivity (detection) to saccadic reaction (decision) is problematic, especially with high contrast stimuli [26]. Secondly, the difference could be attributed to the background of images that must be classified. While Crouzet et al. [15] controlled contextual masking effects on image category by presenting images occurring in both man-made and natural contexts, our images in the detection experiment were embedded in white noise with the same amplitude spectrum as the image (electronic supplementary material, figure S7). As Hansen & Loschky [27] report, the type of mask used (e.g. using a mask sharing only the amplitude spectrum with the image versus one sharing both amplitude and phase information with the image) affects masking strength. It is still unclear which type of masks work best across different image categories [27].

Although we carefully controlled the spatial frequency content of our stimuli in experiments 1 and 2, it is conceivable that the bias towards man-made objects arises at a level intermediate between the visual system's extraction of these low-level features and its classification of stimuli into semantic categories. To investigate whether any known ‘mid-level’ features might be responsible for the bias towards man-made objects, we repeated experiments 1 and 2 with HMAX, a computer-based image classifier developed on the basis of the neural computations mediating object recognition in the ventral stream of the visual cortex [28,29], allowing it to exploit mid-level visual features in its decision processes (see electronic supplementary material, §§S4 and S10). We also classified hybrids from experiment 2 with the AlexNet Deep Convolutional Neural Network (DNN), which could potentially capture more mid-level features [30] (see electronic supplementary material, §S9). Results indicate that human observers' bias for man-made images seems not to be a simple function of the lower and mid-level features exploited by conventional image-classification techniques.

However, we must concede that HMAX and AlexNet do not account for all possible intermediate feature differences between object categories, for instance 3D viewpoint [31]. If we are frequently exposed to different viewpoints of man-made but not non-man-made objects, this might lead to a man-made bias too. Therefore, more experiments where categorical biases can be measured after equating object categories for intermediate features are needed to pinpoint the level at which the man-made bias occurs. Indeed, the bias for man-made objects might have nothing to do with visual features at all. It may stem from (non-visual) expectations that exploit regularities of the visual environment [6]. To be clear: we are speculating that the preponderance of man-made objects in the environment of urban participants could bias their perception such that it becomes efficient at processing these types of stimuli.

When might such a bias develop? Categorical concepts and dedicated neural mechanisms for specific object categories seem to develop after birth, with exposure [32–34]. This suggests that expectations for object categories are likely to develop with exposure too. However, if expectations occur at the level of higher-level features associated with object categories, we cannot discount the possibility that expectations may be innate. For instance, prior expectations for low-level orientation has been attributed to a hardwired non-uniformity in orientation preference of V1 neurons [6]. Similarly, we may have inhomogeneous neural mechanisms for higher-level features too. Recently identified neural mechanisms selectively encoding higher-level features of objects (e.g. uprightness [35]) add to this speculation. It remains to be determined when and how man-made biases arise and whether they are adaptable to changes in the environment. Further, the perceptual bias that we demonstrate may be altered by testing conditions, which limit its generalizability. For instance, low spatial frequency precedence in image classification is altered by the type of classification that must be performed (e.g. classifying face hybrids for its gender versus expression) [36].