Collis, Avinash, and Felix Eggers. 2020. “Effects of Restricting Social Media Usage.” SocArXiv. January 14. doi:10.31235/osf.io/udgxt
Abstract: Recent research has shown that social media services create large consumer surplus. Despite their positive impact on economic welfare, concerns are raised about the negative association between social media usage and performance or well-being. However, causal empirical evidence is still scarce. To address this research gap, we conduct a randomized controlled trial among students in which we track participants’ digital activities over the course of three quarters of an academic year. In the experiment, we randomly allocate half of the sample to a treatment condition in which social media usage is restricted to a maximum of 10 minutes per day. We find that participants in the treatment group substitute social media for instant messaging and do not decrease their total time spent on digital devices. Contrary to findings from previous correlational studies, we do not find any impact of social media usage on well-being and academic success. Our results also suggest that antitrust authorities should consider instant messaging and social media services as direct competitors before approving acquisitions.
Tuesday, January 14, 2020
People valorize the unproductive efforts of others in part because they believe such efforts reflect one’s inner virtues
Celniker, Jared, Andrew Gregory, Hyunjin Koo, Paul K. Piff, Peter
Ditto, and Azim Shariff. 2020. “The Moralization of Unproductive
Effort.” PsyArXiv. January 14. doi:10.31234/osf.io/nh9ax
Abstract: People believe that effort is valuable, but what kind of value does it confer? We find that displays of effort signal moral character. Importantly, we focus on displays of unproductive or unnecessary effort to highlight the heuristic nature of these intuitions—even “useless” effort is deemed virtuous. We conducted five studies to demonstrate the nature of these effects. In the domains of paid employment and charitable giving, the exertion of effort is deemed morally admirable (Studies 1-3) and is monetarily rewarded (Studies 1, 3, and 4), even when that effort results in no additional product. We test and find convergent patterns in a cross-cultural replication (Study 1b) and using a “big data” analysis of naturalistic donation behaviors (Study 4). We consider cultural and evolutionary accounts of effort moralization and discuss the implications of these effects for social welfare policy, automation, and the future of work.
General Discussion
Five studies, using multiple methodologies and cross-cultural samples, found that people ascribe greater moral value to greater exertions of effort, even when that effort is unproductive. Displays of effort serve as signals of one’s moral character, and these judgments inform decisions about how to allocate scarce monetary resources. People valorize the efforts of others in part because they believe such efforts reflect one’s inner virtues.
Our investigation refines previous research on effort evaluations and advances it in important ways. First, by explicitly controlling for productivity in our studies, we extend prior research (Amos, Zhang & Read, 2019) by showing that effort is valued even when it produces no value. Second, we provide the first discriminative evidence that effort cues affect moral evaluations specifically rather than positive character ascriptions more generally. Across four preregistered experiments, manipulating effort produced consistent differences in assessments of moral traits but not assessments of warmth or competence. These findings support theorizing that places moral character judgments at the center of impression formation (Goodwin, 2015; Uhlmann, Pizzaro & Diermeier, 2015). Finally, we broaden research on the martyrdom effect (Olivola & Shafir, 2013)—which has focused on manipulating one’s own commitment to a cause—by conceptually replicating it in paradigms focused on interpersonal moral judgments and real-world donation behaviors.
Unpacking Explanations of Effort Moralization
In addressing methodological limitations of prior work, limitations of a cultural explanation for effort moralization were also revealed. If PWE beliefs moralize effort, then inefficient effort should be denigrated because it is wasteful. Yet across our studies, participants consistently viewed unproductive effort as morally virtuous. Furthermore, individual differences
in participants’ work ethic beliefs did not moderate these effects, implying a limited role of PWE in explaining effort moralization. Finally, replicating one of our experiments in South Korea (including the failure of PWE beliefs to moderate valuations of effort) intimates that people moralize effort outside the West as well.
There is, in fact, some evidence that individuals in modern hunter-gatherer societies also moralize hard work (Smith & Apicella, 2019), suggesting that effort moralization may rest on more fundamental, and potentially evolutionary, origins. In the collaborative, group-living environments in which our species evolved, focusing on displays of costly signaling, like displays of effort, may have been an efficient and adaptive way to assess the cooperative intent of others (Gintis, Smith & Bowles, 2001). Partner choice markets can explain the use of competitive altruism as a signal of one’s value as a cooperation partner (Barclay, 2013), and effort may serve a similar function. This signaling account may provide a more parsimonious framework for conceptualizing effort moralization as a basic social heuristic. Rather than directly causing people to moralize effort, PWE beliefs may be scaffolded upon and exaggerate shared intuitions about the moral value of effort.
Cross-cultural replication of the current findings would seem a crucial next step in disentangling universal and culture-specific accounts of effort moralization. While South Korea is rooted in a distinct cultural tradition that has traditionally eschewed the overtly individualistic institutions and values of the U.S. (Hofstede, 1983), it is still a highly industrialized nation with some of the longest working hours in the OECD (OECD, 2019). Replications in societies that differ from the U.S. and South Korea on other dimensions would provide a more rigorous test of the role of culture in effort valuations.
Abstract: People believe that effort is valuable, but what kind of value does it confer? We find that displays of effort signal moral character. Importantly, we focus on displays of unproductive or unnecessary effort to highlight the heuristic nature of these intuitions—even “useless” effort is deemed virtuous. We conducted five studies to demonstrate the nature of these effects. In the domains of paid employment and charitable giving, the exertion of effort is deemed morally admirable (Studies 1-3) and is monetarily rewarded (Studies 1, 3, and 4), even when that effort results in no additional product. We test and find convergent patterns in a cross-cultural replication (Study 1b) and using a “big data” analysis of naturalistic donation behaviors (Study 4). We consider cultural and evolutionary accounts of effort moralization and discuss the implications of these effects for social welfare policy, automation, and the future of work.
General Discussion
Five studies, using multiple methodologies and cross-cultural samples, found that people ascribe greater moral value to greater exertions of effort, even when that effort is unproductive. Displays of effort serve as signals of one’s moral character, and these judgments inform decisions about how to allocate scarce monetary resources. People valorize the efforts of others in part because they believe such efforts reflect one’s inner virtues.
Our investigation refines previous research on effort evaluations and advances it in important ways. First, by explicitly controlling for productivity in our studies, we extend prior research (Amos, Zhang & Read, 2019) by showing that effort is valued even when it produces no value. Second, we provide the first discriminative evidence that effort cues affect moral evaluations specifically rather than positive character ascriptions more generally. Across four preregistered experiments, manipulating effort produced consistent differences in assessments of moral traits but not assessments of warmth or competence. These findings support theorizing that places moral character judgments at the center of impression formation (Goodwin, 2015; Uhlmann, Pizzaro & Diermeier, 2015). Finally, we broaden research on the martyrdom effect (Olivola & Shafir, 2013)—which has focused on manipulating one’s own commitment to a cause—by conceptually replicating it in paradigms focused on interpersonal moral judgments and real-world donation behaviors.
Unpacking Explanations of Effort Moralization
In addressing methodological limitations of prior work, limitations of a cultural explanation for effort moralization were also revealed. If PWE beliefs moralize effort, then inefficient effort should be denigrated because it is wasteful. Yet across our studies, participants consistently viewed unproductive effort as morally virtuous. Furthermore, individual differences
in participants’ work ethic beliefs did not moderate these effects, implying a limited role of PWE in explaining effort moralization. Finally, replicating one of our experiments in South Korea (including the failure of PWE beliefs to moderate valuations of effort) intimates that people moralize effort outside the West as well.
There is, in fact, some evidence that individuals in modern hunter-gatherer societies also moralize hard work (Smith & Apicella, 2019), suggesting that effort moralization may rest on more fundamental, and potentially evolutionary, origins. In the collaborative, group-living environments in which our species evolved, focusing on displays of costly signaling, like displays of effort, may have been an efficient and adaptive way to assess the cooperative intent of others (Gintis, Smith & Bowles, 2001). Partner choice markets can explain the use of competitive altruism as a signal of one’s value as a cooperation partner (Barclay, 2013), and effort may serve a similar function. This signaling account may provide a more parsimonious framework for conceptualizing effort moralization as a basic social heuristic. Rather than directly causing people to moralize effort, PWE beliefs may be scaffolded upon and exaggerate shared intuitions about the moral value of effort.
Cross-cultural replication of the current findings would seem a crucial next step in disentangling universal and culture-specific accounts of effort moralization. While South Korea is rooted in a distinct cultural tradition that has traditionally eschewed the overtly individualistic institutions and values of the U.S. (Hofstede, 1983), it is still a highly industrialized nation with some of the longest working hours in the OECD (OECD, 2019). Replications in societies that differ from the U.S. and South Korea on other dimensions would provide a more rigorous test of the role of culture in effort valuations.
We suggest greater aesthetic relevance, face for facial aesthetics, of the mobile and communicative parts for the female face and, conversely, of the rigid, structural, parts for the male one
Filtered beauty in Oslo and Tokyo: A spatial frequency analysis of facial attractiveness. Morten Øvervoll et al. PLOS, January 14, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0227513
Abstract: Images of European female and male faces were digitally processed to generate spatial frequency (SF) filtered images containing only a narrow band of visual information within the Fourier spectrum. The original unfiltered images and four SF filtered images (low, medium-low, medium-high and high) were then paired in trials that kept constant SF band and face gender and participants made a forced-choice decision about the more attractive among the two faces. In this way, we aimed at identifying those specific SF bands where forced-choice preferences corresponded best to forced-choice judgements made when viewing the natural, broadband, facial images. We found that aesthetic preferences dissociated across SFs and face gender, but similarly for participants from Asia (Japan) and Europe (Norway). Specifically, preferences when viewing SF filtered images were best related to the preference with the broadband face images when viewing the highest filtering band for the female faces (about 48–77 cycles per face). In contrast, for the male faces, the medium-low SF band (about 11–19 cpf) related best to choices made with the natural facial images. Eye tracking provided converging evidence for the above, gender-related, SF dissociations. We suggest greater aesthetic relevance of the mobile and communicative parts for the female face and, conversely, of the rigid, structural, parts for the male face for facial aesthetics.
Hence, for the present study, we gathered evidence that forced-choice preferences when viewing specific SF bands of face images relate positively to preferences when viewing the corresponding broadband facial images. Our approach consisted in filtering spatial frequencies out of the natural face’s photo image (Fig 1). We then presented the obtained face images, containing a narrow band of SF information, in a “beauty contest” between same-sex face pairs (Fig 2). Although all of our photo images depicted faces of really existing European individuals, the participants of the present study belonged to different populations recruited in Europe and Asia (i.e., Norway and Japan).
The gender of the faces had a strong effect on which spatial frequencies were closest related to the same individuals’ decisions when performing the task with the unfiltered, natural looking, face pairs. That is, female faces related 80% of the time to choices made with the broadband faces, when viewing the highest of the four SF bands (Fig 3). In contrast, male faces related slightly above 80% of the time to choices made with broadband faces when viewing the second lowest of the four SF bands included in this study (Fig 3). We note that all of the SF bands related above 65% of time to choices made with broadband faces, indicating that all SF bands contribute to some extent with information relevant to aesthetics decision, although apparently in different doses. Thus, it would appear that medium-low spatial frequencies contains visual information that is most relevant for aesthetic decisions made about male faces, but the high spatial frequencies contain key information for decision about female faces. This dissociation is to our knowledge a novel finding, which could lead to identifying detailed gender-specific visual cues.
The oculomotor behavior provided converging evidence for the relevance of the medium-low spatial frequencies for male faces and high spatial frequencies for female faces. The attractive face in a pair was not only looked more in general than the unattractive, but gaze lingered the most over the attractive female face when the face pairs were shown with the highest (SF 4) filtering. Consistently, gaze dwelled the longest over the attractive male face when seeing the face pairs with the medium-low spatial (SF 2) filtering (Fig 4).
In addition, to get a sense of what information is contained and visible in the stimuli and within each band of SF information, we provided visualizations of how this content related to observers’ judgements. There was high similarity for the female faces between the two highest (SF 3 and 4) and the broadband faces within a small, bilateral, region (overlapping the eye pupil and the lower eyelid and infraorbital concavity but including the upper part of the zygomatic convexity; Fig 8). In addition, similarity between the filtered and unfiltered faces was higher for male models than female models for the area around the brows, nasal root, and eyes, and especially so for the (medium low) SF 2. Instead, for the medium high and high spatial frequencies (SF 3 and 4), the similarity was higher for female models than male models for the area around the lower eyelid and infraorbital region. Remarkably, the relative distributions of gaze when viewing these SF bands closely matched these similarity profiles.
Statistical analyses on the Lempel-Ziv complexity confirmed that the female faces contained significantly more information than the male faces in the above-described regions (Fig 9). However, information content was significantly high in the low SF bands only for the male faces; in particular, for the central eyebrow region, including the skull area immediately above (i.e., the supraorbital process or brow ridge) in SF 1, and the glabella of the nose and lowest nose region (including the nostrils) in SF 2.
Importantly, there was a striking dissociation between SFs for male and female faces in relation to the relevance of vertically oriented frequencies for attractiveness (normative) ratings. As visible in Fig 10, different spatial frequencies related to the ratings, revealing that for female faces, there was a significant positive correlation between attractiveness and amplitude of high vertical frequencies for female faces and at low vertical frequencies for male faces. Taking into consideration also the eye-tracking data, participants had a strong tendency to look at the faces along the whole axis of the nose (Fig 7), in particular in the European group, extending as low as the upper lip (philtum) and the Cupid’s bow at the center of the mouth, more so with increasing spatial frequency. This gaze behavior seems consistent with the preponderant role of the central, vertically oriented, features for attractiveness (normative) ratings.
Being the nose at the center of both the vertical and horizontal axes of the ‘face’ (Nota Bene: below the hairline, not the head), it is presumable that it constitutes an important element to focus gaze when evaluating facial proportions, the configuration and global harmony or symmetry of the face [58]. When spatial frequency is high, the volumetric aspect of the nose, relatively more relevant for the male face (Fig 11, right panel), becomes less visible. The nose is the most sexually dimorphic facial trait in its morphology, being on average disproportionally larger in volume in male than female faces [85–87]. While the visibility of the nose’s volume decreases that of its shape and symmetry increases with higher spatial frequencies and the latter features appear more relevant for judging the attractiveness of the female faces (Fig 11, left panel). Since gaze scanning (Fig 7) revealed a strong tendency to focus gaze at the root of the nose, or onto the central portion of the face that may correspond to the limiting size for efficient summation of configurational properties of upright (vertically oriented) face information in a single configurational face template [88]. The eyes, being paired features, horizontally centered together with the vertical prominence of the nose [89], may also convey essential information on a face’s proportions and symmetry, and more clearly so in higher spatial frequencies conditions.
It also seems of interest that the dispersion of gaze over the eyes, nose and mouth region differs in our European and Asian groups (Fig 7). The typical T-shaped focus pattern appears mainly with the European participants and increasingly so with higher spatial frequencies. In fact, the pattern of fixations is consistent with previous reports that Asians (i.e., Chinese) tend to look less at the eyes and distribute less their gaze over the face [90–92]. Especially within Japanese culture, a prolonged eye contact may be disrespectful and Japanese children are taught to look at others’ necks instead of the eyes [93, 94].
Perhaps the most remarkable dissociation between female and male features related to attractiveness, revealed by the present study’s Fourier approach, is between the two faces in Fig 11. These show graphic representations of the spatial frequencies that correlate positively with the stimuli’s normative attractiveness ratings (collected independently of the present eye-tracking study and only with Norwegian raters). A striking difference between the two genders’ images is that they show very different, little overlapping, SF components. Moreover, these SF components impressively overlap with the SF bands most relevant for forced choices, derived from the present eye-tracking study (Fig 3). For the male face (Fig 11, right panel), the attractiveness-correlated SF provide only a coarse visual resolution of the face, which however clearly conveys the depth or volumetric aspect of the head and face, with its overall size, extent of the face contour (the jaw and chin), and skull’s bone structure. These three-dimensional aspects of the male’s whole face or skull structure may be important in judging overall proportions. In contrast, the female face’s (in Fig 11, left panel) attractiveness-correlated SFs, not only show little overlap with the male’s, but they suggest that female attractiveness may be judged more on information carried by higher spatial frequencies. These may reveal local information about the surface of the face and of specific features at a level of detail that is optimal also for the task of individual person recognition and the communication of emotional signals.
In particular, internal features of the female face like the brow ridge, eyes, mouth, as well as the lower part of the face contour or chin, and their immediately surrounding facial surface regions, are clearly visible in the left panel image. We surmise that the high resolution of the above traits allows a more precise evaluation of the arrangements, spatial relations, or distance ratios between these features (e.g., the inter-ocular distance). There are several suggestions in the literature on facial beauty (also from anthropology, odontology, and aesthetic medical surgery) that our sense of face attractiveness may seek a “golden ratio” between facial traits like the eyes and mouth/teeth and the general proportions of the face ([95] but see [96]). We surmise that at HSF resolutions, information is optimal for spotting the presence of skin blemishes and the smoothness surface skin (i.e., cues of age or poor health) as well as details of the eye region affording the registering of subtle differences in eyelids’ and orbital region shape. If smooth skin is crucial for attractiveness in female faces and these properties of surface skin are best represented in high spatial frequencies, then amplitudes of higher frequencies should correlate with attractiveness ratings, since these frequencies make visible these aspects. We also note that the irises’ colors as well as the size of the pupils seem clearly delineated at such resolution. Instead, the colors of the irises would be smeared at LSF and, interestingly, previous research suggests that eye color may be more relevant when judging female than male faces for attractiveness [13]. Similarly, the highly mobile pupils may be particularly important for signaling social agreeableness, interest and attraction [8, 97]. We note that our behavioral and gaze results in the main experiment seem consistent with this ideas.
Moreover, the lower portion of the nose (nostrils) and the fullness of the lips (or vermilions) appear clearly visible within these attractiveness-correlated spatial frequencies and shape imperfections and coloring, luminance contrast between sides of the Cupid’s bow, may be very salient at this high resolution. Thus, female faces’ attractiveness-related SFs may reveal subtle deformations over the face surface, skin, and be related to the soft and malleable elements of the face, instead of its rigid skull structure. These highly mobile parts of the face like the mouth, eyes and eyebrows, all allow the display of subtle affiliative emotions [98], which may also play a key role when judging the attractiveness of an individual, even when just looking at static images [72].
In the male image in Fig 11 (right panel), a region around the ocular orbits, including the eyebrows and the bony area immediately above (i.e., the supraorbital process or ridge and glabella), as well as a region below the eyes and cheeks’ zygomas, appears well delineated in volumetry. Interestingly, the lower portions of the nose and of the mouth’s upper region play a role for male attractiveness, despite at such a coarse level of resolution the separations between the nostrils or lips are not resolved. Instead, the three-dimensional or volumetric aspects of the chin (in particular the protuberance of the mandible and its breadth) appear to be very salient. A possibility is that the coarse LSF prevalence in the image, by revealing the bony prominence of the brow ridge and of the jaw and chin, conveys effectively the attribute of masculinity inherent in the face [62, 99, 100]. In addition, a large face size characterizes masculinity as opposed to femininity [101]. However, several researchers have cautioned that masculinity may predict attractiveness relatively weakly compared to other fluctuating properties like skin color [102–104] or face and body symmetry [105, 106], which signal immunocompetence. Said and Todorov [18] found a gender-specific dissociation in the effects of shape (e.g., face width) or reflectance (e.g., lightness and color of skin). Increases towards masculinity in reflectance aspects of the male face increased attractiveness, but doing the same in shape aspects decreased it. We surmise that despite the coarse LSF male image (in Fig 11) both the reflectance of skin and of the brows are clearly visible. Interestingly, the reflectance dimensions with the strongest effects on female attractiveness involved the contrast around the eyes and the redness of the lips, which may be both best visible at higher SF.
Indeed, the HSF prominence in the image of the female face’ in Fig 11 yields a more detailed but somewhat less volumetric rendition (with slightly “embossed” features to use an art metaphor). What is visible appears related not only to highly mobile parts of the face that allow the display of subtle affiliative emotions but also to several cues associated with a sense of femininity [107, 108]. Sexual dimorphism correspond to different directions in morphometric space [108] and the female direction is associated with horizontal reduction of the chin, a forward movement of the gonion (jaw angle) and alveolar prognathism. In Fig 11, the male chin is clearly more visible than the female and appears larger in the morphed image.
The eye-tracking results confirmed that the beautiful faces are strong attractors of attention [109], since participants spent about 10% more time dwelling onto the attractive face in a pair (Fig 5) than on the relatively less attractive one. It has been shown that the attentional priority towards attractive faces can also occur unconsciously [110] and that a decision about a face’s level of attractiveness can be reached very rapidly (within 33 ms), and not very differently than when having unlimited time [111]. However, the present results are consistent with several previous studies showing that we typically spend extra time looking at faces considered attractive [112–114].
Finally, a previous study [38] used Fourier power spectrum analyses to describe the relation between spatial frequency and power of the radially averaged (1d) Fourier spectrum on a log-log scale. As the researchers point out, most natural (complex) images show a linear relationship and the relative strength or ‘power’ of fine detail information or coarse structure in an image can be, respectively, expressed linearly be the angle of the slopes in the power plots. Importantly, enhanced HSF information leads to shallow slopes, whereas enhanced LSF information leads to steep slopes. Given that pleasing natural scenes and artworks share a shallow power slope of -2 [115], the authors hypothesized that also faces approaching a Fourier power slope of -2 (i.e., with enhanced HSF information) would be considered more attractive than the same face, or others, differing from this value (e.g., steeper slopes between -3 and -4). Remarkably, when participants were given the opportunity to manually adjust the Fourier slope of the images on screen, they did choose a mean value of -2.6, which is a bit closer to that of pleasing natural scenes or artistic facial portraits. The effect was significantly larger for female faces, which also seems consistent with the present study’s findings of a bias for HSF information for female faces. A limitation of the Fourier slope approach is that it is informative about the relative distribution of frequency power, but not specific frequency bands. We surmise that, by presenting ranges of SF information separately, we are likely to reveal which information contained in the natural stimulus directly related to the aesthetic judgment about a face. In contrast, by strengthening or adding one type of visual information by distorting the natural image, one can reveal directional biases and explore the limits within which a face’s attractiveness can be enhanced [17].
Abstract: Images of European female and male faces were digitally processed to generate spatial frequency (SF) filtered images containing only a narrow band of visual information within the Fourier spectrum. The original unfiltered images and four SF filtered images (low, medium-low, medium-high and high) were then paired in trials that kept constant SF band and face gender and participants made a forced-choice decision about the more attractive among the two faces. In this way, we aimed at identifying those specific SF bands where forced-choice preferences corresponded best to forced-choice judgements made when viewing the natural, broadband, facial images. We found that aesthetic preferences dissociated across SFs and face gender, but similarly for participants from Asia (Japan) and Europe (Norway). Specifically, preferences when viewing SF filtered images were best related to the preference with the broadband face images when viewing the highest filtering band for the female faces (about 48–77 cycles per face). In contrast, for the male faces, the medium-low SF band (about 11–19 cpf) related best to choices made with the natural facial images. Eye tracking provided converging evidence for the above, gender-related, SF dissociations. We suggest greater aesthetic relevance of the mobile and communicative parts for the female face and, conversely, of the rigid, structural, parts for the male face for facial aesthetics.
Discussion
A key question about what constitutes our sense of aesthetics is what kind of visual information within the stimulus underlies our judgements. Despite the spatial frequency structure of any visual stimulus is processed very early by the visual brain and several studies have addressed its role in the identification of facial identity and/or expression [81, 82], very few studies have specifically investigated the role of visual spatial frequency information in supporting our sense of facial aesthetics. That different face relevant types of visual information can be optimally channeled through different bands of spatial frequencies is well known for emotional expressions, but the possibility that a similar relationship occur for aesthetic cues has not been fully explored yet. It is very likely that other facial information, seemingly unrelated to visual spatial frequency, plays a relevant role in judgments of attractiveness (e.g., skin’s tone [83, 84]), but spatial frequency may play a role beyond the coding of facial shape. In particular, the optimal perception of several of surface and texture cues may be confined within specific bands of spatial information (e.g., the thin lines or creases revealing age or the colors of small parts like the irises). The appreciation of the colors (or discoloring) of small-width or thin facial parts (like the mouth lips) may also depend on high frequency information that may be smeared and significantly weakened in visibility at low spatial frequencies.Hence, for the present study, we gathered evidence that forced-choice preferences when viewing specific SF bands of face images relate positively to preferences when viewing the corresponding broadband facial images. Our approach consisted in filtering spatial frequencies out of the natural face’s photo image (Fig 1). We then presented the obtained face images, containing a narrow band of SF information, in a “beauty contest” between same-sex face pairs (Fig 2). Although all of our photo images depicted faces of really existing European individuals, the participants of the present study belonged to different populations recruited in Europe and Asia (i.e., Norway and Japan).
The gender of the faces had a strong effect on which spatial frequencies were closest related to the same individuals’ decisions when performing the task with the unfiltered, natural looking, face pairs. That is, female faces related 80% of the time to choices made with the broadband faces, when viewing the highest of the four SF bands (Fig 3). In contrast, male faces related slightly above 80% of the time to choices made with broadband faces when viewing the second lowest of the four SF bands included in this study (Fig 3). We note that all of the SF bands related above 65% of time to choices made with broadband faces, indicating that all SF bands contribute to some extent with information relevant to aesthetics decision, although apparently in different doses. Thus, it would appear that medium-low spatial frequencies contains visual information that is most relevant for aesthetic decisions made about male faces, but the high spatial frequencies contain key information for decision about female faces. This dissociation is to our knowledge a novel finding, which could lead to identifying detailed gender-specific visual cues.
The oculomotor behavior provided converging evidence for the relevance of the medium-low spatial frequencies for male faces and high spatial frequencies for female faces. The attractive face in a pair was not only looked more in general than the unattractive, but gaze lingered the most over the attractive female face when the face pairs were shown with the highest (SF 4) filtering. Consistently, gaze dwelled the longest over the attractive male face when seeing the face pairs with the medium-low spatial (SF 2) filtering (Fig 4).
In addition, to get a sense of what information is contained and visible in the stimuli and within each band of SF information, we provided visualizations of how this content related to observers’ judgements. There was high similarity for the female faces between the two highest (SF 3 and 4) and the broadband faces within a small, bilateral, region (overlapping the eye pupil and the lower eyelid and infraorbital concavity but including the upper part of the zygomatic convexity; Fig 8). In addition, similarity between the filtered and unfiltered faces was higher for male models than female models for the area around the brows, nasal root, and eyes, and especially so for the (medium low) SF 2. Instead, for the medium high and high spatial frequencies (SF 3 and 4), the similarity was higher for female models than male models for the area around the lower eyelid and infraorbital region. Remarkably, the relative distributions of gaze when viewing these SF bands closely matched these similarity profiles.
Statistical analyses on the Lempel-Ziv complexity confirmed that the female faces contained significantly more information than the male faces in the above-described regions (Fig 9). However, information content was significantly high in the low SF bands only for the male faces; in particular, for the central eyebrow region, including the skull area immediately above (i.e., the supraorbital process or brow ridge) in SF 1, and the glabella of the nose and lowest nose region (including the nostrils) in SF 2.
Importantly, there was a striking dissociation between SFs for male and female faces in relation to the relevance of vertically oriented frequencies for attractiveness (normative) ratings. As visible in Fig 10, different spatial frequencies related to the ratings, revealing that for female faces, there was a significant positive correlation between attractiveness and amplitude of high vertical frequencies for female faces and at low vertical frequencies for male faces. Taking into consideration also the eye-tracking data, participants had a strong tendency to look at the faces along the whole axis of the nose (Fig 7), in particular in the European group, extending as low as the upper lip (philtum) and the Cupid’s bow at the center of the mouth, more so with increasing spatial frequency. This gaze behavior seems consistent with the preponderant role of the central, vertically oriented, features for attractiveness (normative) ratings.
Being the nose at the center of both the vertical and horizontal axes of the ‘face’ (Nota Bene: below the hairline, not the head), it is presumable that it constitutes an important element to focus gaze when evaluating facial proportions, the configuration and global harmony or symmetry of the face [58]. When spatial frequency is high, the volumetric aspect of the nose, relatively more relevant for the male face (Fig 11, right panel), becomes less visible. The nose is the most sexually dimorphic facial trait in its morphology, being on average disproportionally larger in volume in male than female faces [85–87]. While the visibility of the nose’s volume decreases that of its shape and symmetry increases with higher spatial frequencies and the latter features appear more relevant for judging the attractiveness of the female faces (Fig 11, left panel). Since gaze scanning (Fig 7) revealed a strong tendency to focus gaze at the root of the nose, or onto the central portion of the face that may correspond to the limiting size for efficient summation of configurational properties of upright (vertically oriented) face information in a single configurational face template [88]. The eyes, being paired features, horizontally centered together with the vertical prominence of the nose [89], may also convey essential information on a face’s proportions and symmetry, and more clearly so in higher spatial frequencies conditions.
It also seems of interest that the dispersion of gaze over the eyes, nose and mouth region differs in our European and Asian groups (Fig 7). The typical T-shaped focus pattern appears mainly with the European participants and increasingly so with higher spatial frequencies. In fact, the pattern of fixations is consistent with previous reports that Asians (i.e., Chinese) tend to look less at the eyes and distribute less their gaze over the face [90–92]. Especially within Japanese culture, a prolonged eye contact may be disrespectful and Japanese children are taught to look at others’ necks instead of the eyes [93, 94].
Perhaps the most remarkable dissociation between female and male features related to attractiveness, revealed by the present study’s Fourier approach, is between the two faces in Fig 11. These show graphic representations of the spatial frequencies that correlate positively with the stimuli’s normative attractiveness ratings (collected independently of the present eye-tracking study and only with Norwegian raters). A striking difference between the two genders’ images is that they show very different, little overlapping, SF components. Moreover, these SF components impressively overlap with the SF bands most relevant for forced choices, derived from the present eye-tracking study (Fig 3). For the male face (Fig 11, right panel), the attractiveness-correlated SF provide only a coarse visual resolution of the face, which however clearly conveys the depth or volumetric aspect of the head and face, with its overall size, extent of the face contour (the jaw and chin), and skull’s bone structure. These three-dimensional aspects of the male’s whole face or skull structure may be important in judging overall proportions. In contrast, the female face’s (in Fig 11, left panel) attractiveness-correlated SFs, not only show little overlap with the male’s, but they suggest that female attractiveness may be judged more on information carried by higher spatial frequencies. These may reveal local information about the surface of the face and of specific features at a level of detail that is optimal also for the task of individual person recognition and the communication of emotional signals.
In particular, internal features of the female face like the brow ridge, eyes, mouth, as well as the lower part of the face contour or chin, and their immediately surrounding facial surface regions, are clearly visible in the left panel image. We surmise that the high resolution of the above traits allows a more precise evaluation of the arrangements, spatial relations, or distance ratios between these features (e.g., the inter-ocular distance). There are several suggestions in the literature on facial beauty (also from anthropology, odontology, and aesthetic medical surgery) that our sense of face attractiveness may seek a “golden ratio” between facial traits like the eyes and mouth/teeth and the general proportions of the face ([95] but see [96]). We surmise that at HSF resolutions, information is optimal for spotting the presence of skin blemishes and the smoothness surface skin (i.e., cues of age or poor health) as well as details of the eye region affording the registering of subtle differences in eyelids’ and orbital region shape. If smooth skin is crucial for attractiveness in female faces and these properties of surface skin are best represented in high spatial frequencies, then amplitudes of higher frequencies should correlate with attractiveness ratings, since these frequencies make visible these aspects. We also note that the irises’ colors as well as the size of the pupils seem clearly delineated at such resolution. Instead, the colors of the irises would be smeared at LSF and, interestingly, previous research suggests that eye color may be more relevant when judging female than male faces for attractiveness [13]. Similarly, the highly mobile pupils may be particularly important for signaling social agreeableness, interest and attraction [8, 97]. We note that our behavioral and gaze results in the main experiment seem consistent with this ideas.
Moreover, the lower portion of the nose (nostrils) and the fullness of the lips (or vermilions) appear clearly visible within these attractiveness-correlated spatial frequencies and shape imperfections and coloring, luminance contrast between sides of the Cupid’s bow, may be very salient at this high resolution. Thus, female faces’ attractiveness-related SFs may reveal subtle deformations over the face surface, skin, and be related to the soft and malleable elements of the face, instead of its rigid skull structure. These highly mobile parts of the face like the mouth, eyes and eyebrows, all allow the display of subtle affiliative emotions [98], which may also play a key role when judging the attractiveness of an individual, even when just looking at static images [72].
In the male image in Fig 11 (right panel), a region around the ocular orbits, including the eyebrows and the bony area immediately above (i.e., the supraorbital process or ridge and glabella), as well as a region below the eyes and cheeks’ zygomas, appears well delineated in volumetry. Interestingly, the lower portions of the nose and of the mouth’s upper region play a role for male attractiveness, despite at such a coarse level of resolution the separations between the nostrils or lips are not resolved. Instead, the three-dimensional or volumetric aspects of the chin (in particular the protuberance of the mandible and its breadth) appear to be very salient. A possibility is that the coarse LSF prevalence in the image, by revealing the bony prominence of the brow ridge and of the jaw and chin, conveys effectively the attribute of masculinity inherent in the face [62, 99, 100]. In addition, a large face size characterizes masculinity as opposed to femininity [101]. However, several researchers have cautioned that masculinity may predict attractiveness relatively weakly compared to other fluctuating properties like skin color [102–104] or face and body symmetry [105, 106], which signal immunocompetence. Said and Todorov [18] found a gender-specific dissociation in the effects of shape (e.g., face width) or reflectance (e.g., lightness and color of skin). Increases towards masculinity in reflectance aspects of the male face increased attractiveness, but doing the same in shape aspects decreased it. We surmise that despite the coarse LSF male image (in Fig 11) both the reflectance of skin and of the brows are clearly visible. Interestingly, the reflectance dimensions with the strongest effects on female attractiveness involved the contrast around the eyes and the redness of the lips, which may be both best visible at higher SF.
Indeed, the HSF prominence in the image of the female face’ in Fig 11 yields a more detailed but somewhat less volumetric rendition (with slightly “embossed” features to use an art metaphor). What is visible appears related not only to highly mobile parts of the face that allow the display of subtle affiliative emotions but also to several cues associated with a sense of femininity [107, 108]. Sexual dimorphism correspond to different directions in morphometric space [108] and the female direction is associated with horizontal reduction of the chin, a forward movement of the gonion (jaw angle) and alveolar prognathism. In Fig 11, the male chin is clearly more visible than the female and appears larger in the morphed image.
The eye-tracking results confirmed that the beautiful faces are strong attractors of attention [109], since participants spent about 10% more time dwelling onto the attractive face in a pair (Fig 5) than on the relatively less attractive one. It has been shown that the attentional priority towards attractive faces can also occur unconsciously [110] and that a decision about a face’s level of attractiveness can be reached very rapidly (within 33 ms), and not very differently than when having unlimited time [111]. However, the present results are consistent with several previous studies showing that we typically spend extra time looking at faces considered attractive [112–114].
Finally, a previous study [38] used Fourier power spectrum analyses to describe the relation between spatial frequency and power of the radially averaged (1d) Fourier spectrum on a log-log scale. As the researchers point out, most natural (complex) images show a linear relationship and the relative strength or ‘power’ of fine detail information or coarse structure in an image can be, respectively, expressed linearly be the angle of the slopes in the power plots. Importantly, enhanced HSF information leads to shallow slopes, whereas enhanced LSF information leads to steep slopes. Given that pleasing natural scenes and artworks share a shallow power slope of -2 [115], the authors hypothesized that also faces approaching a Fourier power slope of -2 (i.e., with enhanced HSF information) would be considered more attractive than the same face, or others, differing from this value (e.g., steeper slopes between -3 and -4). Remarkably, when participants were given the opportunity to manually adjust the Fourier slope of the images on screen, they did choose a mean value of -2.6, which is a bit closer to that of pleasing natural scenes or artistic facial portraits. The effect was significantly larger for female faces, which also seems consistent with the present study’s findings of a bias for HSF information for female faces. A limitation of the Fourier slope approach is that it is informative about the relative distribution of frequency power, but not specific frequency bands. We surmise that, by presenting ranges of SF information separately, we are likely to reveal which information contained in the natural stimulus directly related to the aesthetic judgment about a face. In contrast, by strengthening or adding one type of visual information by distorting the natural image, one can reveal directional biases and explore the limits within which a face’s attractiveness can be enhanced [17].
Overall effect of music training programs in cognitive & academic benefits is consistently null, regardless of the type of outcome measure (verbal, non-verbal, speed-related, etc.)
Sala, Giovanni, and Fernand Gobet. 2020. “Cognitive and Academic Benefits of Music Training with Children: A Multilevel Meta-analysis.” PsyArXiv. January 15. doi:10.31234/osf.io/7s8wr
Abstract: Music training has repeatedly been claimed to positively impact on children’s cognitive skills and academic achievement. This claim relies on the assumption that engaging in intellectually demanding activities fosters particular domain-general cognitive skills, or even general intelligence. The present meta-analytic review (N = 6,984, k = 254, m = 54) shows that this belief is incorrect. Once the study quality design is controlled for, the overall effect of music training programs is null (g ̅ ≈ 0) and highly consistent across studies (τ2 ≈ 0). Small statistically significant overall effects are obtained only in those studies implementing no random allocation of participants and employing non-active controls (g ̅ ≈ 0.200, p < .001). Interestingly, music training is ineffective regardless of the type of outcome measure (e.g., verbal, non-verbal, speed-related, etc.). Furthermore, we note that, beyond meta-analysis of experimental studies, a considerable amount of cross-sectional evidence indicates that engagement in music has no impact on people’s non-music cognitive skills or academic achievement. We conclude that researchers’ optimism about the benefits of music training is empirically unjustified and stem from misinterpretation of the empirical data and, possibly, confirmation bias. Given the clarity of the results, the large number of participants involved, and the numerous studies carried out so far, we conclude that this line of research should be dismissed.
Abstract: Music training has repeatedly been claimed to positively impact on children’s cognitive skills and academic achievement. This claim relies on the assumption that engaging in intellectually demanding activities fosters particular domain-general cognitive skills, or even general intelligence. The present meta-analytic review (N = 6,984, k = 254, m = 54) shows that this belief is incorrect. Once the study quality design is controlled for, the overall effect of music training programs is null (g ̅ ≈ 0) and highly consistent across studies (τ2 ≈ 0). Small statistically significant overall effects are obtained only in those studies implementing no random allocation of participants and employing non-active controls (g ̅ ≈ 0.200, p < .001). Interestingly, music training is ineffective regardless of the type of outcome measure (e.g., verbal, non-verbal, speed-related, etc.). Furthermore, we note that, beyond meta-analysis of experimental studies, a considerable amount of cross-sectional evidence indicates that engagement in music has no impact on people’s non-music cognitive skills or academic achievement. We conclude that researchers’ optimism about the benefits of music training is empirically unjustified and stem from misinterpretation of the empirical data and, possibly, confirmation bias. Given the clarity of the results, the large number of participants involved, and the numerous studies carried out so far, we conclude that this line of research should be dismissed.
Whole-apple intake was associated with a reduced risk of CVD mortality, ischemic heart disease mortality, stroke mortality, all-cause mortality, and severe abdominal aortic calcification
The effects and associations of whole-apple intake on diverse cardiovascular risk factors. A narrative review. Berner Andrée Sandoval-Ramírez et al. Critical Reviews in Food Science and Nutrition, Jan 13 2020. https://doi.org/10.1080/10408398.2019.1709801
Abstract: Apples are among the world’s most consumed fruits. However, while the impact of whole-apple intake on cardiovascular disease (CVD) remains unknown. This narrative review summarizes a novel integrated view of whole-apple intake, CVD risk association (through observational studies; OSs), and the effects on CVD risk factors (randomized trials; RTs). In 8 OSs, whole-apple intake was associated with a reduced risk of CVD mortality, ischemic heart disease mortality, stroke mortality, all-cause mortality, and severe abdominal aortic calcification, as well as with lower C-reactive protein (CRP) concentrations. In 8 RTs, whole-apple consumption reduced total cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, systolic blood pressure, pulse pressure, and plasma inflammatory cytokines, and noticeably reduced CRP, whereas it increased high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDLc) and improved endothelial function. Thus, consuming between 100 and 150 g/day of whole apples is associated with a lower CVD risk and decreases in blood pressure, pulse pressure, total cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, and inflammation status as well as with increases in HDLc and endothelial function. These results, support the regular consumption of whole apples as an aid in the prevention of CVD.
Keywords: Apple, blood pressure, cardiovascular, cholesterol, health
Abstract: Apples are among the world’s most consumed fruits. However, while the impact of whole-apple intake on cardiovascular disease (CVD) remains unknown. This narrative review summarizes a novel integrated view of whole-apple intake, CVD risk association (through observational studies; OSs), and the effects on CVD risk factors (randomized trials; RTs). In 8 OSs, whole-apple intake was associated with a reduced risk of CVD mortality, ischemic heart disease mortality, stroke mortality, all-cause mortality, and severe abdominal aortic calcification, as well as with lower C-reactive protein (CRP) concentrations. In 8 RTs, whole-apple consumption reduced total cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, systolic blood pressure, pulse pressure, and plasma inflammatory cytokines, and noticeably reduced CRP, whereas it increased high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDLc) and improved endothelial function. Thus, consuming between 100 and 150 g/day of whole apples is associated with a lower CVD risk and decreases in blood pressure, pulse pressure, total cholesterol, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, and inflammation status as well as with increases in HDLc and endothelial function. These results, support the regular consumption of whole apples as an aid in the prevention of CVD.
Keywords: Apple, blood pressure, cardiovascular, cholesterol, health
Crimes that were written in a foreign language were systematically evaluated as less severe, maybe due to attenuated emotional processing in a nonnative language
Woumans, E., Van der Cruyssen, I., & Duyck, W. (2020). Crime and punishment: Morality judgment in a foreign language. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Jan 2020. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000736
Abstract: The current study examined whether use of a foreign language affects the manner in which people evaluate a criminal situation. We employed a range of crime scenarios, for which severity judgment scores were obtained. Crimes that were written in a foreign language were systematically evaluated as less severe compared with the same cases described in the native language. We propose that these differences may be due to attenuated emotional processing in a nonnative language. Crucially, this observed variation in severity judgment may also affect magistrates and police interrogators confronted with crime scenarios formulated in a foreign tongue. This in turn would have inevitable consequences for the penalty they will or will not exact on the suspect.
Abstract: The current study examined whether use of a foreign language affects the manner in which people evaluate a criminal situation. We employed a range of crime scenarios, for which severity judgment scores were obtained. Crimes that were written in a foreign language were systematically evaluated as less severe compared with the same cases described in the native language. We propose that these differences may be due to attenuated emotional processing in a nonnative language. Crucially, this observed variation in severity judgment may also affect magistrates and police interrogators confronted with crime scenarios formulated in a foreign tongue. This in turn would have inevitable consequences for the penalty they will or will not exact on the suspect.
Discussion
The goal of the present study was to identify whether use of a foreign language
influences crime judgment. Our results show that a crime is indeed deemed less severe
when it is described in a language other than the native one. This was the case for all four
murder scenarios employed in this study, making it the first demonstration ever that
crime judgment is affected by language use. Hence, the outcome of our study is
imperative for actual administration of justice in a globalised world, where suspects,
juries, and judges often have different native languages than the official language of the
jurisdiction in which they live.
Previous research on juridic judgment had already established that judges are
prone to certain bias when it comes to crime assessment. As such, attractiveness and
facial characteristics of the offender seem to determine the verdict and stringency of the
sentence. Attractive individuals and individuals with large and round eyes, high
eyebrows, and a narrow chin (i.e. baby-faced) tend to be judged less severely, an effect
which has been observed in lab settings (e.g. Berry & Zebrowitz-McArthur, 1988; Efran,
1974; Leventhal & Krate, 1977) as well as in field studies (e.g. Stewart, 180; 1985;
Zebrowitz & McDonald, 1991). Although these findings are striking, personal
appearance may be deemed a more plausible determinant of judgment than the language
employed. Intuitively, one would conceive that accounts of a crime are visualised in a
juror’s mind, creating a scenario independent of language. Nevertheless, similar findings
have been reported within the literature on moral decision-making (Costa et al., 2017).
Here, the prevailing theory ascribes the effect to emotional attenuation as a result of
foreign language processing. Still, it may also be the case that use of a foreign language
reduces vividness of mental imagery (Hayakawa & Keysar, 2018), which in turn may
hamper emotional processing. In any case, moral dilemmas involve personal harm for the
respondents, as they are the ones deciding on matters of life and death. The current
research now shows that the foreign language effect persists, even if a third person is the
agent of the scenario and the respondent is merely a ‘bystander’.
Although the foreign language effect was observed systematically, our study is
characterised by the fact that our crime cases varied in both motive and feelings of
remorse. Furthermore, we noticed that narratives in which the agent was male were rated
more gravely, both by male and female participants. It may be the case that crimes
committed by men are judged as more appalling than crimes committed by women.
Conversely, it is possible that gender and severity coincidentally coincided.
Notwithstanding, we believe that neither explanation alters the key finding of this study,
namely the impact of foreign language use. Moreover, this may be regarded as a
validation that the effect of language is persistent and does not depend on specific story
characteristics. This being said, we must also point out that our participant sample
consisted of both sexes, but was still dominantly female (86%). Previous research has
demonstrated that females may be more ethically sensitive than males (e.g. Roxas &
Stoneback, 2004). We must therefore note that the general outcome of this study could
vary if the sample consists of only males, who may be less severe in their judgment.
Nevertheless, there is again no indication that this may influence the effect of language
reported here. Furthermore, as the materials in this study were transferred into the other
language using the method of back-translation by a non-native speaker, future work may
need to determine whether materials written by native speakers would affect text
perception, be it emotionally or otherwise.
All in all, our findings indicate that use of a foreign language diminishes crime
severity judgment, and whilst our study was conducted among laypeople, evidence from
field studies into judgment bias related to the appearance of offenders suggests that our
results may extrapolate to professionals. Crucially, the observed variation in morality
standards may also affect magistrates and police interrogators confronted with crime
scenarios formulated in a foreign tongue, who will consider these cases to be less severe
than they would in their native one. This in turn would have inevitable consequences for
the penalty they will or will not exact on the suspect. To illustrate, in the case of the
European Court of Human Rights, the working language is either English or French.
These are the languages in which judges deliberate, pleadings and written legal
submissions are translated, and the judgment is drafted. As this court often deals with
important cases such a prohibition of torture, right to life, and right to liberty and
security, it would have serious repercussions if judges were to underestimate the gravity
of the situation merely due to the language being used. Naturally, this is not the sole
example. In an increasingly multilingual society (Grosjean, 2012), judges and juries all
over the world may be operating in a non-native language.
Oxytocin administration can promote self‐serving lying when given repeated opportunities to lie; sensitivity to these effects might be moderated by individual differences in the oxytocin receptor gene
The role of oxytocin on self‐serving lying. Cornelia Sindermann, Ruixue Luo, Benjamin Becker, Keith M. Kendrick, Christian Montag. Brain and Behavior, January 13 2020. https://doi.org/10.1002/brb3.1518
Abstract
Introduction The effects of intranasal administration of the neuropeptide oxytocin on social cognition and behavior are highly specific. Potentially situational and personal variables influence these effects. The aim of the present study was to investigate effects of oxytocin administration on self‐serving lying, including situational effects.
Methods A total of 161 adult males participated in a randomized double‐blind placebo‐controlled between‐subject intranasal oxytocin administration (24 international units) study. Self‐serving lying was assessed using three subsequent rounds of the die‐in‐a‐cup paradigm, in which different degrees of lying can be implemented by the participants that can be determined on group level.
Results Oxytocin administration seemed to promote self‐serving lying, particularly in the third (last) round and only to a certain degree (not to the maximum possible).
Conclusions Our findings demonstrate that oxytocin administration can promote self‐serving lying when given repeated opportunities to lie. Moreover, exploratory results presented in the Supplementary Material indicate that the sensitivity to the effects of intranasal oxytocin in this domain might be moderated by individual differences in the oxytocin receptor gene.
Abstract
Introduction The effects of intranasal administration of the neuropeptide oxytocin on social cognition and behavior are highly specific. Potentially situational and personal variables influence these effects. The aim of the present study was to investigate effects of oxytocin administration on self‐serving lying, including situational effects.
Methods A total of 161 adult males participated in a randomized double‐blind placebo‐controlled between‐subject intranasal oxytocin administration (24 international units) study. Self‐serving lying was assessed using three subsequent rounds of the die‐in‐a‐cup paradigm, in which different degrees of lying can be implemented by the participants that can be determined on group level.
Results Oxytocin administration seemed to promote self‐serving lying, particularly in the third (last) round and only to a certain degree (not to the maximum possible).
Conclusions Our findings demonstrate that oxytocin administration can promote self‐serving lying when given repeated opportunities to lie. Moreover, exploratory results presented in the Supplementary Material indicate that the sensitivity to the effects of intranasal oxytocin in this domain might be moderated by individual differences in the oxytocin receptor gene.
Individuals living under gang control have significantly worse education, wealth, and less income than individuals living only 50 meters away in areas not controlled by gangs
Melnikov, Nikita and Schmidt-Padilla, Carlos and Sviatschi, Maria Micaela, Gangs, Labor Mobility, and Development (October 29, 2019). SSRN: http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3477097
Abstract: We study the effects that two of the largest gangs in Latin America, MS-13 and 18th Street, have on economic development in El Salvador. We exploit the fact that the emergence of gangs in El Salvador was in part the consequence of an exogenous shift in US immigration policy that led to the deportation of gang leaders from the United States to El Salvador. Using the exogenous variation in the timing of the deportations and the boundaries of the territories controlled by the gangs, we perform a spatial regression discontinuity design and a difference-in-differences analysis to estimate the causal effect that living under the rule of gangs has on development outcomes. Our results show that individuals living under gang control have significantly worse education, wealth, and less income than individuals living only 50 meters away in areas not controlled by gangs. None of these discontinuities existed before the arrival of gangs from the US. The results are not determined by exposure to violence, lower provision of public goods, or selective migration away from gang locations. We argue that our findings are mostly driven by gangs restricting residents' mobility and labor choices. We find that individuals living under the rule of gangs have less freedom of movement and end up working in smaller firms. The results are relevant for many developing countries where non-state actors control parts of the country.
Keywords: Gangs, Development, Latin America, MS-13, Crime, Mobility
Abstract: We study the effects that two of the largest gangs in Latin America, MS-13 and 18th Street, have on economic development in El Salvador. We exploit the fact that the emergence of gangs in El Salvador was in part the consequence of an exogenous shift in US immigration policy that led to the deportation of gang leaders from the United States to El Salvador. Using the exogenous variation in the timing of the deportations and the boundaries of the territories controlled by the gangs, we perform a spatial regression discontinuity design and a difference-in-differences analysis to estimate the causal effect that living under the rule of gangs has on development outcomes. Our results show that individuals living under gang control have significantly worse education, wealth, and less income than individuals living only 50 meters away in areas not controlled by gangs. None of these discontinuities existed before the arrival of gangs from the US. The results are not determined by exposure to violence, lower provision of public goods, or selective migration away from gang locations. We argue that our findings are mostly driven by gangs restricting residents' mobility and labor choices. We find that individuals living under the rule of gangs have less freedom of movement and end up working in smaller firms. The results are relevant for many developing countries where non-state actors control parts of the country.
Keywords: Gangs, Development, Latin America, MS-13, Crime, Mobility
Monday, January 13, 2020
If you were to force America's 11 largest cities to be no larger than Miami, real income per American would fall by 7.9%; if planning regulations were lifted entirely, real income would rise by 25.7%
Urban Growth and its Aggregate Implications. Gilles Duranton, Diego Puga. NBER Working Paper No. 26591, December 2019. https://www.nber.org/papers/w26591
We develop an urban growth model where human capital spillovers foster entrepreneurship and learning in heterogenous cities. Incumbent residents limit city expansion through planning regulations so that commuting and housing costs do not outweigh productivity gains. The model builds on strong microfoundations, matches key regularities at the city and economy-wide levels, and generates novel predictions for which we provide evidence. It can be quantified relying on few parameters, provides a basis to estimate the main ones, and remains transparent regarding its mechanisms. We examine various counterfactuals to assess quantitatively the effect of cities on economic growth and aggregate income.
1. If you restricted New York City and Los Angeles to the size of Chicago, 18.9 million people would be displaced and per capita rural income would fall by 3.6%, due to diminishing returns to labor in less heavily populated areas.
2. The average reduction in real income per person, from this thought experiment, would be 3.4%. You will note that NIMBY policies are in fact running a version of this policy, albeit at different margins and with a different default status quo point.
3. If you were to force America's 11 largest cities to be no larger than Miami, real income per American would fall by 7.9%.
4. If planning regulations were lifted entirely, NYC would reach about 40 million people, Philadelphia 38 million (that's a lot of objectionable sports fans!), and Boston just shy of 30 million (ditto).
5. Output per person, under that scenario, would rise in NYC by 5.7% and by 13.3% in Boston. That said, under this same scenario incumbent New Yorkers would see net real consumption losses of 13%, whereas for Boston the incumbent losses are only about 1.1%.
6. The big winners are the new entrants. On average, real income would rise by 25.7%.
7. Alternatively, in their model, rather than laissez-faire, if America's three most productive cities relaxed their planning regulations to the same level as the median U.S. city, real per capita income would rise by about 8.2%.
8. In all of these cases the authors calculate the change in rural per capita income, based on resulting population reallocations.
We develop an urban growth model where human capital spillovers foster entrepreneurship and learning in heterogenous cities. Incumbent residents limit city expansion through planning regulations so that commuting and housing costs do not outweigh productivity gains. The model builds on strong microfoundations, matches key regularities at the city and economy-wide levels, and generates novel predictions for which we provide evidence. It can be quantified relying on few parameters, provides a basis to estimate the main ones, and remains transparent regarding its mechanisms. We examine various counterfactuals to assess quantitatively the effect of cities on economic growth and aggregate income.
1. If you restricted New York City and Los Angeles to the size of Chicago, 18.9 million people would be displaced and per capita rural income would fall by 3.6%, due to diminishing returns to labor in less heavily populated areas.
2. The average reduction in real income per person, from this thought experiment, would be 3.4%. You will note that NIMBY policies are in fact running a version of this policy, albeit at different margins and with a different default status quo point.
3. If you were to force America's 11 largest cities to be no larger than Miami, real income per American would fall by 7.9%.
4. If planning regulations were lifted entirely, NYC would reach about 40 million people, Philadelphia 38 million (that's a lot of objectionable sports fans!), and Boston just shy of 30 million (ditto).
5. Output per person, under that scenario, would rise in NYC by 5.7% and by 13.3% in Boston. That said, under this same scenario incumbent New Yorkers would see net real consumption losses of 13%, whereas for Boston the incumbent losses are only about 1.1%.
6. The big winners are the new entrants. On average, real income would rise by 25.7%.
7. Alternatively, in their model, rather than laissez-faire, if America's three most productive cities relaxed their planning regulations to the same level as the median U.S. city, real per capita income would rise by about 8.2%.
8. In all of these cases the authors calculate the change in rural per capita income, based on resulting population reallocations.
The better people are educated, the less positive their other-perceptions are; a potential explanation could be that a good education goes along with a sense of self-importance & haughtiness
Seeing the Best or Worst in Others: A Measure of Generalized Other-Perceptions. Richard Rau, Wiebke Nestler, Michael Dufner, Steffen Nestler. Assessment (to be published), January 2020. DOI: 10.13140/RG.2.2.16925.87521
Abstract: How positively or negatively people generally view others is key for understanding personality, social behavior, and psychopathology. Previous research has measured generalized other-perceptions by relying on either explicit self-reports or judgments made in group settings. With the current research, we overcome the limitations of these past approaches by introducing a novel measurement instrument for generalized other-perceptions: the Online-Tool for Assessing Perceiver Effects (O-TAPE). By assessing perceivers’ first impressions of a standardized set of target people displayed in social network profiles or short video sequences, the O-TAPE captures individual differences in the positivity of other-perceptions. In Study 1 (n = 219), the instrument demonstrated good psychometric properties and correlations with related constructs. Study 2 (n = 142) replicated these findings and also showed that the O-TAPE predicted other-perceptions in a naturalistic group setting. Study 3 (n = 200) refined the nomological network of the construct and demonstrated that the OTAPE is invulnerable to effects of social desirability.
Keywords: generalized other-perception, perceiver effect, interpersonal perception, person judgment, positivity bias
General Discussion
In the current research, we introduced the O-TAPE, a measurement tool that
objectively and reliably captures individual differences in the positivity of generalized other-perceptions. We developed two versions of the tool that use different types of stimuli:
screenshots of social network profiles (SoN-TAPE) and short video sequences (ViS-TAPE).
In both versions, perceivers differed considerably in how they judged a standardized set of
individuals, and these perceiver differences could be aggregated into a score with excellent
internal consistency, reflecting the positivity in judgments made across different targets and
traits. Further, in Studies 1 and 2 the two instruments demonstrated good convergent validity
and showed remarkable retest reliability when we administered parallel forms in a time
interval of one to three weeks. Moreover, the O-TAPE was able to predict generalized
other-perceptions in a real-life context in Study 2.
The nomological network analyses established robust convergent and divergent
relationships with a number of individual difference constructs across two heterogenous
online samples (Studies 1 and 3) and a student sample (Study 2). Most notably, more positive
generalized other-perceptions were associated with several interpersonally relevant
personality characteristics such as high communion, high agreeableness, high honestyhumility, low dispositional contempt, and (albeit less consistently) narcissistic rivalry. This
suggests that generally positive vs. negative views of others underlie many personality traits
tapping differences on the continuum from communal/prosocial to antagonistic/antisocial.
Further, some demographic variables (i.e., gender and education) were associated with
generalized other-perceptions. The gender effect converges with previous research reporting
more positive generalized other-perceptions among women (Srivastava et al., 2010; Winquist
et al., 1998; Wood et al., 2010) and indicates that women might be more mellow in their
social judgments. The education effect indicates that the better people are educated, the less
positive their other-perceptions are. A potential explanation could be that a good education
goes along with a sense of self-importance and haughtiness, but this explanation is speculative
and might be addressed in future research. Other characteristics such as openness to
experience, conscientiousness, height, explicit anthropologic beliefs, and psychological
adjustment were not or were not consistently linked to generalized other-perceptions. Finally,
the O-TAPE predicted how positively or negatively students viewed their future classmates
when they met them for the first time on a welcoming day at their university in Study 2. This
suggests that the O-TAPE captures generalized other-perceptions in an ecologically valid
way. Importantly, we ruled out the possibility that the correlations were driven by general
scale-use bias. Thus, the results are informative, specifically about the positivity in
generalized other-perceptions rather than about a global tendency to provide rather positive or
negative evaluations on rating scales in general. Finally, we also demonstrated that O-TAPE
scores are unaffected by differences in socially desirable responding.
Applications and Adaptations of the O-TAPE
Which version of the O-TAPE should be applied? The results of Study 1 and 2 suggest
that neither version should be preferred on the basis of psychometric properties. However, it
might be wise to use the ViS-TAPE rather than the SoN-TAPE when studying populations
that are not familiar with online social networks (e.g., elderly people). Yet, in most other
contexts, it might be advisable to use the SoN-TAPE rather than the ViS-TAPE for pragmatic
reasons. Specifically, the material of the SoN-TAPE can be adjusted for other languages and
the technical implementation of images into online survey platforms is usually easier than the
implementation of videos. For these reasons, we only administered the SoN-TAPE in Study 3.
There, completing the measure took most participants between five and eight minutes
(interquartile range), suggesting that researchers can draw on it even when there are time
constraints.
Moreover, the clear unidimensional factor structure of trait perceiver effects and the
high internal consistency of positivity scores suggest that it would not be problematic to
reduce the number of traits rated per target in future studies in order to obtain an even shorter
instrument that still warrants a highly reliable and valid measurement of generalized other-perceptions. For this purpose, assessing impressions of at least five (sufficiently evaluative)
traits should be adequate. In order to establish unidimensionality, samples sizes should be 200
or larger. At the same time, we advise against reducing the number of rated targets given that
large target heterogeneity is crucial to warrant the generality of the measured construct.
Importantly also, Study 3 emphasized that solely assessing people’s perceptions of “a typical
person” without providing actual target stimuli does not do the job.
Researchers who are interested in applying and adapting the O-TAPE are referred to
the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/6wuf8/). There, we provide all materials
necessary to apply the O-TAPE as well as templates and instructions for adjusting the social
network stimuli for the use in non-German speaking countries.
Finally, results of Study 1 and 2 showed that generalized other-perceptions as
measured with the O-TAPE exhibit moderate yet significant overlap with scale-use bias as
measured with the ORT. However, this did not substantially affect the validity correlations in
the present work because most validation measures were themselves relatively insusceptible
to individual differences in scale-use. We thus refrained from including the ORT in Study 3.
Nevertheless, researchers might consider complementing the O-TAPE with the ORT when
they have a specific reason to suspect that scale-use bias might impair the validity of their
results.
How should O-TAPE raw data be aggregated to obtain a scale score for each
participant? In most cases of substantive research, it will not be necessary to run random
effects models and report ICCs. As long as the only goal is to capture generalized other-perceptions, it is justified to treat the ten target stimuli as if they were items in a questionnaire
without examining how much of the overall variance is due to differences in participants vs.
differences in “item difficulties” (i.e., targets). It is also warranted to treat the rating
dimensions as if they were subscales of a questionnaire in which subscale scores can be
averaged to index an overall construct (i.e., positivity). Reporting Cronbach’s coefficient
alpha across these “subscales” serves as a straightforward (and conservative) estimate of the
positivity score’s reliability.
Abstract: How positively or negatively people generally view others is key for understanding personality, social behavior, and psychopathology. Previous research has measured generalized other-perceptions by relying on either explicit self-reports or judgments made in group settings. With the current research, we overcome the limitations of these past approaches by introducing a novel measurement instrument for generalized other-perceptions: the Online-Tool for Assessing Perceiver Effects (O-TAPE). By assessing perceivers’ first impressions of a standardized set of target people displayed in social network profiles or short video sequences, the O-TAPE captures individual differences in the positivity of other-perceptions. In Study 1 (n = 219), the instrument demonstrated good psychometric properties and correlations with related constructs. Study 2 (n = 142) replicated these findings and also showed that the O-TAPE predicted other-perceptions in a naturalistic group setting. Study 3 (n = 200) refined the nomological network of the construct and demonstrated that the OTAPE is invulnerable to effects of social desirability.
Keywords: generalized other-perception, perceiver effect, interpersonal perception, person judgment, positivity bias
General Discussion
In the current research, we introduced the O-TAPE, a measurement tool that
objectively and reliably captures individual differences in the positivity of generalized other-perceptions. We developed two versions of the tool that use different types of stimuli:
screenshots of social network profiles (SoN-TAPE) and short video sequences (ViS-TAPE).
In both versions, perceivers differed considerably in how they judged a standardized set of
individuals, and these perceiver differences could be aggregated into a score with excellent
internal consistency, reflecting the positivity in judgments made across different targets and
traits. Further, in Studies 1 and 2 the two instruments demonstrated good convergent validity
and showed remarkable retest reliability when we administered parallel forms in a time
interval of one to three weeks. Moreover, the O-TAPE was able to predict generalized
other-perceptions in a real-life context in Study 2.
The nomological network analyses established robust convergent and divergent
relationships with a number of individual difference constructs across two heterogenous
online samples (Studies 1 and 3) and a student sample (Study 2). Most notably, more positive
generalized other-perceptions were associated with several interpersonally relevant
personality characteristics such as high communion, high agreeableness, high honestyhumility, low dispositional contempt, and (albeit less consistently) narcissistic rivalry. This
suggests that generally positive vs. negative views of others underlie many personality traits
tapping differences on the continuum from communal/prosocial to antagonistic/antisocial.
Further, some demographic variables (i.e., gender and education) were associated with
generalized other-perceptions. The gender effect converges with previous research reporting
more positive generalized other-perceptions among women (Srivastava et al., 2010; Winquist
et al., 1998; Wood et al., 2010) and indicates that women might be more mellow in their
social judgments. The education effect indicates that the better people are educated, the less
positive their other-perceptions are. A potential explanation could be that a good education
goes along with a sense of self-importance and haughtiness, but this explanation is speculative
and might be addressed in future research. Other characteristics such as openness to
experience, conscientiousness, height, explicit anthropologic beliefs, and psychological
adjustment were not or were not consistently linked to generalized other-perceptions. Finally,
the O-TAPE predicted how positively or negatively students viewed their future classmates
when they met them for the first time on a welcoming day at their university in Study 2. This
suggests that the O-TAPE captures generalized other-perceptions in an ecologically valid
way. Importantly, we ruled out the possibility that the correlations were driven by general
scale-use bias. Thus, the results are informative, specifically about the positivity in
generalized other-perceptions rather than about a global tendency to provide rather positive or
negative evaluations on rating scales in general. Finally, we also demonstrated that O-TAPE
scores are unaffected by differences in socially desirable responding.
Applications and Adaptations of the O-TAPE
Which version of the O-TAPE should be applied? The results of Study 1 and 2 suggest
that neither version should be preferred on the basis of psychometric properties. However, it
might be wise to use the ViS-TAPE rather than the SoN-TAPE when studying populations
that are not familiar with online social networks (e.g., elderly people). Yet, in most other
contexts, it might be advisable to use the SoN-TAPE rather than the ViS-TAPE for pragmatic
reasons. Specifically, the material of the SoN-TAPE can be adjusted for other languages and
the technical implementation of images into online survey platforms is usually easier than the
implementation of videos. For these reasons, we only administered the SoN-TAPE in Study 3.
There, completing the measure took most participants between five and eight minutes
(interquartile range), suggesting that researchers can draw on it even when there are time
constraints.
Moreover, the clear unidimensional factor structure of trait perceiver effects and the
high internal consistency of positivity scores suggest that it would not be problematic to
reduce the number of traits rated per target in future studies in order to obtain an even shorter
instrument that still warrants a highly reliable and valid measurement of generalized other-perceptions. For this purpose, assessing impressions of at least five (sufficiently evaluative)
traits should be adequate. In order to establish unidimensionality, samples sizes should be 200
or larger. At the same time, we advise against reducing the number of rated targets given that
large target heterogeneity is crucial to warrant the generality of the measured construct.
Importantly also, Study 3 emphasized that solely assessing people’s perceptions of “a typical
person” without providing actual target stimuli does not do the job.
Researchers who are interested in applying and adapting the O-TAPE are referred to
the Open Science Framework (https://osf.io/6wuf8/). There, we provide all materials
necessary to apply the O-TAPE as well as templates and instructions for adjusting the social
network stimuli for the use in non-German speaking countries.
Finally, results of Study 1 and 2 showed that generalized other-perceptions as
measured with the O-TAPE exhibit moderate yet significant overlap with scale-use bias as
measured with the ORT. However, this did not substantially affect the validity correlations in
the present work because most validation measures were themselves relatively insusceptible
to individual differences in scale-use. We thus refrained from including the ORT in Study 3.
Nevertheless, researchers might consider complementing the O-TAPE with the ORT when
they have a specific reason to suspect that scale-use bias might impair the validity of their
results.
How should O-TAPE raw data be aggregated to obtain a scale score for each
participant? In most cases of substantive research, it will not be necessary to run random
effects models and report ICCs. As long as the only goal is to capture generalized other-perceptions, it is justified to treat the ten target stimuli as if they were items in a questionnaire
without examining how much of the overall variance is due to differences in participants vs.
differences in “item difficulties” (i.e., targets). It is also warranted to treat the rating
dimensions as if they were subscales of a questionnaire in which subscale scores can be
averaged to index an overall construct (i.e., positivity). Reporting Cronbach’s coefficient
alpha across these “subscales” serves as a straightforward (and conservative) estimate of the
positivity score’s reliability.
Humans judge faces in incomplete photographs as physically more attractive
Humans judge faces in incomplete photographs as physically more attractive. Diana Orghian & César A. Hidalgo. Scientific Reports volume 10, Article number: 110 (Jan 2020). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-56437-4
Abstract: Attractive people are perceived to be healthier, wealthier, and more sociable. Yet, people often judge the attractiveness of others based on incomplete and inaccurate facial information. Here, we test the hypothesis that people fill in the missing information with positive inferences when judging others’ facial beauty. To test this hypothesis, we conducted seven experiments where participants judged the attractiveness of human faces in complete and incomplete photographs. Our data shows that—relative to complete photographs—participants judge faces in incomplete photographs as physically more attractive. This positivity bias is replicated for different types of incompleteness; is mostly specific to aesthetic judgments; is stronger for male participants; is specific to human faces when compared to pets, flowers, and landscapes; seems to involve a holistic processing; and is stronger for atypical faces. These findings contribute to our understanding of how people perceive and make inferences about others’ beauty.
Abstract: Attractive people are perceived to be healthier, wealthier, and more sociable. Yet, people often judge the attractiveness of others based on incomplete and inaccurate facial information. Here, we test the hypothesis that people fill in the missing information with positive inferences when judging others’ facial beauty. To test this hypothesis, we conducted seven experiments where participants judged the attractiveness of human faces in complete and incomplete photographs. Our data shows that—relative to complete photographs—participants judge faces in incomplete photographs as physically more attractive. This positivity bias is replicated for different types of incompleteness; is mostly specific to aesthetic judgments; is stronger for male participants; is specific to human faces when compared to pets, flowers, and landscapes; seems to involve a holistic processing; and is stronger for atypical faces. These findings contribute to our understanding of how people perceive and make inferences about others’ beauty.
Discussion
We often judge others based on their physical appearance. Such judgments are driven by inferential mechanisms that help us fill in missing information. Here, we showed that (i) the inferential mechanism that we use to judge the physical appearance of human faces is positively biased, (ii) the bias is more pronounced in male participants, (iii) is specific to aesthetic judgments, but generalizes to other dimensions when the bias is strong enough, (iv) seems to be specific to human faces when compared to dog faces, landscapes, and flowers, and (v) is driven by the use of a holistic representation of what is a typical/average face. We also ruled out similarity to the self, positive expectations, and mood differences as explanatory mechanisms for the effect.
Presented with an incomplete human faces and instructed to judge their attractiveness, participants resort to what they know about faces (structure and features) and their representation of a prototypical face to generate new holistic representations. An inferential process that stems from matching the type of stimuli – i.e., human faces – with a prototype already existent in their memories. While incomplete human faces lead to an overall positive bias effect, stimuli such landscapes, pets, and flowers showed not positivity bias, which is likely due to the absence of a clear prototypical representations of these stimuli in people’s memories. Although our experiments suggest that typicality may have a role in the attractiveness positivity effect, further and more direct evidence is necessary to prove the robustness of this relationship. If typicality does play a relevant role, is also important to better understand how is this prototypical representation created and what are exactly the past experiences that shape it.
While the hypothesis that people fill in the missing pieces with positive inferences was never explicitly raised and tested, Saegusa and Watanabe stumbled on similar findings while investigating other phenomena. In their research on how information from individual facial parts contributes to the judgements of whole-face attractiveness over time, they found that attractiveness was higher for independent facial parts (e.g., eye, mouth) than for whole-faces36. Another study found that, on average, back-view photographs were rated as more attractive than front-view photographs37. The back-view condition can be seen as an extreme case of our incomplete treatments, in which the only information provided about the person is the shape of the head and the hair type, color, cut, and length. On a similar note, Miyazaki and Kawahara38 in an attempt to look into how the use of sanitary-masks by the Japanese women affects people’s perception of their beauty and health, found that certain types of occlusions also lead to higher perceived attractiveness, but only for originally unattractive faces judgements. Finally, Lu and collaborators39 manipulated the amount of information and attractiveness of cartoon characters (computer generated, gouache, and stick-figures), with the purpose of studying gender difference in attractiveness judgements. However, no significant differences were found between attractiveness judgements of the three types of cartoons. Overall, these findings support our hypothesis: when perceiving incomplete faces people fill in the missing information with positive details. Also, noteworthy, but in a domain different from that of facial perception, the work by Norton and colleagues8 showed that people perceive others’ personalities more favorably when they are provided with fewer personality traits as opposed to many.
Being positively biased about the attractiveness of strangers might have been a mechanism evolutionarily selected, as it might have facilitated social and reproductive events. However, the impact of this bias might only apply to impressions and interactions in first encounters. It is known that first impressions get diluted as we get to know and acquire more information about a person7. Thus, an interesting question for future research is the influence of the positivity bias on subsequent interactions with the target-person.
Whether the effect is unique to human faces also requires further research. More homogeneous categories than the ones we used need to be submitted to the same analysis to reach a more robust conclusion regarding the specificity of the positivity bias effect.
The contribution of face symmetry should also be studies in more detail. A meta-analysis performed by Rhodes in 200640 tells us that symmetric faces are perceived as more attractive when they result from blending the original and mirror-reversed images, but they are not when they are “chimeras” (pure mirror-reversed with no blending). Pure mirror-reversed photographs lead to less attractive exemplars due to enlargement or reduction of the mid-line features41. In our second experiment, we used chimeras because we wanted to understand if one half of the face is used to infer the missing half, but it would be interesting to test whether using a blended symmetric face (and thus more naturally looking) would lead to a similar conclusion.
One limitation of our work is that all experiments were performed online with Mechanical Turk participants. While there is research showing that data from online experiments is comparable to data from lab-based experiments42,43, these conclusions need to be replicated in the laboratory and in contexts where the implications of the research might be directly relevant (e.g., social media, recruitment, fashion industry, entertainment, advertisement, and marketing).
We aim to determine whether shoes are a systematic form of self-expression
Those shoes are you! Personality expressed in shoes. Stephanus Badenhorst et al. Univ. of Wisconsin, Jan 2020. https://minds.wisconsin.edu/bitstream/handle/1793/79561/BadenhorstSpr19.pdf?sequence=1
• People express their personality traits and attitudes in many ways. People express themselves
in the way they speak and carry themselves1, what they post on social media2, the leisure activities they pursue3, the music they prefer4, and even the clothes they wear5.
• We aim to determine whether shoes are a systematic form of self-expression. Only one other
research team has pursued this question 6; in that study, men and women completed a brief (10-item) personality inventory and submitted a photo of the shoes they wear most often. The researchers showed that characteristics of people’s shoes are tied to their gender (more feminine shoes) and income (more expensive shoes), but they found very few links between people’s personality traits and shoe characteristics.
• In the current study, we extend past research by (1) using a comprehensive personality inventory, (2) asking participants to report on their shoe purchasing and decision-making behaviors, and (3) asking participants to submit a photo of the shoes they think best represents their personality.
• In this poster, we present the results of analyses designed to test two hypotheses:
(1) The shoes that people wear are tied to their personality (e.g., more conscientious people wear
cleaner and well-maintained shoes); and
(2) People’s shoe-buying and shoe-decision-making behaviors are tied to their personality traits (e.g., more extraverted people own more shoes and spend more money on their shoes).
• As far as we know, we are only the second research team to test the hypothesis that people drop hints about their personality through the shoes they wear; further, we are the first team to investigate how people’s shoe decision-making and shoe consumer habits relate to their personality traits.
• Not all personality traits were correlated with all shoe characteristics, and the correlations that were statistically significant were generally weak in magnitude. However, we had a lot of shoes that did not vary from each other: 3 people uploaded a basic Converse, 15 people uploaded a black or neutral toned running shoe, and 4 people uploaded a basic white Vans canvas loafer. It is possible that the links between shoe characteristics and shoe-owner personality traits would be a bit stronger if we had a sample of shoes posted by individuals –perhaps middle-aged adults– who have fewer financial constraints and perhaps fewer conformity concerns that presumably limit the degree of variability in shoe characteristics within a college student sample.
• People express their personality traits and attitudes in many ways. People express themselves
in the way they speak and carry themselves1, what they post on social media2, the leisure activities they pursue3, the music they prefer4, and even the clothes they wear5.
• We aim to determine whether shoes are a systematic form of self-expression. Only one other
research team has pursued this question 6; in that study, men and women completed a brief (10-item) personality inventory and submitted a photo of the shoes they wear most often. The researchers showed that characteristics of people’s shoes are tied to their gender (more feminine shoes) and income (more expensive shoes), but they found very few links between people’s personality traits and shoe characteristics.
• In the current study, we extend past research by (1) using a comprehensive personality inventory, (2) asking participants to report on their shoe purchasing and decision-making behaviors, and (3) asking participants to submit a photo of the shoes they think best represents their personality.
• In this poster, we present the results of analyses designed to test two hypotheses:
(1) The shoes that people wear are tied to their personality (e.g., more conscientious people wear
cleaner and well-maintained shoes); and
(2) People’s shoe-buying and shoe-decision-making behaviors are tied to their personality traits (e.g., more extraverted people own more shoes and spend more money on their shoes).
• As far as we know, we are only the second research team to test the hypothesis that people drop hints about their personality through the shoes they wear; further, we are the first team to investigate how people’s shoe decision-making and shoe consumer habits relate to their personality traits.
• Not all personality traits were correlated with all shoe characteristics, and the correlations that were statistically significant were generally weak in magnitude. However, we had a lot of shoes that did not vary from each other: 3 people uploaded a basic Converse, 15 people uploaded a black or neutral toned running shoe, and 4 people uploaded a basic white Vans canvas loafer. It is possible that the links between shoe characteristics and shoe-owner personality traits would be a bit stronger if we had a sample of shoes posted by individuals –perhaps middle-aged adults– who have fewer financial constraints and perhaps fewer conformity concerns that presumably limit the degree of variability in shoe characteristics within a college student sample.
Individuals perceive the gay non-partisan candidate as significantly more liberal; & conservative individuals reliably prefer in-group gay candidates to straight candidates from the other party
Partisanship, sexuality, and perceptions of candidates. Eric Loepp & Shane M. Redman. Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties, Jan 12 2020. https://doi.org/10.1080/17457289.2019.1711099
ABSTRACT: Cultural debates over gay rights have prompted a great deal of scholarship assessing the nature and resiliency of citizen attitudes toward homosexuality in American political life. We posit, however, that more attention should be devoted to LGBT individuals themselves as potential office holders. Specifically, we argue that in an era of increased affective polarization and partisan sorting, party identification of candidates, as well as affectual and ideological attitudes of voters, must be integrated into analyses of the effects of sexuality as a voting heuristic. Drawing on social identity and subtyping theories, we contend that candidate sexuality will influence attitudes about some candidates, but not others. We then present the results of an original survey experiment in which candidate partisanship and sexuality are both manipulated. The data reveal substantial support of our theory: while sexuality is a relevant consideration in the candidate evaluation process, both partisanship of candidates and political attributes of voters can severely condition its effects.
Discussion
In a world of increasing affective polarization (e.g. Iyengar and Westwood
2015) and partisan-ideological sorting (e.g. Levendusky 2009), studying the
effects of candidate sexuality requires analyzing its interaction with partisanship. We demonstrate that while gay stereotypes remain a potent force in
shaping impressions of political candidates in a non-partisan setting, they
are largely, though not wholly, neutralized in partisan contexts. Voters in
both parties consistently express more support for co-partisans than out-partisans. Even more conservative individuals reliably prefer gay candidates from
their own party to straight candidates from the other. At the same time, candidate sexuality can be an important determinant of voter attitudes when
evaluating gay Republican candidates. These candidates represent a
subtype of Republicans, possessing cognitively inconsistent attributes that
complicate the evaluation process. This tension manifests in the use of sexuality as a conditioning heuristic that generates differential perceptions of gay
and straight Republicans. The results speak to behavioral patterns in the electorate that have important implications for gay candidates that are beginning
to run for office at higher rates than ever. 2018 saw over 600 non-straight candidates run for public office in the United States, including a four-fold increase
over 2010 in the number of candidates nominated for a seat in Congress.16
The 2020 presidential election cycle witnessed the first openly gay candidate
run for his party’s presidential nomination.17 Our results suggest mixed prospects for these candidates. On one hand, sexuality remains a pervasive
influence in non-partisan contexts. Given that political careers often start at
lower levels of public office—which are often non-partisan—the results
imply that if openly gay candidates seek a non-partisan office, their sexuality
status may—if divulged—be used as a cue by voters, such that the candidate
is perceived to be more ideologically liberal. In heavily Democratic areas, this
may be an asset; in more Republican regions, a liability. However, many elections are not non-partisan, and this study contributes important caveats concerning the applicability of sexuality to partisan races. Consistent with recent
research on the effects of partisan affect and sorting (e.g. Mason 2015), we
observe that shared partisanship compels voters to express (dis)approval of
Democratic candidates principally as a function of their party affiliation.
Voters are no more likely to reject a gay Democratic candidate than a straight
one, or vice versa. Popular wisdom, along with some of the extant literature,
suggests that gay individuals face additional barriers that may discourage
them from running for office. While we do not claim gay Democrats will
never face electoral challenges when running for office that their straight
counterparts do not, this research suggests that when it comes to judging
Democratic politicians, the effects of sexuality are diminished. At the same
time, the data suggest a dilemma for gay Republicans that is not dissimilar
to challenges female or non-white Republicans have historically faced:
voters drawing on global stereotypes about partisanship and sexuality must
process conflicting information about them. This could prove advantageous
at times: for instance, a gay Republican candidate may enjoy more support
among Democratic voters than would straight Republican candidates. Yet
Democrats may still perceive gay Republicans to be “too conservative”
when they are contrasted with Democratic candidates from the voters’ own
party. Simultaneously, we show that Republicans may perceive gay Republicans as “not conservative enough,” and express less support for them than
for straight Republican candidates. This challenge is compounded by the
fact that primary elections in the United States mean gay Republicans
would first have to endure the penalties imposed by their sexuality among
party constituents. Even if they were to secure a party nomination, there is
little evidence Democrats would defect from their party to support a gay
Republican in a general election. Patterns of stereotypes and partisan affect
suggest the prospects for openly gay Republican candidates remain bleak.
This research does not purport to be the final authority on the interaction
of sexuality and partisanship. Indeed, multiple caveats are important to
acknowledge. First and foremost, this project represents an initial foray into
this subject; further research building upon the findings uncovered here is
essential. Different treatment designs may yield additional results of interest.
Relatedly, a number of potentially consequential variables that will further
qualify the impact of sexuality in American elections are now ripe for exploration, such as gender, race, and political status (e.g. incumbency). Indeed, just
as women may still be held to different standards than men even if they are
not overtly discriminated against at the polls (e.g. Teele, Kalla, and Rosenbluth
2018), it may also be the case that candidate sexuality matters in particular
electoral contexts more than others. Future work can also extend this analysis
to other phenomena of interest like vote choice in multi-candidate fields.
More expansive conjoint analyses would also be useful to further identify
the causal effects of candidate attributes on voter behavior. Despite these
limitations, we offer an important extension of early research on sexuality
cues that do not integrate partisanship: candidates’ sexuality does not systematically impact how all voters perceive them; instead, its impact is felt when it
does not align with partisanship, when partisan information is altogether unavailable, and among individuals with particularly strong political attitudes.
ABSTRACT: Cultural debates over gay rights have prompted a great deal of scholarship assessing the nature and resiliency of citizen attitudes toward homosexuality in American political life. We posit, however, that more attention should be devoted to LGBT individuals themselves as potential office holders. Specifically, we argue that in an era of increased affective polarization and partisan sorting, party identification of candidates, as well as affectual and ideological attitudes of voters, must be integrated into analyses of the effects of sexuality as a voting heuristic. Drawing on social identity and subtyping theories, we contend that candidate sexuality will influence attitudes about some candidates, but not others. We then present the results of an original survey experiment in which candidate partisanship and sexuality are both manipulated. The data reveal substantial support of our theory: while sexuality is a relevant consideration in the candidate evaluation process, both partisanship of candidates and political attributes of voters can severely condition its effects.
Discussion
In a world of increasing affective polarization (e.g. Iyengar and Westwood
2015) and partisan-ideological sorting (e.g. Levendusky 2009), studying the
effects of candidate sexuality requires analyzing its interaction with partisanship. We demonstrate that while gay stereotypes remain a potent force in
shaping impressions of political candidates in a non-partisan setting, they
are largely, though not wholly, neutralized in partisan contexts. Voters in
both parties consistently express more support for co-partisans than out-partisans. Even more conservative individuals reliably prefer gay candidates from
their own party to straight candidates from the other. At the same time, candidate sexuality can be an important determinant of voter attitudes when
evaluating gay Republican candidates. These candidates represent a
subtype of Republicans, possessing cognitively inconsistent attributes that
complicate the evaluation process. This tension manifests in the use of sexuality as a conditioning heuristic that generates differential perceptions of gay
and straight Republicans. The results speak to behavioral patterns in the electorate that have important implications for gay candidates that are beginning
to run for office at higher rates than ever. 2018 saw over 600 non-straight candidates run for public office in the United States, including a four-fold increase
over 2010 in the number of candidates nominated for a seat in Congress.16
The 2020 presidential election cycle witnessed the first openly gay candidate
run for his party’s presidential nomination.17 Our results suggest mixed prospects for these candidates. On one hand, sexuality remains a pervasive
influence in non-partisan contexts. Given that political careers often start at
lower levels of public office—which are often non-partisan—the results
imply that if openly gay candidates seek a non-partisan office, their sexuality
status may—if divulged—be used as a cue by voters, such that the candidate
is perceived to be more ideologically liberal. In heavily Democratic areas, this
may be an asset; in more Republican regions, a liability. However, many elections are not non-partisan, and this study contributes important caveats concerning the applicability of sexuality to partisan races. Consistent with recent
research on the effects of partisan affect and sorting (e.g. Mason 2015), we
observe that shared partisanship compels voters to express (dis)approval of
Democratic candidates principally as a function of their party affiliation.
Voters are no more likely to reject a gay Democratic candidate than a straight
one, or vice versa. Popular wisdom, along with some of the extant literature,
suggests that gay individuals face additional barriers that may discourage
them from running for office. While we do not claim gay Democrats will
never face electoral challenges when running for office that their straight
counterparts do not, this research suggests that when it comes to judging
Democratic politicians, the effects of sexuality are diminished. At the same
time, the data suggest a dilemma for gay Republicans that is not dissimilar
to challenges female or non-white Republicans have historically faced:
voters drawing on global stereotypes about partisanship and sexuality must
process conflicting information about them. This could prove advantageous
at times: for instance, a gay Republican candidate may enjoy more support
among Democratic voters than would straight Republican candidates. Yet
Democrats may still perceive gay Republicans to be “too conservative”
when they are contrasted with Democratic candidates from the voters’ own
party. Simultaneously, we show that Republicans may perceive gay Republicans as “not conservative enough,” and express less support for them than
for straight Republican candidates. This challenge is compounded by the
fact that primary elections in the United States mean gay Republicans
would first have to endure the penalties imposed by their sexuality among
party constituents. Even if they were to secure a party nomination, there is
little evidence Democrats would defect from their party to support a gay
Republican in a general election. Patterns of stereotypes and partisan affect
suggest the prospects for openly gay Republican candidates remain bleak.
This research does not purport to be the final authority on the interaction
of sexuality and partisanship. Indeed, multiple caveats are important to
acknowledge. First and foremost, this project represents an initial foray into
this subject; further research building upon the findings uncovered here is
essential. Different treatment designs may yield additional results of interest.
Relatedly, a number of potentially consequential variables that will further
qualify the impact of sexuality in American elections are now ripe for exploration, such as gender, race, and political status (e.g. incumbency). Indeed, just
as women may still be held to different standards than men even if they are
not overtly discriminated against at the polls (e.g. Teele, Kalla, and Rosenbluth
2018), it may also be the case that candidate sexuality matters in particular
electoral contexts more than others. Future work can also extend this analysis
to other phenomena of interest like vote choice in multi-candidate fields.
More expansive conjoint analyses would also be useful to further identify
the causal effects of candidate attributes on voter behavior. Despite these
limitations, we offer an important extension of early research on sexuality
cues that do not integrate partisanship: candidates’ sexuality does not systematically impact how all voters perceive them; instead, its impact is felt when it
does not align with partisanship, when partisan information is altogether unavailable, and among individuals with particularly strong political attitudes.
The developing neonatal cortical folding is unique enough to be considered as a “fingerprint” that can reliably identify an individual within a cohort of infants, even monozygotic twins with similar developmental environments
Individual identification and individual variability analysis based on cortical folding features in developing infant singletons and twins. Dingna Duan et al. Human Brain Mapping, January 12 2020. https://doi.org/10.1002/hbm.24924
Abstract: Studying the early dynamic development of cortical folding with remarkable individual variability is critical for understanding normal early brain development and related neurodevelopmental disorders. This study focuses on the fingerprinting capability and the individual variability of cortical folding during early brain development. Specifically, we aim to explore (a) whether the developing neonatal cortical folding is unique enough to be considered as a “fingerprint” that can reliably identify an individual within a cohort of infants; (b) which cortical regions manifest more individual variability and thus contribute more for infant identification; (c) whether the infant twins can be distinguished by cortical folding. Hence, for the first time, we conduct infant individual identification and individual variability analysis involving twins based on the developing cortical folding features (mean curvature, average convexity, and sulcal depth) in 472 neonates with 1,141 longitudinal MRI scans. Experimental results show that the infant individual identification achieves 100% accuracy when using the neonatal cortical folding features to predict the identities of 1‐ and 2‐year‐olds. Besides, we observe high identification capability in the high‐order association cortices (i.e., prefrontal, lateral temporal, and inferior parietal regions) and two unimodal cortices (i.e., precentral gyrus and lateral occipital cortex), which largely overlap with the regions encoding remarkable individual variability in cortical folding during the first 2 years. For twins study, we show that even for monozygotic twins with identical genes and similar developmental environments, their cortical folding features are unique enough for accurate individual identification; and in some high‐order association cortices, the differences between monozygotic twin pairs are significantly lower than those between dizygotic twins. This study thus provides important insights into individual identification and individual variability based on cortical folding during infancy.
4 DISCUSSION
4.1 Infant identification based on cortical folding features
The first main contribution of this study resides in the finding that the cortical folding morphology fingerprints the dynamic developing infant brain and is reliable for individual identification during the first postnatal years. Despite the dramatic global change in cortical size, shape and folding features during birth and 2 years of age (Li, Nie, Wang, Shi, Lin, et al., 2013a; Li, Wang, Shi, Lyall et al., 2014; Lyall et al., 2014; Meng et al., 2014), as also shown in Figure 1, we achieved promising accuracies in identifying 1‐ and 2‐year‐old brains from neonatal cortices using the combinations of cortical folding features (Table 2 ). More importantly, we can thus anticipate that the evidenced fingerprinting power of the neonatal brain of a specific subject can be carried out across the whole lifespan. The reasons for this assumption are in two aspects. First, all major cortical folds and individual variability patterns of the human brain are established at term birth (Duan et al., 2018; Hill et al., 2010; Li, Wang, Shi, Lin, & Shen, 2014a). Second, the most dynamic phase of postnatal brain development is the first 2 years of life, and the folding patterns only undergo minor changes during later childhood and adulthood, thus the 2‐year‐olds' brains largely resemble the adult brains in cortical folding (Gilmore et al., 2007; Li, Nie, Wang, Shi, Lin, et al., 2013a; Li, Nie, Wang, Shi, Gilmore, et al., 2014). Hence, once the 2‐year‐olds can be correctly identified, the possibility of identifying the adult brains based on their neonatal cortical folding patterns would be very high. However, further investigations are required to validate this assumption using a larger longitudinal dataset covering both developing and adult periods.Table 2 provides us further insights into the infant identification tasks from neonatal cortical folding. Specifically, first, the combination of three kinds of cortical folding features can slightly improve identification accuracies compared to any single feature. Though the improvement is not significant, we prefer to adopt the combinations of three features into the proposed individual identification framework because of two reasons: (a) the mean curvature, average convexity, and sulcal depth provide complementary morphological information of cortical folding from different aspects, as described at the beginning of Section 2.3; (b) the accuracies are all 100% in all tasks, outperforming any single feature and other feature combinations. Second, the identification accuracies in the first two tasks using neonatal brain to identify 1‐ and 2‐year‐olds are lower than that in the third task using 1‐year‐olds to identify 2‐year‐olds. Compared to the first two tasks, the third task is more similar to the adult individual identification, due to the moderate change of cortical folding from Year 1 to Year 2. Thus, these results indirectly validate that the infant individual identification involving neonates is much more challenging than the adult individual identification. Furthermore, the identification accuracies in the first task (i.e., using the dataset with scans at Year 0 to predict the identities of scans at Year 1) are sometimes lower than that of the second task (i.e., using the dataset with scans at Year 0 to predict the identities of scans at Year 2). It might seem less reasonable, since the first task should be easier than the second one, because of the smaller brain development in the first year, in comparison to the first 2 years. To analyze whether this result is caused by the imbalanced datasets in the first two tasks, we repeated experiments with balanced datasets based on both ROI‐based and global‐based methods, as shown in Table S3. Here, to obtain the balanced Year 1 and Year 2 datasets, we randomly selected 200 subjects for 10 times from their original datasets, respectively. Table S3 shows the averaged accuracies of 10 times experiments. As we can see, the accuracies in Task 1 are still lower than Task 2 in some experiments. Excluding the reason of imbalanced datasets, we speculate that the different surface quality in Year 1 and Year 2 datasets might be responsible for this unexpected result in Table 2. Specifically, in the image processing pipeline, the surfaces in Year 0 dataset are reconstructed based on the segmentation results obtained from T2‐weighted images, which show better tissue contrast than the T1‐weighted images of neonatal brains, while the surfaces in Year 1 and Year 2 datasets are reconstructed from T1‐weighted images. Due to the poorer contrast of T1‐weighted images at Year 1 compared with those at Year 2, the surface quality of images in Year 1 dataset in the first task is poorer than that in Year 2 dataset in the second task, which thus might lead to the unexpected slightly lower identification accuracies in the first task.
To handle the case where the subject to be identified has no corresponding scan in the dataset, we set a threshold of the ratio between the frequencies of the first ranked potential identity and the second ranked potential identity. We recorded the ratios during all subjects' identification procedures, and found that the minimum ratios in the first two tasks are 2.0 and 2.2, respectively. The distributions of the ratios are displayed in histograms in Figure 7. Of note, choosing a proper threshold of the ratios is important for the individual identification method. If the threshold is too large, the FPR would be 0, but the FNR would be large; if it is too small, the FPR would be large, and the FNR would be 0. In both situations with improper thresholds, the identification accuracies would be low. The accuracies, FPRs and FNRs based on different thresholds in inverse tasks are displayed in Table S1. Here, we set the threshold to 2.0 according to the above minimum ratio in the first two tasks. Based on thresholding, if a new coming scan has no corresponding scan in the early dataset, we would reject it, thus controlling the false discovery rate.
4.3 Twins study: Individual identification and cortical variability
The third main contribution of our study is the discovery that both the MZ and DZ twins' brains can be correctly identified using the cortical folding features despite similar genetic and environmental influences. Table 5 demonstrates that the cortical folding features are reliable for identifying both infant MZ and DZ twins, and there is no statistical significant difference in the difficulty degree between their identification. Besides, the accuracies show slightly higher values than the corresponding identification accuracies in Table 2, but no significant improvement was found. The slight difference might be caused by the largely imbalanced datasets in the tasks of individual and twin identification. Moreover, Figure 5 and Figures S4‐S5 show that the discordance between MZ twin pairs in most cortical regions, especially the high‐order association cortices, is generally lower than that between DZ twin pairs. Figure 6 further validates that in most of these high‐order association cortices, the degree of discordance between MZ twin pairs is significantly lower than that of between DZ twin pairs, which is in line with the universal biological principles (Kaminsky et al., 2009). In a few regions in Figure 5, the differences between MZ twin pairs are slightly larger than the difference between DZ twin pairs, but no significance was found according to the results of the one‐tailed test. According to the results of these statistical tests, we can have an interesting conclusion that only in some high‐order association cortices, the differences between MZ twin pairs are significantly lower than those between DZ twin pairs, while in other ROIs, there is no statistical significant difference between the discordance of MZ and DZ twins.It is interesting that the MZ twins, who share the identical genetic makeup (DNA) from a single fertilized egg (Jain, Prabhakar, & Pankanti, 2002; Patwari & Lee, 2008), present distinctive cortical folding patterns in infants. Though the underlying reason is still unclear, recent studies found that the genetically‐identical cells and organisms are not an entirely genetic characteristic, but influenced by both genetic and environmental factors in a dynamic and complex manner (Jha et al., 2018; Raser & O'shea, 2005). Specifically, first, the variation in gene expression may contribute to the phenotypic variability (Patwari & Lee, 2008; Raser & O'shea, 2005) of cortical folding patterns. Second, the prenatal environmental factors (Patwari & Lee, 2008), including the umbilical cord length, access to the nutrition, blood pressure, and position in the womb, also play import roles during the prenatal dynamic development of cortical folding. To this end, we can conclude that (a) both genetic and environmental factors could influence the early development of cortical folding morphology; (b) individual identification based on cortical folding is valid and promising, because there are no two identical brains, even for MZ twins.
4.4 Additional considerations
There are several issues that require further considerations as listed below.4.4.1 Cortical parcellation choice
From a methodological perspective, the scale and definition of the ROI might influence the patterns of regions with high identification accuracy to some extent. With a cortical region showing high identification accuracy, it might be hard to know which specific part of this region is more critical, given the large sizes of some ROIs from Desikan‐Killiany parcellation (Desikan et al., 2006). Future work may explore the patterns of identification accuracy with a finer‐scale ROI parcellation to better understand which sub‐regions are more or less contributive for individual identification and to better inspect the relation of cortical identification capability and individual variability patterns.4.4.2 Longitudinal individual cortical folding study across lifespan
It remains unclear to which extent the individual cortical folding is consistent across the whole lifespan. This would be ideally explored using a longitudinal brain dataset with follow‐up MR images from birth to adulthood—which is currently nonexistent. Future studies should include further collecting follow‐up images, and exploring the consistent aspects and developmental aspects of cortical folding during brain development. Additionally, since our experiments with promising identification accuracies were carried out on healthy subjects, it is still unclear that whether specific neurodevelopmental disorder would influence the individual variability and fingerprinting power of the cortical folding. However, it is promising since some studies found that the descriptor of brain morphology can be used to effectively identify adult individuals with Alzheimer's Disease (Peper et al., 2007; Wachinger et al., 2015). Further studies would be required to validate this assumption based on datasets including both healthy subjects and subjects with neurodevelopmental disorders. It would constitute a formidable step forward to demonstrate this in brain development and maturation research.4.4.3 Infant identification
Though our proposed method based on cortical folding features achieves promising identification accuracies (100%), we do realize that it is not a realistic way for infant identification at present, since MRI is a relatively slow and expensive imaging examination until now. Of note, our main innovation of this study is not the real application of infant identification but rather the three neuroscientific discoveries we reported. Thus, we concisely review the background of current infant identification methods as follows. To our knowledge, this is the first study to leverage the developing cortical folding as the biometric trait for infant identification. There are a few infant identification studies based on other conventional biometric traits, for example, fingerprint (Jain et al., 2016), footprint (E. Liu, 2017), face (Bharadwaj, Bhatt, Singh, Vatsa, & Singh, 2010), or iris (Corby et al., 2006). Compared to the cortical folding features, these biometric traits are more convenient to acquire. However, their performance is less promising, especially when involving neonates (typically < 90% in accuracy) due to the rapidly changing biometric traits during infancy. Besides, these exterior biometric traits are typically unstable and easy to be artificially changed or imitated on purpose in the real application. In future, once brain MRI becomes fast, convenient and cheap to acquire, cortical folding could potentially be a reliable biometric trait for infant identification.
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