True statistical inference is found outside of the great apes: Kea can integrate knowledge across different cognitive domains to flexibly adjust their predictions of sampling events

Kea show three signatures of domain-general statistical inference. Amalia P. M. Bastos & Alex H. Taylor. Nature Communications volume 11, March 3 2020, Article number: 828 (2020). https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-14695-1

Abstract: One key aspect of domain-general thought is the ability to integrate information across different cognitive domains. Here, we tested whether kea (Nestor notabilis) can use relative quantities when predicting sampling outcomes, and then integrate both physical information about the presence of a barrier, and social information about the biased sampling of an experimenter, into their predictions. Our results show that kea exhibit three signatures of statistical inference, and therefore can integrate knowledge across different cognitive domains to flexibly adjust their predictions of sampling events. This result provides evidence that true statistical inference is found outside of the great apes, and that aspects of domain-general thinking can convergently evolve in brains with a highly different structure from primates. This has important implications not only for our understanding of how intelligence evolves, but also for research focused on how to create artificial domain-general thought processes.

The parrots that understand probabilities, Nature Video. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Yj718A7_s4A

Perceptions of President Donald Trump’s Personality Disorder Traits: The relative strength of the traits associated with the disorders (sadistic, narcissistic, antisocial, & passive-aggressive) was highly similar between conservatives & liberals

Voter Perceptions of President Donald Trump’s Personality Disorder Traits: Implications of Political Affiliation. Jacob A. Fiala et al. Clinical Psychological Science, March 3, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1177/2167702619885399

Abstract: The short form of the Coolidge Axis II Inventory (SCATI) was used to measure traits associated with 14 personality disorders (according to essential Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders criteria) in Donald Trump shortly after the fall 2016 election. Liberal or conservative participants (N = 219, mean age = 38.20 years, range = 18–79 years) were randomly assigned to view a positive or negative compilation of official campaign videos depicting Trump and then completed the SCATI. The general hypothesis was supported: Respondents’ political affiliation related with personality perceptions (although campaign video compilations did not). Despite differences in magnitude, the relative strength of the traits associated with the disorders was highly similar between conservatives and liberals (intraclass correlation coefficient = .76, p < .001). On the basis of overall rankings (independent of respondent’s party affiliation), Trump’s personality was collectively perceived to be at or above the 99th normative percentile for traits associated with four personality disorders (sadistic, narcissistic, antisocial, and passive-aggressive).

Keywords: personality, Trump, political psychology, narcissistic, sadistic

Beliefs about religious evil remain a strong and consistent predictor of attitudes about issues involving sexuality, including abortion, homosexuality, premarital sex, extramarital sex, and pornography use

The Flesh and The Devil: Belief in Religious Evil and Views of Sexual Morality. Joseph O. Baker, Andrea Molle & Christopher D. Bader. Review of Religious Research, March 3 2020. https://rd.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13644-020-00403-4

Abstract: We examine an understudied connection between religion and sexuality: beliefs about the reality of supernatural evil (Satan, hell, and demons). After controlling for multiple other aspects of religiosity, beliefs about religious evil remain a strong and consistent predictor of attitudes about issues involving sexuality, including abortion, homosexuality, premarital sex, extramarital sex, and pornography use. Further, the effects of religious service attendance on attitudes about sexuality are contingent upon beliefs about religious evil. Moral condemnation of non-traditional sexuality is significantly higher among regular religious participants who believe strongly in religious evil compared to actively religious people who disbelieve in religious evil, as well as compared to people who do not attend religious services. Beliefs about religious evil are therefore central to understanding the empirical connections between religion and support for conservative, traditional views of sexual morality.

Female threespine sticklebacks: Consistent individual differences in neuroendocrine correlates of personality traints, and in activity, sociability and risk taking after an opportunity to mate

Personality traits change after an opportunity to mate. Chloe Monestier, Alison Bell. bioRxiv, March 03, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.02.973693

Abstract: There is growing evidence that personality traits can change throughout the life course in humans and nonhuman animals. However, the proximate and ultimate causes of personality trait change are largely unknown, especially in adults. In a controlled, longitudinal experiment, we tested whether a key life event for adults - mating - can cause personality traits to change in female threespine sticklebacks. We confirmed that there are consistent individual differences in activity, sociability and risk taking, and then compared these personality traits among three groups of females: 1) control females; 2) females that physically mated; 3) females that socially experienced courtship but did not mate. Both the physical experience of mating and the social experience of courtship caused females to become less willing to take risks and less social. To understand the proximate mechanisms underlying these changes, we measured levels of excreted steroids. Both the physical experience of mating and the social experience of courtship caused levels of dihydroxyprogesterone (17α,20β-P) to increase, and females with higher 17α,20β-P were less willing to take risks and less social. These results provide experimental evidence that personality traits and their underlying neuroendocrine correlates are influenced by formative social and life-history experiences well into adulthood.

Men reported higher levels of extradyadic behaviors and sexual desire, gave more importance to physical attractiveness, and perceived their current relationship as having less quality than women

Extradyadic Behaviors and Gender: How Do They Relate With Sexual Desire, Relationship Quality, and Attractiveness. Joana Arantes, Fátima Barros and Helena M. Oliveira. Front. Psychol., March 3 2020. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02554

Abstract: Recent years have seen an increasing number of studies on relationship extradyadic behaviors (Pinto and Arantes, 2016; Pazhoohi et al., 2017; Silva et al., 2017; Fisher, 2018). However, much is still to learn about the impact of these extradyadic behaviors on subsequent relationships that an individual may have. Our main goal was to study the association between past extradyadic behaviors – inflicted and suffered – and current relationship quality, sexual desire and attractiveness. Specifically, we aimed to: (i) Understand if past extradyadic behaviors are related to current relationship quality, sexual desire, and self-perceived and partner’s attractiveness; (ii) Identify possible gender differences in these variables. For that, 364 participants (251 females and 113 males) were recruited through personal and institutional e-mails, online social networks (e.g., Facebook), and the website of the Evolutionary Psychology Group from the University of Minho. All participants completed a demographic and relationship questionnaire, followed by questions related to extradyadic behaviors and self-perceived attractiveness, the Perceived Relationship Quality Components (PRQC) Inventory, the Sex Drive Scale (SDQ), and the Importance of Partner’s Physical Attractiveness Scale (IPPAS). For those currently involved in a relationship, results suggested that extradyadic behaviors (both suffered or inflicted) are linked with current low relationship quality and high sexual desire in the present. In addition, individuals who perceived themselves as being more attractive tended to have a higher sexual desire and higher relationship quality. Overall, men reported higher levels of extradyadic behaviors and sexual desire, gave more importance to physical attractiveness, and perceived their current relationship as having less quality than women. These results add to the literature by focusing on different variables that play an important role in romantic relationships, and have important implications.

Discussion

The primary goal of the present study was to examine the association between past extradyadic behaviors – both inflicted and suffered – on current romantic relationships. Results from our data showed that men have higher levels of extradyadic behaviors, higher levels of sexual desire, gave more importance to physical attractiveness and perceived their current relationship as having less quality compared to women. These results confirmed our first hypothesis. Findings are consistent with the existent literature (Ostovich and Sabini, 2004; Galperin and Haselton, 2010; Pinto and Arantes, 2016). For example, previous studies have showed that females tend to have fewer extradyadic behaviors (Pinto and Arantes, 2016). One possible explanation is that there are stereotypes and gender roles that have been internalized about women being good wifes (Bittman et al., 2003; Ellemers, 2018). Another possible explanation – based on an evolutionary perspective – is the greater maternal investment required for pregnancy and subsequent child care (Hill and Hill, 1990; Bjorklund and Shackelford, 1999). However, Wiederman and Hurd (1999) suggested that the differences in extradyadic behaviors obtained may be due to underreporting of extradyadic behaviors by women rather than real sex differences – due to the existent double sexual standard.

Those participants that have betrayed in the past are significantly more likely to perceive the quality of their current relationship as being lower and to have a higher sexual desire in the present. These results are consistent with our second hypothesis. Interestingly, Owen et al. (2013) found that both men and women who reported more thoughtful decision-making processes regarding their romantic relationship tended to report higher satisfaction with the relationship and fewer extradyadic behaviors.

Previous research has shown that individuals that have stronger sexual interest levels tended to have more extradyadic behaviors (Treas and Giesen, 2000). In addition, individuals who have betrayed in the past tend to report more unrestricted sociosexuality (Rodrigues et al., 2017). When we analyzed the association between having betrayed and the PRQC and SDR we found similar results. More specifically, individuals that had been betrayed by a partner tend to have higher sexual desire, and to perceive their romantic relationship has having lower quality. These results are consistent with our third hypothesis. These results may be explained due to the fact that those individuals that tend to betrayal also tend to be betrayed. These findings are consistent with Shaw et al. (2013) prospective study, that showed that partner’s extradyadic behaviors is a predictor of extradyadic relationships. More specifically, they found in a large, nationally representative sample of unmarried couples that factors such as lower relationship satisfaction, negative communication, and partner’s extradyadic behaviors (actual or suspected) were predictors of extradyadic sexual interaction. Research has shown that when men believe their partners are more likely to betray them, they feel more attracted to other women possibly to increase the likelihood of genetic transmission (Shaw et al., 2013).

Our data showed that there was no significant difference between those who had betrayed and had not betrayed regarding their self-perceived attractiveness. The same was true when we compared those who had been betrayed and had not been betrayed. These results are inconsistent with our second and third hypothesis. One possible explanation for these results is that because participants that have been betrayed are also more likely to have betrayed (Shaw et al., 2013), any possible differences were minimized.

Our results showed that, overall, those who perceive themselves as being more attractive tend to have a higher sexual desire and higher relationship quality. These confirm our fourth hypothesis. There are however, further gender differences. Specifically, women who perceived themselves as being relatively more attractive had a tendency to report a higher sexual desire than those who perceived themselves as being relatively less attractive. This result was not obtained for men. Previous research has shown that women who consider themselves physically attractive show a greater preference for masculinity and symmetry, suggesting that these women may attempt to maximize phenotypic quality in potential partners, whereas women of low mate value may maximize reproductive success by searching males most likely to invest (Little et al., 2001). Also, women (and not men) who perceived their relationship as high quality tended to give less importance to the partner’s physical attractiveness compared with those women who rated their relationship quality as low. This finding is consistent with an evolutionary perspective, suggesting that those women who are in a secure and committed relationship which provides good resources for themselves and the children are more likely to disregard physical attractiveness (Penton-Voak et al., 2003). Finally, men that perceived their relationship has having high quality were more likely to perceive themselves as more attractive.

Limitations

First, even though we propose that past extradyadic behaviors history has an impact on the experience of current romantic relationships, our data were correlational and consequently we cannot make strong inferences. It is possible that someone with an overall high sexual desire and that tends to perceive the quality of intimate relationships to be low, will have a higher tendency to betray their partners during the course of their lives. Therefore, it would be very interesting to test which path is the most likely to occur by doing a prospective, longitudinal study. Second, we did not have an equal number of males and females’ participants that have betrayed/been betrayed. This unequal sample sizes may have affected the results (Keppel, 1993). Third, we did not ask participants about their perception of extradyadic behaviors, nor to specify the extradyadic behaviors them have suffered and/or inflicted. This may have affected the results. Fourth, we did not ask participants if they were in sexually non-monogamous relationships (SNMR), defined as those relationships in which “individuals are each other’s primary partners and have consensually agreed upon extradyadic sex” (Rodrigues et al., 2016). Research has shown that individuals in SNMR do not perceive extradyadic sex as a transgressive behavior or extradyadic behaviors (Mogilski et al., 2017). Therefore, having extradyadic sex does not seem to affect, for example, the quality of the relationships in SNMR (Mogilski et al., 2017), which may have affected our results. Fifth, research has shown that self-perceived attractiveness seems to be related with both face and body features, and that with ratings of attractiveness given by independent evaluators (Muñoz-Reyes et al., 2015). Nevertheless, it is possible that some participants may have confounded between face and body attractiveness. Sixth, all obtained correlation coefficients were low, and therefore strong inferences should not be done. Seventh, the age of the majority of our participants ranged from 18 to 40. It would be interesting to investigate if the same pattern of results would be obtained with an older sample. Finally, to evaluate some of our variables (e.g., extradyadic behaviors) we developed specific questions that have not been used in previous studies, which may have also affected our results.

Rolf Degen summarizing: Less than half of all parents manage to transmit their partisan identities to their children

The Role of Child Perception and Motivation in Political Socialization. Peter K. Hatemi, Christopher Ojeda. British Journal of Political Science, February 28 2020. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0007123419000516

Abstract: Most of what is known regarding political socialization treats parent–child concordance as evidence of transmission. This direct-transmission approach remains agnostic regarding how socialization occurs, whether traits have a role in a child's ability to identify and understand their parent's values or their motivation to adopt their parents’ values. This article advances a perception-adoption approach to unpack these microprocesses of socialization. The authors test their model using three independent studies in the United States that together comprise 4,852 parent–child dyads. They find that the transmission of partisan orientations from parent to child occurs less than half the time, which is qualitatively different from the generally held view. More importantly, the findings provide a greater understanding of how key predictors facilitate the political socialization process. Specifically, politicization improves child perception, but has no role in the child's motivation to adopt parental values. Closeness and parental value strength influence children to want to be like their parents, but do nothing to improve children's ability to recognize their parents' values. And education, previously thought to have little role in transmission, does not influence a child's ability to understand their parent's affiliation, but appears to make children more likely to reject whatever they believe it to be.

Aversiveness to both the tendency of male infants to produce more expiratory phonations when crying, as well as their visual appearance when crying, may contribute to their increased vulnerability to abuse

Perception of male and female infant cry aversiveness by adult men. Lynnet Richey, Ting Li & James K. Rilling. Journal of Reproductive and Infant Psychology, Mar 2 2020. https://doi.org/10.1080/02646838.2020.1732896

ABSTRACT
Objective: The study aimed to determine why male infants are abused more frequently than female infants.

Background: Infant crying is a well-known trigger for Shaken Baby Syndrome or Abusive Head Trauma (SBS/AHT). For unknown reasons, male infants are more often victims of SBS/AHT than female infants. We hypothesised that this sex difference in victimisation was attributable to either acoustic or movement differences between male and female infants when crying, or to gender stereotypes about infant crying (e.g. ‘boys don’t cry’).

Methods: Adult male participants rated auditory and video cry stimuli from male and female infants for aversiveness. Each infant was rated while wearing both blue and pink clothing to denote male or female gender.

Results: In two experiments, male infants spent more time producing expiratory phonations than did female infants, and this variable was positively correlated with aversiveness ratings. Including visual stimuli increased male but not female infant cry aversiveness compared with audio stimuli alone. Finally, dressing infants in blue did not increase cry aversiveness.

Conclusions: These findings suggest that both the tendency of male infants to produce more expiratory phonations when crying, as well as their visual appearance when crying, may contribute to their increased vulnerability to abuse.

KEYWORDS: Cry, infant, abuse, sex, gender

Severity and the number of common cold symptoms: Women were expected to report more symptoms & a higher severity; no differences found between men and women in their reports

From 2019... Sex differences in the severity and number of common cold symptoms. Eva Lutgerink. Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences Theses, Utrecth Univ. Jun 2019. https://dspace.library.uu.nl/handle/1874/392930

Abstract: It is commonly believed that men tend to exaggerate the severity of their illness when infected with a respiratory virus. On the contrary, on literature in health, it seems that women are generally the ones who are “sicker”. In the literature there is still a debate on whether men or women tend over-report minor health problems. Therefore, this study examines the effect of sex on the severity and number of common cold symptoms. Hypotheses were derived from literature building on a social constructionist perspective of gender and health. Women were expected to report more symptoms and a higher severity of their symptoms. Also, the effects were expected to be mediated by stress. The results show that there are no differences between men and women in their reports on the severity and the number of common cold symptoms.

Author keywords: sex differences; gender; health; common cold; symptoms

Rosy memories: Mainly in autobiographical memory & particularly for self-relevant information, positive memory biases emerge from the operation of powerful mechanisms aimed at maintaining the individual’s well-being

Chapter 7 - A “rosy view” of the past: Positive memory biases. Orly Adler, Ainat Pansky. In Cognitive Biases in Health and Psychiatric Disorders - Neurophysiological Foundations. 2020, Pages 139-171. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-816660-4.00007-6

Abstract: The positivity bias in memory is a prevalent phenomenon. People tend to remember more pleasant than unpleasant events, to remember events more favorably than they actually were, and to view their past through rosy glasses overall. Apparent mainly in autobiographical memory and particularly for self-relevant information, positive memory biases emerge from the operation of powerful mechanisms aimed at maintaining the individual’s well-being. In the current chapter, we review these mechanisms and the various techniques by which they operate. Manifestation of the bias in clinical populations and the manner in which it is reflected in neural activations are described, alongside methodological limitations and directions for future research.

Check also The Many Faces of Forgetting: Toward a Constructive View of Forgetting in Everyday Life. Jonathan M.Fawcett, Justin C. Hulbert. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, January 21 2020. https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2020/01/forgetfulness-contributes-to.html

Middle- and old-aged individuals: Moderate lifetime alcohol intake was associated with lower cerebral beta amyloid deposition compared to a lifetime history of not drinking

Association of moderate alcohol intake with in vivo amyloid-beta deposition in human brain: A cross-sectional study. Jee Wook Kim et al. PLOS, February 25, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pmed.1003022

Abstract
Background: An emerging body of literature has indicated that moderate alcohol intake may be protective against Alzheimer disease (AD) dementia. However, little information is available regarding whether moderate alcohol intake is related to reductions in amyloid-beta (Aβ) deposition, or is protective via amyloid-independent mechanisms in the living human brain. Here we examined the associations of moderate alcohol intake with in vivo AD pathologies, including cerebral Aβ deposition, neurodegeneration of AD-signature regions, and cerebral white matter hyperintensities (WMHs) in the living human brain.

Methods and findings: The present study was part of the Korean Brain Aging Study for Early Diagnosis and Prediction of Alzheimer’s Disease (KBASE), an ongoing prospective cohort study that started in 2014. As of November 2016, 414 community-dwelling individuals with neither dementia nor alcohol-related disorders (280 cognitively normal [CN] individuals and 134 individuals with mild cognitive impairment [MCI]) between 56 and 90 years of age (mean age 70.9 years ± standard deviation 7.8; male, n [%] = 180 [43.5]) were recruited from 4 sites (i.e., 2 university hospitals and 2 public centers for dementia prevention and management) around Seoul, South Korea. All the participants underwent comprehensive clinical assessments comprising lifetime and current histories of alcohol intake and multimodal brain imaging, including [11C] Pittsburgh compound B positron emission tomography (PET), [18F] fluorodeoxyglucose (FDG) PET, and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans. Lifetime and current alcohol intake were categorized as follows: no drinking, <1 standard drink (SD)/week, 1–13 SDs/week, and 14+ SDs/week. A moderate lifetime alcohol intake (1–13 SDs/week) was significantly associated with a lower Aβ positivity rate compared to the no drinking group, even after controlling for potential confounders (odds ratio 0.341, 95% confidence interval 0.163–0.714, p = 0.004). In contrast, current alcohol intake was not associated with amyloid deposition. Additionally, alcohol intake was not related to neurodegeneration of AD-signature regions or cerebral WMH volume. The present study had some limitations in that it had a cross-sectional design and depended on retrospective recall for alcohol drinking history.

Conclusions: In this study, we observed in middle- and old-aged individuals with neither dementia nor alcohol-related disorders that moderate lifetime alcohol intake was associated with lower cerebral Aβ deposition compared to a lifetime history of not drinking. Moderate lifetime alcohol intake may have a beneficial influence on AD by reducing pathological amyloid deposition rather than amyloid-independent neurodegeneration or cerebrovascular injury.

Discussion

In this study, we observed that lifetime alcohol intake of 1–13 SDs/week (moderate drinking) was associated with lower cerebral Aβ deposition compared to the no drinking group in these middle- and old-aged individuals with neither dementia nor alcohol-related disorders.
The present finding of an association between moderate alcohol intake and lower Aβ deposition is in line with results from previous studies using animal or cultured cell models, which indicated that moderate alcohol intake exerts a protective effect via attenuating Aβ accumulation [17,20]. Many clinical and epidemiological studies have reported an inverse association between moderate alcohol intake and the risk of AD dementia [3,9–13], and the present findings regarding the association between moderate alcohol intake and decreased cerebral Aβ positivity may explain this inverse association.
While moderate lifetime alcohol intake had a significant association with Aβ deposition, moderate current intake did not. This difference indicates that the protective effects of moderate alcohol intake against Aβ pathology involve the chronic effects associated with long-term exposure rather than an acute effect. The significant finding for lifetime intake only also suggests that the protective association for moderate alcohol intake is not due to the inclusion of forced abstainers, i.e., those who stopped using alcohol owing to other health concerns related to problem drinking, among the reference group (i.e., non-drinkers). Forced abstainers were classified as drinkers for lifetime alcohol intake status, whereas they were classified as non-drinkers for current alcohol intake status.
Unlike for Aβ deposition, there were no associations between moderate alcohol intake and neurodegeneration or WMHs. Similarly, previous human MRI studies did not observe an association between moderate alcohol intake and cerebral gray matter volume [29] or total brain volume [30]. However, several preclinical and human studies reported that moderate alcohol intake has protective effects against vascular changes and atrophy in the brain. Studies using cultured cell or animal models showed that moderate alcohol intake is protective against ischemic brain injury [24,27], and human MRI studies have suggested that moderate alcohol intake is protective against damage to cerebral gray [23] and white [21,22] matter. These discrepancies may be related to methodological differences between studies. However, as suggested in a systematic review of the chronic effects of moderate alcohol intake on the structural and functional properties of the brain [53], the present findings based on both structural MRI (cortical thickness and WMHs) and FDG PET (cerebral glucose metabolism) measures support that moderate alcohol intake did not exert its protective effects directly through neurodegenerative or vascular mechanisms.
Although excessive alcohol intake has been related with an increased risk of cognitive decline [1–4], and U- or J-shaped association has been implied together with the decreased risk of cognitive impairment with moderate alcohol intake [3,5–16], we did not find any association between higher alcohol intake and increased AD pathologies. Alcohol-related brain damage (ARBD) [54] was suggested as an umbrella term for conditions including Wernicke–Korsakoff syndrome, alcohol-related dementia, and other forms of persistent alcohol-related cognitive impairment. ARBD encompasses a range of clinical presentations that manifest as impairments in memory, executive functioning, and judgement, which are related to frontal brain function. Several brain imaging studies also reported damage of the frontal lobe in individuals with alcoholism [55], while AD-CT and AD-CM measures mainly include temporo-parietal degeneration. Therefore, we additionally analyzed the association between alcohol intake and frontal lobe state (i.e., glucose metabolism, cortical thickness, and WMH volume of the frontal region) in order to find out if there was any ARBD-like damage with alcohol intake. As shown in S9 Table, however, we did not find any significant results from those analyses. These null findings may be because individuals with alcohol-related disorders were excluded and, as a result, heavy drinkers (14+ SDs/week) in the present study consisted of individuals without alcoholism or other severe alcohol problems.
The investigation of the influence of age on the association between moderate alcohol intake and Aβ positivity revealed that the protective effect of moderate alcohol intake on Aβ positivity was more prominent in older individuals (≥75 years) than younger ones. This finding may be due in part to age-associated increases in the Aβ positivity rate in individuals without dementia [56]. In the present study, the Aβ positivity rate was 24.5% (n = 62) in the younger age group and 37.3% (n = 57) in the older group. The relatively small proportion of Aβ+ individuals in the younger group might decrease the likelihood of detecting a significant difference. It is also possible, as mentioned above, that these age-related differences are related to the chronic effects associated with long-term alcohol exposure. In contrast, sex, APOE4, and clinical diagnosis did not have any moderating effect on the association between moderate alcohol intake and Aβ positivity.
The present study had a couple of strengths. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first to show the association of moderate alcohol intake with Aβ accumulation in the living human brain. The study included a relatively large number of participants who were well-characterized through comprehensive clinical assessments including systematic interview for detailed alcohol drinking history and multimodal brain imaging for in vivo AD pathologies and WMHs. In addition, various potential confounders were systematically evaluated and controlled in the statistical models in order to reveal the association between alcohol intake and brain pathologies as clearly as possible. Even after controlling for all potential confounders, the findings did not change. The results were also confirmed by sensitivity analyses conducted after excluding binge or former drinkers.
Nevertheless, the present study also had several limitations that should be considered. First, because this was a cross-sectional study, causal relationships cannot be inferred from the findings. Second, in terms of lifetime alcohol intake, underestimation of drinking or retrospective recall bias may have affected the results in older individuals. However, it is unlikely that underestimation of alcohol intake was significant because harmful drinkers and individuals with a history of alcohol use disorder were excluded from the analyses, and moderate drinkers have no reason to underestimate their alcohol intake. Moreover, to reduce recall bias, information was obtained from reliable informants as well as the study participants. Additionally, a review of self-report bias in the assessment of alcohol intake suggested that this recall bias is not greater in older individuals than in the general population [57]. Third, about one-third of the study participants were diagnosed with MCI, which may also raise some concern about the accuracy of self-report for alcohol intake. However, although individuals with MCI have some problems with their recent memory, their remote memory is very well preserved [58]: It is not likely that individuals with MCI reported their history for alcohol intake more erroneously, because the self-report for lifetime alcohol intake mainly depends on remote memory rather than recent memory. In addition, even when we controlled for clinical diagnosis (CN versus MCI) as an additional covariate in Model 3 (Tables 2, 3, and S2–S7), the results were still very similar. Fourth, there are quite different alcohol intake patterns regarding the frequency and regularity of intake, and the amount of alcohol consumed in a single session, within the moderate drinking category. Although we obtained similar findings after excluding binge drinkers in sensitivity analyses, a more detailed understanding of the influence of drinking patterns is needed. Finally, although we did not find any significant association between alcohol intake and neurodegeneration or WMHs, the lack of association may reflect a lack of statistical power given the sample size.
Although further long-term follow-up investigations in larger populations with heterogeneous alcohol intake patterns are still needed, the association of moderate alcohol intake with reduced risk of pathological Aβ deposition (about one-third of the risk for no drinking) observed in the present study may suggest that moderate lifetime alcohol intake may be beneficial in preventing AD dementia or related cognitive decline.
In conclusion, the present findings from middle- and old-aged individuals with neither dementia nor alcohol-related disorders suggest that moderate lifetime alcohol intake may have some beneficial influence on AD by reducing pathological amyloid deposition rather than amyloid-independent neurodegeneration or cerebrovascular injury.

It seems people selectively attend to moral stimuli; moral content might be prioritized in conscious awareness after an initial perceptual encoding but before subsequent memory processing or action preparation

From 2019... Gantman, Ana P., Sayeed Devraj-Kizuk, Peter Mende-Siedlecki, Jay J. Van Bavel, and Kyle E. Mathewson. 2019. “The Time-course of Moral Perception: An Electroencephalography Investigation.” PsyArXiv. August 26. doi:10.31234/osf.io/72dxa

Abstract: Humans are highly attuned to perceptual cues about their values. A growing body of evidence suggests that people selectively attend to moral stimuli. However, it is unknown whether morality is prioritized early in perception or much later in cognitive processing. We use a combination of behavioral methods and electroencephalography to investigate how early in perception moral words are prioritized relative to non-moral words. The behavioral data replicate previous research indicating that people are more likely to correctly identify moral than non-moral words in a modified lexical decision task. The electroencephalography data reveal that words are distinguished from non-words as early as 200 milliseconds after onset over frontal brain areas, and moral words are distinguished from non-moral words 100 milliseconds later over left-posterior cortex. Further analyses reveal that differences in brain activity to moral vs. non-moral words cannot be explained by differences in arousal associated with the words. These results suggest that moral content might be prioritized in conscious awareness after an initial perceptual encoding but before subsequent memory processing or action preparation. This work offers a more precise theoretical framework for understanding how morality impacts vision and behavior.

Keywords: morality, EEG, social neuroscience, conscious awareness, vision

When discounted at the risk-free rate, real Social Security wealth increased from $5.6 tn in 1989 to $42.0 tn in 2016; adjusting for systematic risk, it grew from $4.6 tn in 1989 to $34.0 tn in 2016

Catherine, Sylvain and Miller, Max and Sarin, Natasha, Social Security and Trends in Inequality (February 29, 2020). SSRN: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3546668

Abstract: Recent influential work finds large increases in inequality in the U.S., based on measures of wealth concentration that notably exclude the value of social insurance programs. This paper revisits this conclusion by incorporating Social Security retirement benefits into measures of wealth inequality. Wealth inequality has not increased in the last three decades when Social Security is accounted for. When discounted at the risk-free rate, real Social Security wealth increased substantially from $5.6 trillion in 1989 to just over $42.0 trillion in 2016. When we adjust for systematic risk coming from the covariance of Social Security returns with the market portfolio, this increase remains sizable, growing from over $4.6 trillion in 1989 to $34.0 trillion in 2016. Consequently, by 2016, Social Security wealth represented 58% of the wealth of the bottom 90% of the wealth distribution. Redistribution through programs like Social Security increases the progressivity of the economy, and it is important that our estimates of wealth concentration reflect this.

Keywords: Social Security, Inequality, Top Wealth Shares
JEL Classification: D31, E21, G51, H55, N32

CEO types: “Leaders,” who do multifunction, high-level meetings, & “managers,” who do individual meetings with core functions; firms that hire leaders perform better (it takes 3 years to see the difference)

Oriana Bandiera, Andrea Prat, Stephen Hansen, and Raffaella Sadun, "CEO Behavior and Firm Performance," Journal of Political Economy 0, no. 0 (-Not available-): 000. Feb 2020. https://doi.org/10.1086/705331

Abstract: We develop a new method to measure CEO behavior in large samples via a survey that collects high-frequency, high-dimensional diary data and a machine learning algorithm that estimates behavioral types. Applying this method to 1,114 CEOs in six countries reveals two types: “leaders,” who do multifunction, high-level meetings, and “managers,” who do individual meetings with core functions. Firms that hire leaders perform better, and it takes three years for a new CEO to make a difference. Structural estimates indicate that productivity differentials are due to mismatches rather than to leaders being better for all firms.

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From a 2017 version (https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=55632):
Conclusions
This paper combines a new survey methodology with a machine learning algorithm to measure the behavior of CEOs in large samples. We show that CEOs di↵er in their behavior along several dimensions, and that the data can be reduced to a summary CEO index which distinguishes between “managers” –i.e. CEOs that are primarily involved with production-related activities– and leaders -i.e. CEOs that are primarily involved in communication and coordination activities.

Guided by a simple firm-CEO assignment model, we show that there is no “best practice” in
CEO behavior—that is, a behavior that is optimal for all the firms—rather, there is evidence of
horizontal di↵erentiation in CEO behavior, and significant frictions in the assignment of CEOs to firms. In our sample of manufacturing firms across six countries we estimate that 17% of firm-CEO pairs are misassigned and that misassignments are found in all regions but are more frequent in emerging economies. The consequences for productivity are large: the implied productivity loss due to di↵erential misassignment is equal to 13% of the labor productivity gap between firms in high- and middle/low-income countries in our sample.

This paper shows that an under explored dimension of managerial activity–that is, how CEOs
spend their time–is both heterogeneous across managers and firms, and correlated with firm performance. Future work could utilize our data and methodology to inform new leadership models, which incorporate more explicitly the drivers and consequences of di↵erences in CEO behavior, and in particular explore the underlying firm-CEO matching function, which is not dealt with explicitly in the current paper. Furthermore, a possible next step of this research would be to extend the data collection to the diaries of multiple managerial figures beyond the CEO. This approach would allow us to further explore whether and how managerial interactions and team behavior vary across firms and correlate with firm performance (Hambrick and Mason, 1984). These aspects of managerial behavior, which are now largely absent from our analysis, are considered to be increasingly important in the labor market (Deming (2015)), but have so far been largely unexplored from an empirical perspective. We leave these topics for further research.

Himba men prioritize mate fidelity and current reproductive partners in investment decisions, but social obligations to past and current partners and the presence of other male investors also influence decisions

Paternity confidence and social obligations explain men's allocations to romantic partners in an experimental giving game. Brooke A.Scelza, Sean P. Prall, Kathrine Starkweather. Evolution and Human Behavior, Volume 41, Issue 1, January 2020, Pages 96-103. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2019.10.007

Abstract: Paternal care in humans is facultative, with investment decisions responsive to socioecological context. In particular, paternity confidence is thought to have a significant impact on men's provisioning. However, various aspects of the relationship a man has with his partner can also influence the way he provides for his children. Previous papers have tended to focus either on these kinds of relationship dynamics or on the impact of paternity confidence. However, these categories are often intertwined and parsing their contributions can be conceptually and methodologically difficult. To better understand how paternity confidence and relationship dynamics impact men's investment decisions, we used a series of pictorial vignettes to assess the resource allocation strategies of Himba men. We focus on three traits: mate fidelity, partner type (marital or non-marital), and relationship status (current or former). Results suggest that men prioritize mate fidelity and current reproductive partners in investment decisions, but social obligations to past and current partners and the presence of other male investors also influence decisions. Himba men appear to be balancing social norms related to marriage and fatherhood with individually-driven incentives to invest in current and more faithful partners.

4. Discussion

Our results show strong evidence for our primary predictions, which are derived from life history theory, and which are fairly intuitive. Fig. 3 demonstrates this most clearly. All else equal, men favor more faithful partners (rows 1, 10, 15), partners they have formal unions with (2, 7) and, to a lesser extent, current partners (4, 9, 11, 14). Our secondary predictions, which bring these factors together into a series of potential strategies, show greatest support for the paternal investment hypothesis, as partners with omoka children are consistently short-changed in the allocations, and the social obligation hypothesis, as wives are strongly favored over other types of partners (Fig. 1, Panel D). The best fitting model included all three primary factors: partner fidelity, relationship type and relationship status, providing additional evidence that men are employing a mixed-strategy. These experimental results emphasizing a mixed strategy are aligned with behavioral data on Himba paternal investment (Prall and Scelza, 2016). Measures of children's nutritional status, fosterage status and livestock transfers show some titration of investment toward children men believe to be omoka, but these occur largely when investments occur in the more private household domain. When investments occur in more public domains, social obligations to wives and marital offspring lead men to treat biological and non-biological children more equally.

[Fig. 3. Posterior predictions of differences between categories from the best fit model predicting food allocation. Each distribution represents the difference between the two types of women, so that distributions to the right of zero indicate the first woman listed is predicted to receive more food gifts.] 

The best fitting model shows that overall girlfriends and ex-wives are treated relatively equally (Fig. 1, Panel D), but this finding masks some of the interesting variation that occurs in distributions to these two partner types (Fig. 3). In the two cases where omoka status differs between girlfriends and ex-wives (rows 12 and 13), men allocate substantially more to the partner with his biological child. Paternal investment appears to be a greater motivator than either social obligations or mating effort. Similarly, when the child is not omoka in both cases, distributions to girlfriends and ex-wives are indistinguishable (row 11). Where we see a breakdown is in the scenario where both children are omoka. Here we see men favor girlfriends over ex-wives, suggesting some support for mating effort over social obligation (row 14).

The second part of our study was designed to understand whether men are titrating their allocations dependent on whether another partner (and potential provider) is present. Men's allocations to girlfriends fit this pattern, with substantially greater giving to girlfriends who are unmarried than to those who are married. There are several explanations that could account for these results, other than the need-based explanation we are positing. Men could give less to women with other partners as a form of punishment for their infidelity. Women without other partners may also be more likely to father a man's next child, so that giving more to her represents mating effort. Our data do not allow us to test between these explanations. However, opportunistic quotes recorded during the interview process invoking differential need were frequent among our participants. In a typical iteration, one man stated, “This woman has a husband. I will help this one because she doesn't have a husband and needs support.” Therefore, we conclude that need-based considerations are likely to be one important factor in men's decision-making.

A slightly different pattern emerges in Task 2B where men made allocations across wives. Those without boyfriends still received more than those with boyfriends, but the results were less consistent. Men were much more likely to distribute resources evenly across wives than across girlfriends. In the two categories where men were distributing an even number of items (for food and clinic fees) they divided them equally between wives, 40% and 81% of the time respectively, compared to only 19% and 42% of the time with girlfriends. One man reported, “I think of them as my co-wives. You have to treat them equally so that they don't get jealous and one doesn't think that I don't like her.” In the third iteration of Task 2, men were forced to make an unequal distribution. Unlike with girlfriends, where this did not pose a problem, some men were very resistant to making a choice between their wives, with one commenting “I would cut that goat in half” rather than have to choose. This again speaks to the complex interaction of factors affecting men's strategies. Social obligation may dictate that men should treat their wives (relatively) equally, but men may also be hedging their bets, keeping both wives happy may increase their overall chance of paternity in future children.

We also surmise that need was not driving men's choices in the wife scenario to the same degree that it was with informal partners. Opportunistic comments did not stress support from another partner in the way they did in the girlfriend comparison. This may be due to the difference in obligatory provisioning that exists between formal and informal partners. While a man is obligated to provide for his wives, giving to girlfriends is voluntary. Previously, our work showed that for this reason, women had a stronger preference for generosity in boyfriends, whereas in husbands, wealth mattered more (Scelza & Prall, 2018). Here we see that men bias their giving to girlfriends based on need, but factoring in the gifts of others to their wives seems secondary to concerns about keeping the peace at home and treating wives equally.

4.1. Limitations and future directions

The experimental approach used here provides some insight as to how Himba men make decisions about allocating resources across partners of different types. While the high rates of concurrency and nonpaternity in this population mean that most men encounter these types of decisions at some point in their lives, rarely would they encounter all of them at once, highlighting an advantage of the vignette approach. However, as with all studies that use hypothetical allocations, these data may not reflect the ways that men divvy up real resources, but rather how they view social expectations to allocate resources. In response to this, many economic games use cash and follow through with distributions as promised in the game; however, this approach was not feasible here. Despite this limitation, we found that the men in our study understood the complexity of the problem before them, as highlighted by opportunistic comments made throughout the task.

In addition while we thought it was important to address the ways in which men's allocations could be altered by the presence of other providers, this is neither the only nor necessarily the most important way that need might influence giving patterns. Other factors we did not consider in this study include the relative wealth or security of the woman herself, the wealth of her parents, and her number of dependents. Similarly, we did not look at how men's own wealth or security affect his provisioning strategy. Finally, while we did not detect any effects of age or marital status in our analyses (see Fig. S7), it is possible this is due to small sample size. Future studies with larger numbers of participants could address these shortcomings, using either behavioral or experimental data.

Finally, this paper focuses exclusively on men's provisioning decisions. The emphasis on men's care as facultative in the literature drove the design of this study. However, while certain aspects of maternal care are obligate in humans (most significantly pregnancy), most care by mothers is quite variable. Future work should consider how the factors studied here impact maternal provisioning decisions.

Erotic dreams occurred in about 6% of the analyzed dreams, with men reporting slightly more erotic dreams than women; kissing was the most frequent erotic component

College students’ erotic dreams: Analysis of content and emotional tone. C. Geißler, M. Schredl. Sexologies, Volume 29, Issue 1, January–March 2020, Pages e11-e17. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.sexol.2019.08.003

Summary: The present study reports about the frequency, content and emotional tone of erotic dreams based on dream diary reports of a German college student sample. Four hundred and twenty-five students provided 1612 dreams, of which about 6% contained erotic themes, a figure which is in line with previous research. As for the dream content, kissing was the most frequent erotic activity, followed by intercourse and explicit sexual foreplay. Openness to experience is positively related to the frequency of erotic dreams; neuroticism and conscientiousness are associated with a rather negative emotional tone of such dreams. This supports the continuity hypothesis stating that erotic dreaming experience reflects waking life sexual activity, which is likely to be influenced by these personality dispositions. Further research should extend the knowledge of the aspects and emotional intensity of waking life sexual activity and their reflection in erotic dream content, i.e., whether experiencing unwanted and negatively perceived sexual events are associated with the emotional tone of erotic dreams. To investigate the causality of the relation between waking and dreaming sexual activity and the emotions related to it, an experimental study would be a necessary approach.

Keywords: Erotic dreamsOpenness to experienceNeuroticismConscientiousnessContinuity hypothesisDream emotions

Check also A kiss is not just a kiss: kissing frequency, sexual quality, attachment, and sexual and relationship satisfaction. Dean M. Busby,Veronica Hanna-Walker &Chelom E. Leavitt. Sexual and Relationship Therapy, Jan 31 2020. https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2020/02/kissing-frequency-was-strong-indicator.html

Discussion

Erotic dreams occurred in about 6% of the analyzed dreams, with men reporting slightly more erotic dreams than women. The Big Five scale ‘openness to experiences’ correlated positively with the frequency for the appearance of sexual motifs in dreams. As for the dream content, kissing was the most frequent erotic component, followed by intercourse and explicit sexual foreplay. In the majority of dreams, dreamers were actively taking part in the sexual event; those participants solely observing the erotic acts were mostly men. Regarding the emotional component of the erotic dreams, the judges rated the majority of the erotic dreams as emotionally toned (70%) with a small preponderance of positively toned dreams. Moreover, women's erotic dream activities were judged to be emotionally more negative than men's erotic dream activities. The Big Five scales neuroticism and conscientiousness are significantly negatively associated with the emotional tone of the erotic dream.

Before discussing each of the findings, some methodical issues have to be addressed. First, the low number of erotic dreams can cause unrepresentative results regarding erotic content, which have to be confirmed using a larger sample with a broader age range. The study did not focus on specific aspects of dreaming experience and therefore our sample should not underlie any selection bias for erotic topics. Since the majority of the participants were psychology students, the means of the NEO-PI-R scales differed from the norms presented by Ostendorf and Angleitner (2004) leading to higher scores in openness to experiences and neuroticism.

It should also be mentioned that the length of the dream has an increasing effect on the frequency of erotic topics since dream length increases any dream content variables independently of their context or meaning. As Schredl (1999) showed, different content elements (e.g., the number persons or the amount of bizarre or unrealistic elements) are positively associated with the dream's word count. The same effect was found for the analysis of dream emotions, positive as well as negative ones (Schredl, 1999). Therefore, it is crucial for the interpretation of the content analyses to control for the dream length statistically as was performed in this study. In general, the reliability between the raters for dream elements, including emotional tone, was satisfying. For two items, S2 (sexual overtures) and S4 (fore-play), Cohen's κ was considerably lower than for the other categories. It seems much harder to identify these two erotic actions, likely because they are not as explicitly and clearly operationalized as, for example, S5 (actual or attempted intercourse). As a result, it may be harder to interpret findings about these subtypes of erotic dream content.

The ratings regarding the emotional tone of the erotic dreams were conducted by external judges, not by the participants themselves. Since participants might not be comfortable fully expressing their emotions on erotic aspects, they might not record all erotic emotions. Therefore, it is likely for the external judges to underestimate the emotionality of the dream content as reported previously for emotions in general (Schredl and Doll, 1998, Sikka et al., 2014). In consideration of the aforementioned methodical aspects, the findings of this study will be discussed and put into the context of previous research.

The frequency of erotic dreams found in this sample is in line with previous findings in diary studies using college student samples (Domhoff et al., 2005–2006, Hall and Van de Castle, 1966, Nielsen et al., 2003, Rainville and Rush, 2009, Schredl et al., 1998, Zadra and Gervais, 2011). The tendency of men having more erotic dream than women fits with the findings of this study, though the effect size (d = 0.041) is considerably smaller when compared to the mean effect size of the aforementioned studies (d = 0.106). A decreasing gender difference leads to the conclusion that the difference between the findings in older studies as Hall and Van De Castle's (1966) and the finding of the recent study is caused by a cohort effect.

The frequency of erotic dreams is increased for participants with a high score on the ‘openness to experience’ scale. A person scoring high on this scale is described as curious, creative, empathic, and sensitive (Ostendorf and Angleitner, 2004). With regard to sexuality, a person with high openness to experience tends to be younger when having their first sexual intercourse (Miller et al., 2004) and is more permissive with pornography and masturbation (Fernandez and Rodriguez, 2003). High openness to experience is related to a disposition for erotophilia, i.e., he or she generally reacts positively to sexual cues (Natividade and Hutz, 2016). The participants scoring high on this scale reflecting more sexuality in their dreaming experience supports the continuity hypothesis (Schredl, 2003), since being open for experiences in general seems to implicate being open for sexual experiences. Schredl et al. (2003) found that openness to experiences is also positively associated with dream recall frequency, so it is possible for the sample of reported dreams to overestimate the frequency of erotic dreams as there may be more erotic dreams reported by participants with high openness scores. Therefore, dream recall frequency was controlled for in this study.

The content analysis of this sample's dreams differs in some aspects from the Hall and Van de Castle sample (1966). The largest of the differences appears in the frequency of kissing in erotic dreams; more than half of the erotic dreams contained this motif in the recent sample, while it occurred only in 16% of Hall and Van De Castle's (1966) and in 23% of King et al.’s (2009) sample. King et al.’s (2009) study used the Most Recent Dream method, where participants are asked to write down the most recent erotic dream they could recall. In this context, participants might be biased to report explicit sexual behavior and not so likely erotic activities like kissing. As for the comparison with Hall and Van De Castle's (1966) results, no clear methodic or content-related aspect can be identified to cause this divergence.

In order to investigate the differences in erotic dream content of today's college students compared to those in the mid-20th century, it has to be analyzed how waking life sexual activity today differs from that in the late 1940s since waking life sexuality is responsible for the content of dreaming sexuality (King et al., 2009, Schredl et al., 2009). The high percentages found by Hall and Van de Castle (1966) for sexual thoughts and fantasies could not be replicated by King et al. (2009) or the present results. Overall, it is noticeable that explicit sexual events taking place in erotic dreams are more frequent than thoughts and propositions. An explanation for this finding might be that the more explicit activity, e.g., intercourse, is emotionally more intense in waking life compared, for example to kissing, the more often it occurs in dreaming (Malinowski and Horton, 2014, Schredl, 2006).

When being rated for their active participation in sexual events while dreaming in comparison to observing said action, most participants reported themselves directly participating in the erotic events. (Crépault et al., 1977, Crépault and Couture, 1980) showed in his analyses of men and women's sexual (waking life) fantasies that, most of the time, the fantasies included themselves interacting with some part of their environment. This, again, supports the continuity hypothesis for thoughts and fantasies, stating that our waking life thoughts are reflected in the contexts of our dreams (Schredl, 2012). As men dream less often about actively engaging in sexual action than women, one possible explanation might be the frequency of pornography consumption and a higher tendency to engage in voyeurism, which is more common in young men compared to young women (Hald, 2006, Rye and Meaney, 2007). Men could thus be more used to watching others than themselves participating in sexual activity and therefore transfer this into their erotic dreaming experience. It would be interesting to investigate to what extent pornography and the active participation in erotic dreaming activity are related.

Similar to the study of King et al. (2009), erotic activities in dreams were rated by the external raters as emotionally balanced. Both neuroticism and conscientiousness are negatively associated with this emotional valence. A person scoring high on the neuroticism scale is described as anxious, nervous, insecure, and vulnerable (Ostendorf and Angleitner, 2004); with regard to sexuality, men and women with high neuroticism scores show a higher tendency for relationship infidelity, especially in women (Natividade and Hutz, 2016, Schmitt, 2004). Cheating on a partner and participating in sexual activity outside a relationship could lead to more negative experiences, cognitions and emotions about sex, which are reflected in the content of the dreams (Thompson, 1984). In line with this finding, dreams of persons with high neuroticism scores tend to contain more negative emotions such as sadness and apprehension in dreams (Gilchrist et al., 2007).

A person that scores high for conscientiousness, on the other hand, is characterized as reliable, ambitious, self-controlled, hardworking and lives up to moral principles (Jackson et al., 2010, Ostendorf and Angleitner, 2004). Natividade and Hutz (2016) reported a negative correlation of conscientiousness with the erotophilia scale, implicating negative associations with sexual cues and, thus, the erotophobic attitude could transfer into negative dream emotions. It is also possible for a person scoring high in conscientiousness to rate their experienced emotions related to erotic activities during the dream retrospectively, as he or she is more likely to react negatively to that internal sexual cue (Natividade and Hutz, 2016). Apart from that, a person scoring high on conscientiousness is very unlikely to cheat on their partner (Schmitt, 2004). It would be of some interest to measure whether unfaithfulness that occurred in this group fostered negative associations (i.e., guilt) with sexuality that can be reflected in erotic dreams. Just like King et al. (2009), the results of this study do not show a significant effect of the participant's sex on the perception of the emotional tone of erotic dreams. Descriptively however, men's dreams were rated rather positively, fitting with the finding that men tend to initiate the sexual contact while women were more likely to describe the erotic action as at least partly unwanted (Zadra and Gervais, 2011). King et al. (2009) report that nearly 8% of the reported sex dreams contained or mentioned ideas of rape or forced sex; all those dreams appeared solely in women's dreams. Since women have a greater prevalence for being victims to sexual harassment, sexual abuse or rape, the continuity hypothesis explains an incorporation of these negative sexual experiences into dreaming (Blumenthal, 1998, Pino and Meier, 1999, Ullman and Filipas, 2005).

To summarize, openness to experience is positively related to the frequency of erotic dreams; neuroticism and conscientiousness are associated with a rather negative emotional tone of the erotic dreams. This supports the continuity hypothesis (Schredl, 2003) stating that erotic dreaming experience reflects waking life sexual activity, which is likely to be influenced by these personality dispositions. For further research, it would be of interest to extend the knowledge on the aspects and emotional intensity of waking life sexual activity and their reflection in erotic dream content, i.e., whether experiencing unwanted and negatively perceived sexual events are associated with the emotional tone of erotic dreams. In this context, it would be of advantage to let the participants rate their erotic dreams for emotionality themselves as it is likely for them to be more precise in this task than an independent rater. To investigate the causality between waking and dreaming sexual activity and the emotions related to sexuality, an experimental study (Cartwright et al., 1969), such as showing an explicit erotic movie or instructing the participants to engage in sexual fantasies before bedtime, would be necessary. In addition, possible interactions between incorporating erotic material into the dream and openness to experiences could be examined.

Body odor disgust sensitivity is positively related to social, but not economic conservatism, & to implicit bias toward an outgroup; social attitudes may be linked to basic chemosensory processes (pathogen cues)

An Overprotective Nose? Implicit Bias Is Positively Related to Individual Differences in Body Odor Disgust Sensitivity. Marta Zuzanna Zakrzewska et al. Front. Psychol., February 28 2020. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.00301

Abstract: Body odors are universal elicitors of disgust, a core emotion that plays a key role in the behavioral immune system (BIS) – a set of psychological functions working to avoid disease. Recent studies showed that body odor disgust sensitivity (BODS) is associated with explicit xenophobia and authoritarianism. In the current experimental pre-registered study (https://osf.io/6jkp2/), we investigated the association between olfactory pathogen cues, BODS and implicit bias toward an outgroup (tested by an implicit association test). Results show that BODS is positively related to implicit bias toward an outgroup, suggesting that social attitudes may be linked to basic chemosensory processes. These attitudes were not influenced by background odors. Additionally, BODS was related to social, but not economic conservatism. This study extends the BIS framework to an experimental context by focusing on the role of disgust and body odors in shaping implicit bias.

Discussion

In the current preregistered study, we found that disgust sensitivity to body odors (BODS) is related to implicit bias toward an outgroup. This result corroborates and extends previous findings about the relationship between BODS, a BIS-related measure (Liuzza et al., 2017), and attitudes toward outgroups (Zakrzewska et al., 2019). These findings strengthen the view that some individuals may have a more sensitive BIS which makes them prefer behaviors and attitudes that limit contact with out-groups.

Contrary to our hypothesis, implicit bias was not influenced by a background body-like unpleasant odor. We need to point out two possible drawbacks of the paradigm used in our study. First, the odors were presented constantly over the duration of an experimental block. This might have resulted in habituation (Smeets and Dijksterhuis, 2014) to the smell, and suppression of its effect, although similar studies in our lab has shown no evidence of habituation (Syrjänen et al., 2017, 2019). To confirm the null effect of odors (or to find evidence for its existence), further research is needed where odor cues are brief and paired with each target stimulus (as they are in a priming task) rather than serving as background odors. Research shows that congruency effects can be observed on a single trial level through priming, also in the olfactory modality (e.g. Olofsson et al., 2014; Kastner et al., 2016). Second, we did not use actual body odors but odors that resemble them. However, valeric acid is present in body odor, especially in disease (Pandey and Kim, 2011; Shirasu and Touhara, 2011), and the substance has been widely used as sweat-like odor in other studies (e.g. Anderson et al., 2003; Jacob et al., 2003). What may be of more importance is that the smell was not presented in a way suggesting that it came from another person. Again, we believe that a cue – target priming design could help reveal the influence of odor on group biases. In hindsight, although we did not find any odor effects, we think that similar studies would benefit from having not only a body-odor related unpleasant odor, but also another, non-bodily yet unpleasant odor, thus allowing to talk more directly about body odor disgust.

Even though the theoretical framework emphasizes the role body odors and body-odor related disgust we would like to acknowledge a potential limitation of our study in drawing conclusions about the effect of body odors. Namely, BODS is the only measure of disgust we used. While comparing BODS with other disgust measure (such as DS-R or TDDS) we could have potentially shown an olfaction-specific link between disgust sensitivity and implicit bias. However, previous study (Liuzza et al., 2017) showed that BODS is correlated with both DS-R and TDDS (0.37 > = r < = 0.65) while at the same time being more strongly related to PVD than to the other measures, pointing to the relevance of body odor disgust sensitivity (BODS) for pathogen avoidance. Thus, we believe that although including another measure of disgust could have strengthened our claims, we would not have gained much more valuable information.

Faulkner et al. (2004) showed elevated BIS activation and IAT bias for a task evoking danger (rather than general unpleasantness), yet we did not find this effect for our disease-related IAT. In fact, the two versions of the IAT were highly correlated in the current sample. Since health/illness-related words are also strongly valenced, the lack of task version effect might be explained by a difficulty to differentiate between the strength of the target group to a health/illness concept, vs. the target group to a positive/negative concept associations, especially given the relatively small sample.

Lastly, our results should be viewed in the light of the dual process framework. We could not replicate our previous findings on US samples (Liuzza et al., 2018), where we found a stable, small-to-medium relationship between RWA and BODS. It is possible that our sample, including Swedish college students, is not representative of all ranges of authoritarian attitudes (only two observations fell above the theoretical midpoint of the RWA scale). However, it should be noted that, when comparing nationally representative samples and convenience samples, Aarøe et al. (2017) found almost identical correlation coefficients for the association between individual differences in disgust sensitivity and social attitudes. By including these new data to update previous observations from Liuzza et al. (2018), we found that the previous positive relationship between BODS and RWA is still credible. Additionally, current results show a relationship between BODS and another measure of social conservatism, namely the SDS. These relationships can be explained in the light that RWA, SDS and BODS can be related to avoidance of possible pathogen threats, in the world perceived as a dangerous place. Similarly to Liuzza et al. (2018) we found no relationship between BODS and a measure of social dominance (SDO), which refers more to the perception of the world as a competitive jungle and is thus connected to other sources of prejudice, not related to disease avoidance.

Taken together, this study extends current knowledge about odor disgust and BIS with evidence suggesting that social attitudes may be linked to basic chemosensory processes.