Friendship jealousy is sensitive to the value of the threatened friendship, strongly calibrated to cues that one is being replaced, & ultimately motivates behavior aimed at countering third-party threats to friendship (“friend guarding”)

Krems, J. A., Williams, K. E. G., Aktipis, A., & Kenrick, D. T. (2020). Friendship jealousy: One tool for maintaining friendships in the face of third-party threats? Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Aug 11 2020. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000311

Abstract: Friendships can foster happiness, health, and reproductive fitness. However, friendships end—even when we might not want them to. A primary reason for this is interference from third parties. Yet, little work has explored how people meet the challenge of maintaining friendships in the face of real or perceived threats from third parties, as when our friends inevitably make new friends or form new romantic relationships. In contrast to earlier conceptualizations from developmental research, which viewed friendship jealousy as solely maladaptive, we propose that friendship jealousy is one overlooked tool of friendship maintenance. We derive and test—via a series of 11 studies (N = 2,918) using hypothetical scenarios, recalled real-world events, and manipulation of online emotional experiences—whether friendship jealousy possesses the features of a tool well-designed to help us retain friends in the face of third-party threats. Consistent with our proposition, findings suggest that friendship jealousy is (a) uniquely evoked by third-party threats to friendships (but not the prospective loss of the friendship alone), (b) sensitive to the value of the threatened friendship, (c) strongly calibrated to cues that one is being replaced, even over more intuitive cues (e.g., the amount of time a friend and interloper spend together), and (d) ultimately motivates behavior aimed at countering third-party threats to friendship (“friend guarding”). Even as friendship jealousy may be negative to experience, it may include features designed for beneficial—and arguably prosocial—ends: to help maintain friendships.

Out-of-partnership births in East and West Germany: Single women in East Germany are significantly more likely to give birth to a child than single women in West Germany, partly predating 1945

Out-of-partnership births in East and West Germany. Uwe Jirjahn & Cornelia Chadi. Review of Economics of the Household volume 18, pages853–881(2020). https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11150-019-09463-0

Abstract: Using data from the German Socio-Economic Panel (SOEP), we show that single women in East Germany are significantly more likely to give birth to a child than single women in West Germany. This applies to both planned and unplanned births. Our analysis provides no evidence that the difference between East and West Germany can be explained by economic factors or the higher availability of child care in East Germany. This suggests that the difference in out-of-partnership births is rather driven by behavioral and cultural differences. However, these behavioral and cultural differences do not only reflect different gender role models that evolved under the former communist regime in East Germany and the democratic one in West Germany. Partly, they also reflect a long historical divide that predates the 1945 separation of Germany.

Notes

1. 1.
   A further reason for building up the comprehensive child care system was that the communist regime tried to control the socialization and education of its citizens from the very start of their lives.
2. 2.
   Giavazzi et al. (2019) show that a process of cultural transmission can indeed take a long time. They examine the speed of evolution of a series of cultural attitudes for different generations of European immigrants to the US. Specifically, they identify family and moral values, general political views, and religious values as being relatively persistent.
3. 3.
   See www.destatis.de/DE/ZahlenFakten/Indikatoren/LangeReihen/Arbeitsmarkt/lrarb001.html.
4. 4.
   See www.destatis.de/DE/ZahlenFakten/GesamtwirtschaftUmwelt/VerdiensteArbeitskosten/VerdiensteVerdienstunterschiede/Tabellen/Bruttomonatsverdienste.html.
5. 5.
   Note that the data provide no information whether women younger than 18 years gave birth to a child.
6. 6.
   While the estimated coefficient on East Germany is slightly smaller in regression (2) than in regression (1), the marginal effect is higher. The nonlinearity of the probit model implies that the marginal effect of a variable not only depends on the coefficient of that variable, but also on the other explanatory variables included in the regression.
7. 7.
   A potential limitation of our dependent variable is that the share of women with a planned out-of-partnership birth is low. This might result in greater randomness and, hence, in insignificant coefficients of the variables for child care availability and risk attitude in the equation for planned births. However, these variables even take negative coefficients in that equation indicating that they may indeed have no positive influence on planned births.
8. 8.
   At the same time, more equal gender roles imply that cohabitation is more prevalent among East than among West Germans (Jirjahn and Struewing 2018). More emancipated women who are less dependent on a partner may be less inclined to safeguard a relationship through marriage. Moreover, as stressed by sociologists, cohabitation involves a greater lack of normative prescriptions for role performance (Baxter 2001). This leaves more space for cohabiting couples to negotiate more egalitarian relationships.
9. 9.
   We only provide coefficients as STATA has no canned command to calculate marginal effects for Firth’s model.
10. 10.
    E.g., see Brady and Burroway (2012); Corak et al. (2008); Krein and Beller (1988); Lerman (1996); Lichter and Graefe (1999); McLanahan and Sandefur (1994), and Scharte and Bolte (2012).
11. 11.
    E.g., see Maldonado and Nieuwenhuis (2015) and Pong et al. (2003).

Religious individuals assert superior, but false, knowledge on domains highly relevant to religiosity (e.g., international health charities, humanitarian aid organizations)

Do Religious People Self-Enhance? Constantine Sedikides, Jochen E Gebauer. Current Opinion in Psychology, August 10 2020. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2020.08.002

We ask if and when religious individuals self-enhance more than non-believers. First, religious individuals self-enhance on domains central to their self-concept. Specifically, they exhibit the Better-Than-Average Effect: They rate themselves as superior on attributes painting them as good Christians (e.g., traits like “loving” or “forgiving,” Biblical commandments) than on control attributes. Likewise, they exhibit the Overclaiming Effect: They assert superior, but false, knowledge on domains highly relevant to religiosity (e.g., international health charities, humanitarian aid organizations) than on control domains. Second, religious individuals self-enhance strongly in religious (than secular) cultures, which elevate religion to a social value. Finally, Christians may self-enhance in general, perhaps due to their conviction that they have a special relationship with God.

People are somewhat conflicted in their evaluations of those smarter than they are whereas similarly and less intelligent people presented less of an apparent conflict in evaluations (which was unfavorable)

The potentially conflicted evaluations of others based on their intelligence. Peter K. Jonason, Jamie Hughes. Personality and Individual Differences, Volume 168, 1 January 2021, 110299. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2020.110299

Highlights
• Manipulated intelligence of targets relative to participants.
• Measured likability in favorable and unfavorable evaluations.
• Generally, more favorable evaluations than unfavorable ones.
• More conflicted (favorable ≈ unfavorable) likeability for smarter targets.
• Less intelligent people were rated least favorably.

Abstract: Individual differences in intelligence are apparent and likely to come with important interpersonal consequences. We examined (N = 476) how (manipulated) individual differences in intelligence affect likability ratings of men and women. We found that (1) ratings were generally more favorable than unfavorable, (2) the difference between favorable and unfavorable ratings of the female target differed more than those same evaluations of the male target, (3) the favorable evaluation tendency was present across relative intelligence but weakest when the target was smarter than the participant, (4) the smarter target was rated more unfavorably, and (5) the equally smart target was rated more favorably than the less intelligent target. Results suggest that people are somewhat conflicted in their evaluations of those smarter than they are whereas similarly and less intelligent people presented less of an apparent conflict in evaluations.

Keywords: IntelligencePerson-perceptionSocial comparisonSex differencesSex roles

4. Discussion

Never have the consequences of individual differences in intelligence been more noticeable. Smarter people are more likely to get hired, make better decisions in relation to dangers (e.g., COVID-19; Williams, 2020), and gain admission to top-tier universities. But these functional benefits stand aside interpersonal benefits. For men being more intelligent can lead to better success at attracting sexual and romantic partners (Jonason et al., 2019; Jonason & Antoon, 2019; Prokosch et al., 2009) and men with less intelligence are judged harshly as counselors (Abramowitz & O'Grady, 1991). In contrast, women who are intelligent may suffer from unfavorable evaluations because they are in violation of traditional sex roles and that such women may threaten people's traditional ideas of what it means to be a woman (Eckes, 2002). This “backlash” can be seen in how the female target who was smarter received less favorable reactions than equally or less intelligent targets. Indeed, being perceived as less intelligent might actually be an asset to women (Abramowitz & O'Grady, 1991). However, these evaluations rarely considered the possibility that favorable and unfavorable evaluations might co-occur and, therefore, present a new view of how people evaluate others who differ in intelligence.

The most striking pattern (see Fig. 1) was that the target with more intelligence had more conflicted evaluations than the target who was less or similarly intelligent. By that we mean the difference between favorably and unfavorable evaluations was weakest in the former than the latter two. Smart men and women (no sex differences or moderation of this effect were detected) may have features that people like (e.g., resourcefulness, income) but simultaneously may have features that people do not like (e.g., arrogance, argumentativeness). This creates a conflicted wholistic evaluation in others which may create an approach-avoidance conflict towards smarter people in interpersonal or professional contexts. Indeed, these are just the kinds of people that may need to compensate for these negative expectations with humility, charm, and generosity. Alternatively, those with similar and less intelligence may not pose the kinds of intellectual and ego threats that smart people create in others leading to conflicted sentiments and less approach-avoidance conflicts.

We have provided a unique glimpse into the role of individual differences in likeability as a function of relative intelligence in men and women. Despite this, our study was limited by its reliance on a W.E.I.R.D. sample of MTurk workers, using a context-free, ultra-brief manipulation of relative intelligence, and a failure to examine potential mechanisms for these effects like personality (Schmitt et al., 2008), sex roles (Bem, 1974), or sexism (Glick & Fiske, 1997). Despite these shortcomings, we have provided insights into how people judge others based on intelligence. We failed to find evidence consistent with stereotype content theory (Eckes, 2002), and, instead, found that greater insights into how people are evaluated may come from a simultaneous examination of favorable and unfavorable axes.

Sexual minority men showed statistically higher levels of body dissatisfaction than heterosexual men, with no difference among gay & bisexual men; sexual minority & heterosexual women had no difference in body dissatisfaction

Body dissatisfaction and sexual orientations: A quantitative synthesis of 30 years research findings. Jinbo He et al. Clinical Psychology Review, August 11 2020, 101896. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cpr.2020.101896

Highlights
• Sexual minority men showed statistically higher levels of body dissatisfaction than heterosexual men.
• Gay men and bisexual men had no difference in body dissatisfaction.
• Sexual minority women and heterosexual women had no difference in body dissatisfaction.
• Lesbian women and bisexual women had no difference in body dissatisfaction.
• Inconsistency of the studies comparing sexual minority men and heterosexual men was moderated by multiple study features.
• Inconsistency of the studies comparing sexual minority women and heterosexual women was moderated only by survey method.

Abstract: Previous research studies on the relationship between body dissatisfaction and sexual orientation in men and women showed inconsistent results. To better understand this body of research, we conducted a quantitative synthesis based on a three-level random-effects meta-analytic model. In total, we analyzed 229 effect sizes from 75 primary studies published between 1986 and 2019. Results showed that sexual minority men had a higher level of body dissatisfaction than heterosexual men (57 studies, 128 effect sizes), with a small to medium effect size (d = 0.34; 95% CI: 0.28, 0.39). Other comparisons—bisexual men vs. gay men (6 studies, 9 effect sizes), sexual minority women vs. heterosexual women (36 studies, 85 effect sizes), and bisexual women vs. lesbian women (6 studies, 7 effect sizes)—showed smaller and statistically insignificant differences. Moderator analyses revealed that the inconsistency in previous studies comparing sexual minority men and heterosexual men could be partially explained by specific study features, including publication year, survey method, participants' age, participants' BMI, and measures used to assess body dissatisfaction. The inconsistent findings in comparing sexual minority women and heterosexual women could be partially explained by the different survey methods used in previous studies. Explanations and implications are discussed.

Keywords: Body imageBody dissatisfactionBody satisfactionSexual orientationLesbianGayBisexualMeta-analysisQuantitative synthesis

Physical characteristics of politicians such as their obesity can be used as proxy variables for political corruption when the latter are not available, for instance at a very local level

Obesity of politicians and corruption in post‐Soviet countries. Pavlo Blavatskyy. Economics of Transition and Institutional Change, July 18 2020. https://doi.org/10.1111/ecot.12259

Abstract: We collected 299 frontal face images of 2017 cabinet ministers from 15 post‐Soviet states (Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Estonia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Latvia, Lithuania, Moldova, Russia, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Ukraine and Uzbekistan). For each image, the minister's body‐mass index is estimated using a computer vision algorithm. The median estimated body‐mass index of cabinet ministers is highly correlated with conventional measures of corruption (Transparency International Corruption Perceptions Index, World Bank worldwide governance indicator Control of Corruption, Index of Public Integrity). This result suggests that physical characteristics of politicians such as their body‐mass index can be used as proxy variables for political corruption when the latter are not available, for instance at a very local level.

The presence of African American soldiers in the U.K. during World War II reduced anti-minority prejudice, a result of the positive interactions which took place between soldiers and the local population

Shocking Racial Attitudes: Black G.I.s in Europe. David Schindler, Mark Westcott. The Review of Economic Studies, rdaa039, August 3 2020. https://doi.org/10.1093/restud/rdaa039

Abstract: Can attitudes towards minorities, an important cultural trait, be changed? We show that the presence of African American soldiers in the U.K. during World War II reduced anti-minority prejudice, a result of the positive interactions which took place between soldiers and the local population. The change has been persistent: in locations in which more African American soldiers were posted there are fewer members of and voters for the U.K.’s leading far-right party, less implicit bias against blacks and fewer individuals professing racial prejudice, all measured around 2010. Our results point towards intergenerational transmission from parents to children as the most likely explanation.

In two studies we tested the hypothesis that observers can accurately distinguish between convicted criminals and matched controls, merely by scrutinizing facial photographs

The face of crime: Apparent happiness differentiates criminal and non-criminal photos. Kennon M. Sheldon, Mike Corcoran & Jason Trent. The Journal of Positive Psychology, Aug 10 2020. https://doi.org/10.1080/17439760.2020.1805500

ABSTRACT: In two studies we tested the hypothesis that observers can accurately distinguish between convicted criminals and matched controls, merely by scrutinizing facial photographs. Based on the Eudaimonic Activity Model, we further hypothesized that criminals and non-criminals differ in their apparent emotional positivity. Finally, based on honest signaling theory, we hypothesized that such emotionality differences can explain observers’ ability to distinguish criminals and non-criminals. In Study 1 participants evaluated photos of people later convicted of crimes, and photos of matched controls. In Study 2 participants evaluated photos of Catholic priests later convicted of sexual offenses, and photos of the priests who replaced them at their parishes. All three hypotheses were supported. Furthermore, in Study 2, participants’ own facial photos were rated by assistants. Consistent with honest signal theories, observer’s facial positivity, as well as their self-rated positive affect, predicted their ability to perceive positive emotions in non-criminal faces.

KEYWORDS: Happiness, eudaimonia, honest signaling theory, criminality, eudaimonic activity model, facial perceptions

On Aristotelian virtue, human flourishing, human sexuality & animal instinct, innocence, erotic neutralization & the view that sex is an exceptional aspect of morality

Childhood ‘Innocence’ is Not Ideal: Virtue Ethics and Child–Adult Sex. Thomas O’Carroll. Sexuality & Culture volume 22, pages1230–1262(2018). Apr 2018. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12119-018-9519-1

Abstract: Malón (Arch Sexual Behav 44(4):1071–1083, 2015) concluded that the usual arguments against sexual relationships between adults and prepubertal children are inadequate to rule out the moral permissibility of such behaviour in all circumstances. Malón (Sex Cult 21(1):247–269, 2017) applied virtue ethics in an attempt to remedy the postulated deficiency. The present paper challenges the virtue ethics approach taken in the second of Malón’s articles by: (1) contesting the view that sex is an exceptional aspect of morality, to which a virtue approach needs to be applied; (2) contesting the view that virtue ethics succeed, where other arguments fail, against the moral admissibility of child–adult sexual relations; (3) proposing that such relations can be seen as virtuous in the context of an alternative view of what constitutes virtue.

Check also Malón, A. (2017). Adult–child sex and the demands of virtuous sexual morality. Sexuality and Culture, 21(1), 247–269. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs12119-016-9392-8

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Why should the sexual dimension, by contrast, remain a closed book in terms either of open-minded theoretical discussion or, even more vitally, at the level of fact-gathering, hypothesis-forming and testing? Unfortunately, these are happening very little, especially as regards the production of quantified scientific research; on a very small scale, though, there have been richly descriptive qualitative studies of an exploratory kind, plus exhortation to study what is normal beyond the usual WEIRD baseline (Blaise 2013; Leahy 1991, 1992; Narvaez 2016; Sandfort 1984, 1987).

Three different strategies used by people to place themselves within an ideologically homogeneous information environment: selective approach, selective avoidance, & the belief in the importance of silencing others

From 2019... Personality Factors Differentiating Selective Approach, Selective Avoidance, and the Belief in the Importance of Silencing Others: Further Evidence for Discriminant Validity. Yariv Tsfati. International Journal of Public Opinion Research, edz031, October 8 2019. https://doi.org/10.1093/ijpor/edz031

Abstract: Recent research proposed self-report measures tapping three different strategies used by people to place themselves within an ideologically homogeneous information environment: selective approach, selective avoidance, and the belief in the importance of silencing others (BISO). Using online survey data collected in Israel (n = 749), the present investigation explores the discriminant validity of these constructs. Confirmatory factor model comparisons support their empirical differentiation. In addition, it is argued that the constructs are empirically different given the fact that they correlate differently with personality factors. BISO is more strongly and positively associated with authoritarianism. Selective avoidance is more strongly negatively associated with openness to experience. Selective approach was positively associated with empathy, with which selective avoidance was negatively associated.

Evidence of a tendency to perceive bodies in static poses as more feminine and bodies in dynamic poses as more masculine; & male bodies were judged more dynamic than female bodies with the same pose

Motion and Gender-Typing Features Interact in the Perception of Human Bodies. Giulia D’Argenio, Alessandra Finisguerra and Cosimo Urgesi. Front. Neurosci., April 21 2020. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnins.2020.00277

Abstract: The human body conveys socially relevant information, including a person’s gender. Several studies have shown that both shape and motion inform gender judgments of bodies. However, while body shape seems to influence more the judgment of female bodies, body motion seems to play a major role in the judgments of male bodies. Yet, the interdependence of morphologic and dynamic cues in shaping gender judgment and attractiveness evaluation in body perception is still unclear. In two experiments, we investigated how variations of implied motion and shape interact in perceptual and affective judgments of female and male bodies. In Experiment 1, participants were asked to provide ratings for masculinity and femininity of virtual renderings of human bodies with variable gender-typing features and implied motion. We found evidence of a tendency to perceive bodies in static poses as more feminine and bodies in dynamic poses as more masculine. In Experiment 2, participants rated the same pictures for dynamism and pleasantness. We found that male bodies were judged more dynamic than female bodies with the same pose. Also, female bodies were liked more in static than in dynamic poses. A mediation analysis allowed us to further shed light on the relationship between gender-typing features and motion, suggesting that the less is the movement conveyed by a female body, the greater is an observer’s sensitivity to its femininity, and this leads to a more positive evaluation of its pleasantness. Our findings hint to an association between stillness and femininity in body perception, which can stem from either the evolutionary meaning of sexual selection and/or the influence of cultural norms.

General Discussion

The present study aimed to investigate how the manipulation of gender-specific morphological features and implied motion of a body interact in its judgments. To this end, we asked participants to rate the masculinity and femininity (Experiment 1) or the dynamism and pleasantness (Experiment 2) of a series of pictures depicting male and female bodies expressing different amounts of gender-typing features (60% vs. 90% typicality) and displayed in static or dynamic postures. As expected, participants assigned higher value of masculinity and femininity to more gender-typical male and female bodies, respectively. However, the most interesting finding was that also implied motion influenced the gender judgment of body figures, at least when they were displayed with less gender-typing features (i.e., 60% typicality). Indeed, participants tended to perceive low-typical female bodies as more feminine when displayed in static than dynamic poses and to perceive low-typical male bodies as more masculine in dynamic than static poses. Crucially, however, not only implied motion influenced the perception of the gender-typing features of a body figure, but also gender typicality influenced the perception of motion conveyed by a body posture. Indeed, we found that models with typical female-typing features were evaluated as less dynamic than models with typical male-typing features, even when they displayed the same pose. This pattern of results suggests that gender-typing morphological cues and implied motion interact in shaping the perception of body gender. When morphological cues are not clear, the perception of static or dynamic postures pushes gender perception toward a female or male body, respectively. In a similar vein, when the motion conveyed by a body is fuzzy (e.g., implied motion in body pictures), the perception of female- or male-typing features pushes motion perception toward stillness or dynamism, respectively.

Importantly, we also found, at both subject- and item-level analyses, that the association between stillness and femininity influenced the aesthetic appreciation of a body. Indeed, bodies with more gender-typing features (i.e., 90% typicality) were liked more than less-typical bodies (60% typicality). This is in line with the notion that the stereotypical representation of the body according to its gender has implications for its aesthetic appreciation (McCreary et al., 2005), reflecting a correlation between gender-typing features and the impression of a good-looking body (Johnstone, 1994; Grammer et al., 2003; Singh and Singh, 2011). However, we also found that, within female figures, the models in static poses were evaluated as more pleasant than those in dynamic poses. This may seem in contrast with studies showing that more dynamic dance poses are liked more (Calvo-Merino et al., 2008; Cross and Ticini, 2012; Kirsch et al., 2016) and that implied motion enhances the aesthetic appreciation of human bodies (Cazzato et al., 2012), in terms of either attribution of intrinsic perceptual properties to the stimulus (i.e., beauty) or observer’s attitude to it (i.e., liking or attractiveness). However, albeit gender-typical features were less salient in these previous studies as compared to our study, implied motion was found to be a better predictor of the aesthetic appreciation of male than female bodies (Cazzato et al., 2012). In addition, the different impact of static and dynamic stimuli in the judgment of female physical attractiveness has already been reported in adult actresses, showing that more feminine WHRs and larger breasts are considered desirable traits in static photographs whereas more androgynous body shapes are considered appropriate in stars that perform in movies (Voracek and Fisher, 2006). Here we found that static postures increased the aesthetic appreciation of female bodies. This effect could be due to a direct negative effect of implied motion on the appreciation of female attractiveness or be indirectly mediated by a masking of female-typical physical traits. However, the item mediation analysis allowed us to better delineate the relationship between femininity perception, stillness and aesthetic appreciation. In particular, we tested two models, based on the hypothesis that either stillness increased the perceived femininity of a female body and thus increased its pleasantness (Model A) or that femininity reduced the implied motion of a female body and thus reduced its pleasantness (Model B). The results provided evidence in favor of the first model, since perception of femininity was a key mediator of the negative relation between implied motion and liking. In other words, the effect of implied motion on the liking judgments of female bodies was better explained by an indirect effect mediated by femininity than by a direct effect of implied motion on liking. This supports the claim that stillness increased the aesthetic appreciation of a female body at least partially because it increased its gender typicality, likely facilitating the perception of feminine-typing features. In sum, our data suggest that femininity and stillness, on one hand, and masculinity and dynamism, on the other hand, are associated features in body representation, confirming clues from both sexual-selection and socio-cultural frameworks.

In a sexual-selection evolutionist framework, perceiving a static female body vs. a dynamic male body may boost the salience of gender-typing physical traits, such as WHR for women and muscularity for men. Numerous studies, indeed, have shown that a female body is strongly defined by the WHR, since it appears to be related to objective gender-specific qualities such as the levels of sex hormones (e.g., estradiol; De Ridder et al., 1990; Mondragón-Ceballos et al., 2015), the accessibility to fat resources suitable for fetal neurodevelopment (Lassek and Gaulin, 2008), and the more general capacity to sustain pregnancy (Singh, 1993). Obviously, WHR might only serve as a proxy for covariating bodily traits that shape the entire body phenotype and co-determine the judgment of body attractiveness (Brooks et al., 2015). Certainly, being able to select these qualities on the basis of visual cues increases the reproductive success of the species and, in this respect, the body shape of a woman could be considered as the best way to rapidly infer her femininity, meant as a set of biologically determined attributes. Since WHR is based on the computation of the waist and hip proportions, it is plausible that movements may affect its estimation altering shape and size perception. A body in motion, indeed, can provide misleading information about shape, for instance by producing overlaps of body parts (i.e., arms that cover hips while running). As shown in a recent eye-tracking study (Pazhoohi et al., 2020), WHR is widely view-dependent and movement pattern can cause variation in WHR detection, even if body proportions remain constant. On this view, dynamism may hinder the expression of the femininity of a woman by obscuring her salient shapes as compared to when staying in canonical static poses.

Conversely, as in many animal species, humans show sex differences in body composition and the amount of muscle mass appears to be greater in men than in women (Wells, 2007). Performing actions may accentuate the perception of body muscularity, thus biasing gender perception toward masculinity. Furthermore, male individuals seem to tend to disclose their masculinity right through movements (Darwin, 1871), as demonstrated by males of some species which use dance as a signal of neuromuscular condition (Maynard Smith, 1956) or flight ability (Williams, 2001). In humans, for example, it has been shown that men’s bodily symmetry, a measure that reflects the developmental stability of an organism (Moller and Swaddle, 1997; Polak, 2003) and preservation from morbidity and mortality (Stevenson, 2000), strongly correlates with their dance ability (Brown et al., 2005) and running performance (Manning and Pickup, 1998). This suggests that movements, rather than shape, may be a better predictor of men’s functional effectiveness.

As a legacy of sexual selection, the stereotypical association between femininity/stillness and masculinity/dynamism is reflected in socio-cultural norms, grounded on how people think men and women should differ. A domain in which this distinction is quite tangible is represented by sports context. Indeed, studies have suggested that, in most of Western countries, girls and women are less encouraged to participate in sports than boys and men (Eccles and Harold, 1991; Hartmann-Tews and Pfister, 2003) and, even in physical activities where women are predominant, such as performing arts (i.e., ballet), performance seems to be judged more on the basis of aesthetic features than body capability (Klomsten et al., 2005). Nevertheless, media images in sports endorses the stereotyped view of men’s and women’s bodies, emphasizing strength and physical abilities in the case of male athletes but featuring female performers in terms of a sexualized body (Von Der Lippe, 2002). This is in line with the present finding that perception of femininity appears to be intensified by a static body pose. In this regard, studies about “woman objectification,” which refers to the tendency to perceive a woman worth in light of her body appearance and sexual function, have demonstrated that the identification of the female body as an object available for satisfying the needs of men may diminish her attribution of agency (Cikara et al., 2011) and, consequently, underline her passive condition. Interestingly, recent researches have shown that images of female bodies are processed as a recollection of body parts rather than a whole figure (Bernard et al., 2012, 2015), a fragmentary process that is generally observed in the recognition of objects; notably, this pattern of visual perception occurs independently from the gender of the observer, demonstrating that such objectification of the female body involves women themselves. Thus, the well-proved association between femininity and object-related features could easily explain why static postures make bodies to appear more feminine. At the same time, men are encouraged to display their sex-typing features in keeping with contemporary masculine norms, which consider increased muscle mass as more masculine (Mishkind et al., 1986; McCreary et al., 2005). This may explain why men tend to express their gendered body through exercising and practicing physical activity. Accordingly, a study aimed at exploring the association between levels of exercise and patterns of masculinity in men undergoing androgen deprivation therapy has recently revealed that men who are aerobically active have higher levels of self-reported masculinity than those who are inactive (Langelier et al., 2018), highlighting the intersection of masculinity and physical activity. Further, women also seem to judge masculinity through body movements, since they assess a man’s physical strength and attractiveness on the basis of his gait (Fink et al., 2016).

The conclusions that can be drawn from this study need to be weighted in the light of important limitations. First of all, we investigated the effects of dynamic cues in body perception by using static pictures of bodies with implied motion. This allowed controlling for the amount of body views offered in videos of a moving or still person, but obviously limits the salience and naturalness of body movements. Nevertheless, there is evidence for common neurocognitive representation of actual and implied body movements (Urgesi et al., 2006; Cazzato et al., 2014, 2016). Furthermore, the limited sample size prevented us from examining differences between male and female observers and to generally explore the role of individual differences in body-related processes on the association between stillness, femininity, and aesthetic appreciation of bodies. However, in keeping with previous findings (Bernard et al., 2012, 2015), our analyses showed overlapping pattern of results in male and female participants, at least in Experiment 1 where the effects of implied motion on masculinity/femininity perception were explored. Further studies with larger sample are required to appropriately test for gender effects in body perception. Furthermore, we found overlapping results not only when data were treated at the subject level, thus aiming at generalizing at wider population of male and female observers, but also at the item level, thus aiming at generalizing the results at a wider population of male and female bodies. The use of only a limited number of variations in gender typicality (i.e., 60% vs. 90%) prevents us from describing the effect of implied motion on female and male bodies along the continuous nature of gender typicality. Future studies, thus, need to test a larger sample and use different types of stimuli (e.g., videos of real rather than computer-generated bodies in movements) with greater variations of gender typicality and greater ecological validity in order to shed light on whether the association between stillness and femininity concerns mostly perceptive mechanisms or the stereotypical meaning assigned to men and women.

The US has now an active force structure of just 39 maneuver brigades (Army and Marines); only about 13 are combat ready; to add more brigades would require cannibalization of about 25% of the remaining 26 active units

Israel Versus Anyone: A Military Net Assessment of the Middle East. Kenneth S. Brower. The Begin-Sadat Center for Strategic Studies. Mideast Security and Policy Studies No. 178, Aug 2020. https://besacenter.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/178web.pdf


Most Israelis and Americans view the US as the ultimate guarantor
of Israeli security. They assume that in a dire emergency, US
conventional military forces would be able to rescue Israel before it
faced total defeat. They also believe that US training and military
equipment is absolutely vital to Israeli military power.
These widely held assumptions are divorced from reality. The simple
and unarguable truth is that for decades the US military has lacked the
ability to quickly project conventional ground and air forces into the
Middle East that would be able to successfully defend Israel. This has
been true for about 50 years.5

The US Army and US Marine Corps combined now have an active
force structure of just 39 maneuver brigades, of which only about 13
are combat ready. It would require many weeks to bring a portion of
the remaining 26 active maneuver brigades to combat ready status.
Achieving this would require cannibalization of about 25% of the
remaining active units in order to bring the others to full strength.
US reserve National Guard maneuver brigades would each require
about five months for mobilization, retraining, and deployment.
These National Guard reserve units are thus irrelevant to any Israeli
rescue scenario.6

The ability of the US military to deploy forces over long distances has
declined in the last 30 years because of a lack of investment in large
specialized roll-on roll-off ships. Many of the existing US reserve
merchant marine ships dedicated to military use are overage and have
been poorly maintained. Based on the deployment times achieved
during Operation Desert Storm, it is estimated that within about three
weeks the US could project two light infantry paratroop brigades
into Israel by air, plus one Marine infantry brigade transferred by
forward deployed USN amphibious ships and pre-loaded forward-based maritime ships.

Given about nine weeks, the US would likely
be able to field nine maneuver brigades in the Middle East consisting
of three paratroop, three Marine, and three heavy armored brigades.
Consequently, it would require about nine weeks for the US military to
generate roughly 15% of the IDF’s ground force mobilizable order of
battle. These US forces would only deploy about 10% of the number
of armored fighting vehicles the IDF can field.7

The USAF has a very limited number of combat aircraft currently
deployed in Europe. With air-to-air refueling, it is estimated that
these aircraft might be able to sustain the generation of about 90
sorties a day in support of Israel. But these few sorties, which only
represent 5% of Israeli wartime capability, could only be generated
if the host country where these aircraft are based were to allow them
to be operated in support of Israel. In the past, this approval has not
always been provided. Neither the USN nor USMC currently have
any operational combat aircraft based on aircraft carriers or large
amphibious ships that are normally deployed in the Mediterranean
within range of Israel.8

If numerous European airfields were to be made available for use
by the USAF, with appropriate host nation approval, it is estimated
that within 30 days the US could likely shift about 15 additional
fast jet squadrons into Europe. This would potentially raise the
number of daily USAF fast jet sorties generatable to about 450 per
day. However, projecting aircraft over great distances onto existing
airfields sounds far simpler than it is. Maintaining these aircraft
requires extensive specialized ground support equipment. Generating
sorties also requires vast quantities of fuel, munitions and spare parts.
The personnel that command, fly, maintain, and support these aircraft
all require housing and security. Unless European military airfields
are almost totally pre-prepared and fully stocked with ground support
equipment and consumables, which they generally are not, it requires
substantial sealift to transfer everything but the aircraft and personnel
overseas—and sealift takes time.

It should be noted that the generation of 450 daily long-range combat
sorties would also require the forward basing of at least 72 to 96
additional USAF aerial tankers in Europe. Without the provision of
additional forward-based air-to-air refueling tankers, European-based
USAF aircraft would be largely useless in support of Israel.
The USN could likely deploy two carrier battle groups in the
Mediterranean within 30 days. Each USN carrier currently carries
only 44 F-18 combat aircraft. Many of these have to be dedicated to
the generation of defensive combat air patrols and/or buddy air-toair tanking.
Depending on the selected stand off distance from shore,
each carrier can only generate 25 to 50 offensive fast jet sorties per
day. The USMC would likely be able to shift one air wing forward,
including up to 30 F-35B or AV-8B VSTOL aircraft operating from
two or three LHDs/LHAs. These vulnerable unarmored ships would
have to operate far offshore. The sea-based Marine VSTOL aircraft,
which have very limited range, would, therefore, likely generate a
very low daily sortie rate. Conventional Marine F-18 combat aircraft
would, like all USAF aircraft, have to be based at European airfields.
Marine fast jet aircraft would likely generate a daily sortie rate similar
to European-based USAF aircraft and would require additional aerial
tanker support.

To summarize: Given 30 days to mobilize and deploy, and being
provided with access to about 12 large European military air bases,
all with the host nations’ approval for use in support of Israel, and the
deployment of a large number of USN aircraft carriers and amphibious
ships, the three combined US military air forces could only sustain the
generation of about one-third the number of daily combat sorties that
can be generated by the IAF on day one.

Why is welfare provision unpopular in China?

Why is welfare provision unpopular in China? Alex C. H. Chang. Democratization, Jul 22 2020. https://doi.org/10.1080/13510347.2020.1789966

ABSTRACT: This article analyses from a cultural perspective why, despite exacerbating income inequality, Chinese people are not in favour of income equality. I argue that the patriotic education campaign initiated in the 1990s encouraged citizens to sacrifice for the greater good of China and caused the Chinese to accept and adapt to a decrease in governmental welfare as well as lessening the demand for it, thus reducing the government’s financial burden of welfare provision. I then test the hypothesis against the Asian Barometer Survey data. The statistical results support my assertion, suggesting that strong patriotic beliefs reduce the preference for social equality, and that private income and economic perspectives do not significantly stimulate the public demand for redistributive policies in China.

KEYWORDS: inequality, preference for redistribution, China, self-sacrifice for national interest, patriotic indoctrination


In the literature on redistributive policies, Meltzer and Richard have famously argued
that people with lower incomes prefer higher income taxes because they have more
to gain and less to lose from government spending on social welfare than persons
with higher incomes.1 Accordingly, their model suggests that redistributive policies
“lean against the wind”2 – that is the more people’s wages fall below the mean
income, the greater their support for government redistributive policies will be.

Practices, however, call into question the validity of Meltzer and Rickard’s theoretical
assumptions. Lindert’s so-called “Robin Hood Paradox”3 shows that increasing income
inequality is actually associated with less rather than more welfare spending.4 Moreover,
individual-level studies have also pointed out that the poor do not necessarily support
high levels of redistribution, nor that the rich consistently disapprove of them.5 The
most straightforward evidence comes from the United States, where inequality is significantly
increasing but welfare policies remain unpopular.6


Conclusion

Conventional wisdom suggests that the less wealthy should favour welfare policies.
However, empirical findings show that the reasons behind individual preferences for
redistributive policies are more complicated than are commonly thought. By reviewing
competing explanations based on neoclassic economic and culturalist approaches, this
article sets out to investigate why welfare provision is not popular among the Chinese in
spite of a growing income gap. In addition to considering individual demographic and
socioeconomic attributes, as well as their subjective perceptions of social status, I have
shown that attitudes towards welfare policies are not influenced by respondents’ selfinterest,
but by their willingness to self-sacrifice for the greater good of China.
Ceteris paribus, the more Chinese agree to set aside their own interests for the sake
of the national interest, the more they are averse to government welfare. Moreover,
the statistics further show that such a patriotic effect on the preferences for welfare provision
is not applicable to young adults born after the institution of the one-child policy.

The findings above have at least three applications. First of all, they shed some light
on issues that are likely to be crucial for the political acceptability of welfare reform programs
and the redistributive theory inspired by the Meltzer-Richard model. Second,
these findings help us with re-examining the developmental trajectory of China as
well as providing suggestions for the increasing attempts at adopting the China
model as a developmental strategy. The prevalence of Chinese collectivist traditions
enables the CCP to simultaneously manipulate both public policies and the society.
From the perspective of government, the patriotic education campaign not only
evoked public support for marketization reforms and self-sacrifice for the modernization
of China from the supply side, but from the demand side it also inspired
Chinese citizens to restrain their demands for redistribution and thus justified the
low government provision of welfare service. In other words, through the manipulation
of traditional Confucian and Maoist ideals, the CCP government successfully inspired
the alleviation of social discontent attributed to increasing economic inequality and
kept the train towards China’s modernization on track without expanding its government
spending on welfare provision.

While the rise of China has gained global attention and the China Model is increasingly
adopted in developing countries, highlighting China’s liberal economic policy and
one-party political system,63 this article reminds us of the importance of cultural and
patriotic forces mediating between government policy and society. The patriotic tradition
in China, as suggested above, provides a cushion for civil grievances against
central planning, avoids potential conflicts between society and government, and
reduces the extent to which the central government utilizes authority to enforce its policies.
This leads me to conclude that without taking cultural differences into account,
the China model might not be successfully replicated in other developing countries.

Last, but not the least, the analysis of Chinese unexpected low support for welfare provision
in spite of the high income inequality reminds us to review the literature of distributive
politics in authoritarian regimes. According to the redistributive theory of
democratization, inequality-induced redistributive conflicts inevitably lead to either
democratization or repression, the two unfavourable outcomes of the CCP. If an autocratic
government can soothe public discontent towards inequality without rendering
welfare service, apparently there is no need to risk its legitimacy to democratize or to
repress. The findings above demonstrate that China has skilfully managed patriotic
campaign and promoted people’s national identity to curtail their demands for welfare
services. This thus avoids China from inequality-induced redistributive conflicts and
subsequent top-down democratization or bottom-up public turmoil. Having said that,
I do not mean to deny the possibility of democratization or even regime change in
China. As shown in the previous discussion, young Chinese have become more pragmatic
and self-interested than the older adults. While they comply with the patriotic indoctrination
and demonstrate their willingness to sacrifice their own interests to the greater
national interests, they have ensured that nationalist beliefs would not conflict with
their demands for government welfare services. In other words, as income inequality
increases along with internationalization and globalization in China, we would expect
growing demands for welfare services to knock the door of democratization in China.

Contrafreeloading is the willingness of animals to work for food when equivalent food is freely available; seen in laboratory animals (pigeons, rats) & captive wild (bears) & domestic animals (cows, pigs); no sign of contrafreeloading among domestic cats

Contrafreeloading behavior of cats and its relation to activity. Brandon Han, Mikel Delgado, Melissa Bain. 2020 Animal Behavior Society's Virtual Conference, Jul 2020. https://www.animalbehaviorsociety.org/virtual/?page=presentation&session_id=4&presentation_id=47&displayday=&pagefrom=program

Abstract: Contrafreeloading is the willingness of animals to work for food when equivalent food is freely available. This behavior is observed in laboratory animals (pigeons, rats) and captive wild (bears) and domestic animals (cows, pigs). However, a previous study of six laboratory cats did not find evidence of contrafreeloading. We hypothesized that cats in a home environment may contrafreeload and that more active cats would be more likely to contrafreeload. We tested 18 house cats for contrafreeloading by comparing feeding choices in the presence of both a food puzzle and a tray of the same size and shape across 10 trials. All enrolled cats wore an activity tracker. Cats consumed more food from the tray than the puzzle (p< 0.05). A binominal test indicated most cats preferred to eat from the tray first and spent more time eating from the tray compared to the puzzle. Our results indicate there is no sign of contrafreeloading among domestic cats.  There was no relationship between activity as recorded by the tracker and tendencies to interact with the puzzle. Further research is required to understand why among tested animals, only cats seem to not express contrafreeloading behavior.

Facts and Myths about Misperceptions

Facts and Myths about Misperceptions. Brendan Nyhan. Journal of Economic Perspectives—Volume 34, Number 3—Summer 2020—Pages 220–236. https://doi.org/10.1257/jep.34.3.220

In politics, the sources of—and belief in—dubious claims that meet this standard often divide along partisan lines. On the issue of health care, for instance, Politifact selected Palin’s “death panel” claim as the “Lie of the Year” in 2009 and Barack Obama’s oft-repeated claim that “if you like your health care plan, you can keep it” under the Affordable Care Act as the “Lie of the Year” in 2013...

Conclusion
Many responses to the problem of misinformation unfortunately threaten to
undermine or limit free speech in democratic societies. For example, critics have
called on Facebook to ban ads from political candidates that are deemed false, which
would introduce a centralized constraint on a core form of political speech that is
absent in other media like television. Since 2016, a number of countries around the
world have gone even further in using fines or even criminal penalties to try to limit
misinformation. For example, Kenya enacted legislation making the publication of
false information a crime, a step that the Committee to Project Journalists said will
criminalize free speech (Malalo and Mohammed 2018).

Calls for such draconian interventions are commonly fueled by a moral panic
over claims that “fake news” has created a supposedly “post-truth” era. These claims
falsely suggest an earlier fictitious golden age in which political debate was based on
facts and truth. In reality, false information, misperceptions, and conspiracy theories
are general features of human society. For instance, belief that John F. Kennedy was
killed in a conspiracy were already widespread by the late 1960s and 1970s (Bowman
and Rugg 2013). Hofstadter (1964) goes further, showing that a “paranoid style” of
conspiratorial thinking recurs in American political culture going back to the country’s founding. Moreover, exposure to the sorts of untrustworthy websites that are
often called “fake news” was actually quite limited for most Americans during the
2016 campaign—far less than media accounts suggest (Guess, Nyhan, and Reifler
2020). In general, no systematic evidence exists to demonstrate that the prevalence
of misperceptions today (while worrisome) is worse than in the past.

Even exposure to the ill-defined term “fake news” and claims about its
prevalence can be harmful. In an experimental study among respondents from
Mechanical Turk, Van Duyn, and Collier (2019) find that when people are exposed
to tweets containing the term “fake news,” they become less able to discern real
from fraudulent news stories. Similarly, Clayton et al. (2019) find that participants
from Mechanical Turk who are exposed to a general warning about the prevalence
of misleading information on social media then tend to rate headlines from both
legitimate and untrustworthy news sources as less accurate, suggesting that the
warning causes an indiscriminate form of skepticism.
Any evidence-based response to the problem of misperceptions must thus
begin with an effort to counter misinformation about the problem itself. Only then
can we design interventions that are proportional to the severity of the problem and
consistent with the values of a democratic society.

Country‐level optimism was negatively related to GDP per capita, population density, and democratic norms and positively related to income inequality and perceived corruption

International Optimism: Correlates and Consequences of Dispositional Optimism across 61 Countries. Erica Baranski  Kate Sweeny  Gwendolyn Gardiner  David C. Funder  Members of the International Situations Project. Journal of Personality, August 7 2020. https://doi.org/10.1111/jopy.12582

Abstract
Objective: The current exploratory study sought to examine dispositional optimism, or the general expectation for positive outcomes, around the world.

Method: Dispositional optimism and possible correlates were assessed across 61 countries (N = 15,185; mean age = 21.92; 77% female). Mean‐level differences in optimism were computed along with their relationships with individual and country‐level variables.

Results: Worldwide, mean optimism levels were above the midpoint of the scale. Perhaps surprisingly, country‐level optimism was negatively related to GDP per capita, population density, and democratic norms and positively related to income inequality and perceived corruption. However, country‐level optimism was positively related to projected economic improvement. Individual‐level optimism was positively related to individual well‐being within every country, although this relationship was less strong in countries with challenging economic and social circumstances.

Conclusions: While individuals around the world are generally optimistic, societal characteristics appear to affect the degree to which their optimism is associated with psychological well‐being, sometimes in seemingly anomalous ways.

The Political Right Is Not More Credulous: Experimental Evidence Against Asymmetric Motivations to Believe False Political Information

Is the Political Right More Credulous?: Experimental Evidence Against Asymmetric Motivations to Believe False Political Information. Timothy Ryan and Amanda Aziz. The Journal of Politics, Aug 2020. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/pdfplus/10.1086/711133

Abstract: Recent political events have galvanized interest in the promulgation of misinformation—particularly false rumors about political opponents. An array of studies provide reasons to think that harboring false political beliefs is a disproportionately conservative phenomenon, since citizens with affinity for the political right endorse more false information than people with affinity for the left. However, as we discuss below, past research is limited in its ability to distinguish supply-sideexplanations for this result (false information is spread more effectively by elites on the right) from demand-side explanations (citizens who sympathize with the right are more likely to believe false information upon receipt). We conduct an experiment on a representative sample of Americans designed specifically to reveal asymmetries in citizens’proclivity to endorse false damaging information about political opponents. In a contrast with previous results, we find no evidence that citizens on the political right are especially likely to endorse false political information.

Keywords: Rigidity of the Right; Ideology; Motivated reasoning; Conspiracy beliefs

The unexpected small decline in Neuroticism suggests that, during the acute phase of COVID-19, feelings of anxiety and distress may be attributed more to the pandemic than to one’s personality

Change in five-factor model personality traits during the acute phase of the coronavirus pandemic. Angelina R. Sutin et al. PLoS, August 6 2020. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0237056

Abstract: The rapid spread of the coronavirus and the strategies to slow it have disrupted just about every aspect of our lives. Such disruption may be reflected in changes in psychological function. The present study used a pre-posttest design to test whether Five Factor Model personality traits changed with the coronavirus outbreak in the United States. Participants (N = 2,137) were tested in early February 2020 and again during the President’s 15 Days to Slow the Spread guidelines. In contrast to the preregistered hypotheses, Neuroticism decreased across these six weeks, particularly the facets of Anxiety and Depression, and Conscientiousness did not change. Interestingly, there was some evidence that the rapid changes in the social context had changed the meaning of an item. Specifically, an item about going to work despite being sick was a good indicator of conscientiousness before COVID-19, but the interpretation of it changed with the pandemic. In sum, the unexpected small decline in Neuroticism suggests that, during the acute phase of the coronavirus outbreak, feelings of anxiety and distress may be attributed more to the pandemic than to one’s personality.

Discussion

The present research suggests modest acute personality change during the initial stages of the coronavirus outbreak in the United States. Contrary to our hypothesis, there was a small decline in Neuroticism rather than the expected increase. This change in Neuroticism was only apparent among individuals who were not in quarantine/isolation. We likewise did not find the expected increase in Conscientiousness, and there was some evidence that the current social environment may have changed the meaning of an item. In exploratory analyses, there was modest evidence that isolation status moderated trait changes in Conscientiousness, Openness, and Agreeableness, as well as for Neuroticism.

Personality traits tend to be stable over time and resistant to normative life events that are stressful [8]. Of the five traits, there is the most evidence that Neuroticism may be the most reactive to stress. When individuals experience a great amount of distress, either through an extremely aversive event [17–19] or a depressive episode [9], Neuroticism tends to increase. A similar but weaker trend is found for long-term psychological responses to natural disasters, such as after the Christchurch Earthquake [20]. Likewise, interventions to improve mental health decrease Neuroticism [10]. Given the stress and anxiety over the coronavirus, we had expected Neuroticism to increase. Instead, the opposite pattern emerged. This decrease may be due to contrast effects. That is, reminders of the collective stress and anxiety that the world was under were everywhere: During the 10 days of the posttest data collection, there was significant volatility and losses in the stock market [21] (marker of economic anxiety), essential household products such as toilet paper were sold out across the country [22] (marker of consumer anxiety), and national polls indicated that 70% of American adults were concerned or very concerned about the virus in their community [23] (marker of individual anxiety). Feelings of personal stress and anxiety may be attributed less to the self when there is a tremendous amount of stress and anxiety experienced through the whole of society. In such a context, there might be an attenuated tendency to perceive and rate oneself as emotionally distressed as compared to other people. The stress and anxiety participants felt may have been ascribed to the external situation rather than their own personality. It is important to note that participants with pretest data but no posttest data scored higher in Neuroticism. This difference in attrition may have had an effect on the pattern of results. For example, as individuals higher in neuroticism were lost to follow-up, it is possible that this more emotionally vulnerable group responded differently to the pandemic. It is also of note, however, that the overall pattern that we found is consistent with anecdotal reports of decreases in anxiety among individuals who typically suffer from anxiety [24].

We did not find evidence for change in Conscientiousness. We hypothesized that the ubiquitous public health messaging to be more attentive to personal behavior would translate into an overall increase in a trait tendency to be conscientious, particularly the facet of Responsibility. Rather than Responsibility, however, we found only modest evidence for an increase in the facet of Productiveness, which indicated that individuals saw themselves as more efficient and persistent in this crisis. There was, however, a fascinating pattern for Dutifulness. Dutifulness measures the tendency to adhere strictly to ethical principles [15]. This trait tendency decreased between pre- and post-test, a change that primarily occurred in participants younger than 65 (i.e., working-aged adults). This decrease was due entirely to declines on one item about going to work/school when not feeling well. In pre-pandemic times, this item was a fairly good marker of an individual’s willingness to follow through on their commitments. The swift changes in the social landscape, however, may have changed the meaning of this item. Now, rather than a marker of conscientiousness, going to work/school while sick may be a marker of recklessness or antagonism, whereas staying at home and protecting one’s community is conscientious. It is an example of how social context can (rapidly) change the meaning of an item and how it defines the trait it measures.

Approximately one-quarter of our sample reported being in isolation/quarantine within the last month. Our exploratory analysis suggested modest change in personality by isolation status. Of most note, isolation status moderated change in Neuroticism such that the decline in Neuroticism only occurred for those not in quarantine. Further, there was a cross-over interaction for the Depression facet: Individuals not in quarantine declined, whereas those in quarantine increased in a trait tendency toward depressed affect. Increases in depressed affect and other aspects of negative emotionality are common while in quarantine, and the effects may or may not be long lasting [25]. More generally, quarantine might provoke anxiety that is not assuaged by the stress and anxiety felt by the rest of the population. In addition to Neuroticism, isolation also moderated change in Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness. In all cases, these traits declined among individuals in isolation, specifically the facets of Curiosity, Trust, and Organization, respectively. The circumstances around isolation may lead to boredom and erode trust. There may also be less pressure to be organized because there is less that needs to get done in a timely manner. It is also of note that there were baseline differences in personality prior to quarantine. That is, individuals who go into quarantine had higher baseline levels of Neuroticism and lower Agreeableness and Conscientiousness. Individuals with these traits may be at greater risk of exposure through either who they interact with and/or they work jobs that put them at higher risk of exposure. Individuals higher in Neuroticism may also perceive more threat and go into quarantine to feel safer. There may also be bias associated with these traits in how quarantine/isolation is interpreted (e.g., safer at home may be interpreted as quarantine). We could not tease apart these different possibilities.

FFM personality traits are known to be stable [26] with normative changes across the lifespan [27] and are also known to be relatively resistant to change after normative life events [8]. As such, there would be no expectation that personality traits would change over just six weeks in normal circumstances. The coronavirus pandemic, however, is unprecedented in its disruption of daily life for most of the population. It was thus possible that it would also have an unprecedented effect on personality. As described above, extremely aversive and stressful events are associated with change in personality [17, 19], and the global scale of the current stressful event may have had a widely felt impact. And yet, even with the widespread fears over health consequences of complications of COVID-19, the economic uncertainty, and restrictions on daily life, personality traits have been mostly resistant to change. These findings support theoretical accounts of personality traits that argue for their stability [28], even in the face of acute environmental stressors. It may be the case that other aspects of psychological functioning, including state affect or mental health [29], may be more vulnerable to the impact of COVID-19 (but see [30]).

The present study had several strengths, including a pre-post design that captured trait psychological function just prior and during the acute phase of the coronavirus pandemic in the United States. The findings, however, need to be put in context. Although there was evidence of change, for example, the magnitude of change was small; in most cases, the change was less than one-tenth of a standard deviation. As such, overall there is more evidence of stability than substantial change. Still, personality would not be expected to change at all over such a short period of time in normal circumstances. The findings also need to be put in context of some limitations. First, the attrition analysis indicated that there were significant selection effects for who remained in the sample at Time 2 that may have had an effect on the results, particularly for Neuroticism (as discussed above). It is important to note that this study was not originally designed to be longitudinal, so participants in the pretest survey did not know that they would be asked to complete a second survey. With the pandemic, the study was reconceptualized to take advantage of the data collected on psychological functioning just prior to the pandemic. Fortunately, many participants were willing to fill out a second survey, but given that the original study was not meant to be longitudinal, there was no expectation that participants would continue to participate. Second, we tested for trait change in the acute phase of the pandemic. Although the purpose of this measurement was to address whether trait psychological functioning was responsive to an acute health-threatening crisis, it is also possible that the effects of the crisis could take longer to consolidate into substantial changes in personality. Future work will need to address whether there are long-term changes in personality in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Future work also needs to address personality change during the pandemic in other cultural contexts. Third, our measure of quarantine/isolation was broad and did not differentiate between quarantine or isolation and the situation for the participant during quarantine/isolation (e.g., whether the person was alone or with another person). As such, we could not disentangle the exact circumstance of the quarantine/isolation and whether such differences are important for personality change. Finally, as with all non-experimental research, there may be other explanations for the current set of results that we cannot rule out.

Overall, the results suggest more trait psychological resilience than harm during the acute phase of the coronavirus spread and response in the United States. Consistent with the notion that traits are stable and resistant to change, there were few changes in response to the spread of the coronavirus and the measures to control the spread in the United States. The results further suggest that the broader social environment may be modifying both how individuals see themselves (e.g., attributing less anxiety and depressed affect to themselves) and the meaning of specific items to how they measure a trait (e.g., items of Dutifulness). Future work will need to address whether these modest changes are long lasting and/or whether different patterns of change emerge if this crisis is protracted.