Wednesday, October 14, 2020

In two different cultures and religious traditions, blocking opioid receptors inhibits social bonding in rituals

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Blocking mu-opioid receptors inhibits social bonding in rituals. S. J. Charles, M. Farias, V. van Mulukom, A. Saraswati, S. Dein, F. Watts a...

Key examples of exaggerated claims & embellishing words from host–parasite systems found in the scientific literature appear to show that some of the fiction surrounding host manipulation has since become fact

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When fiction becomes fact: exaggerating host manipulation by parasites. Jean-François Doherty. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biologica...

Men’s height preferences are responsive to gender-role ideology; women’s preferences are insensitive to it; women prefer a tall partner much more than men prefer a short partner

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Gender-Role Ideology and Height Preference in Mate Selection. Hung-Lin Tao. Economics & Human Biology, October 13 2020, 100927. https://...

After many years of decline in violent behavior among adolescents in several Western countries, recent official statistics indicate a possible trend change - Data from Norway

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Physical Fighting and Leisure Activities among Norwegian Adolescents-Investigating Co-occurring Changes from 2015 to 2018. Lars Roar Frøylan...
Tuesday, October 13, 2020

Partner dreams are not only common in persons with stable partnership (24%) but also in singles (16%); ex-partner dreams were less positive than partner dreams and quite frequent – even years after separation

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Partners and ex-partners in dreams: An online survey. Michael Schredl, Naiara Cadiñanos Echevarria, Louise Saint Macary, Alexandra Francesca...

The eye wants what the heart wants: Women’s preferences for male faces are associated with their preferences for personality traits

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Oh, D., Grant-Villegas, N., & Todorov, A. (2020). The eye wants what the heart wants: Female face preferences are related to partner per...

Famous pop songs, 1975-2017: Lyrics became darker as emotional words became less positive and more negative; swear words and sexual words tended to remain rare and to increase slightly over the decades

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Blais-Rochette, C., Miranda, D., Goulet, M.-A., & Gaudreau, P. (2020). Songs as a way of listening to cultures across generations? A com...

Largest‐ever mega‐analysis: Already from age one, males show greater variability of brain structures than females, being more likely to fall in the extremes

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Greater male than female variability in regional brain structure across the lifespan. Lara M Wierenga et al. Human Brain Mapping, October 12...

Brain damage robbed a patient of the ability to put himself in other people's shoes — and the ability to recognize that failure

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Anosognosia for Theory of Mind deficits: a single case study and a review of the literature. alentina Pacella et al. Neuropsychologia, Octob...

Maybe we evolved (genetically or culturally) to be insensitive to efficacy when donating because people tend not to reward efficacy but well-defined and highly observable behaviours

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An evolutionary explanation for ineffective altruism. Bethany Burum, Martin A. Nowak & Moshe Hoffman. Nature Human Behaviour, Oct 12 202...

When men have more bargaining power (e.g., higher earnings), they manage to attend opera, ballet and other dance performances, which are more frequently attended by women than by men, less frequently

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Battle of the ballet household decisions on arts consumption. Caterina Adelaide Mauri & Alexander Friedrich Wolf. Journal of Cultural Ec...
Monday, October 12, 2020

The salubrious effects of prosocial behavior in the short term are not likely due to the inhibition of cellular aging (at least as indexed by telomere length)

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Fritz, Megan M., Lisa C. Walsh, Steve Cole, Elissa Epel, and Sonja Lyubomirsky. 2020. “Kindness and Cellular Aging: A Pre-registered Experim...

China: The results reveal an inverted U-shaped relationship between BMI and happiness, with obesity associated with happiness through physical appearance, health, and income

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How is obesity associated with happiness? Evidence from China. Yiwei Liu, Ling Xu, Aaron Hagedorn. Journal of Health Psychology, October 11,...

People high in communion, to make others happy or to display their niceness, are particularly keen to share 'happy thoughts'

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Altay, Sacha, and Hugo Mercier. 2020. “Happy Thoughts: The Role of Communion in Accepting and Sharing Epistemically Suspect Beliefs.” PsyArX...

The more-men-more-violence association holds particularly for male violence against other men, is insignificant for violence against women, & the association is significant among childless men, but not among fathers

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Are skewed sex ratios associated with violent crime? A longitudinal analysis using Swedish register data. Andreas Filser et al. Evolution an...

Synthetic voice composites generated by averaging multiple (same gender) individual voices (short syllables) are perceived as increasingly attractive with the number of voices averaged

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Belin P. (2021) On Voice Averaging and Attractiveness. In: Weiss B., Trouvain J., Barkat-Defradas M., Ohala J.J. (eds) Voice Attractiveness....

Spouses’ faces are similar but do not become more similar 20-69 years later

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Spouses’ faces are similar but do not become more similar with time. Pin Pin Tea‑makorn & Michal Kosinski. Scientific Reports, Oct 12 20...
Sunday, October 11, 2020

Showing people that what is considered masculine and feminine can actually apply beyond people led to a reduction in biological (i.e., essential) attributions for gender differences and thereby reduced gender stereotyping

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The Primacy of Gender: Gendered Cognition Underlies the Big Two Dimensions of Social Cognition. Ashley E. Martin, Michael L. Slepian. Perspe...

Once romantic relationships have been initiated, the match between ideals and partner traits generally predicts important outcomes, such as relationship quality

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Reconsidering “Best Practices” for Testing the Ideal Standards Model: A Response to Eastwick, Finkel, and Simpson (2018). Garth J. O. Fletch...

Women tend to lower their voices when interacting with men they consider as particularly attractive, while they significantly raise their pitch when facing men they are not attracted to

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Barkat-Defradas Melissa, Raymond M., Suire A. (2021) Vocal Preferences in Humans: A Systematic Review. In: Weiss B., Trouvain J., Barkat-Def...

Self-reports on the motives of selfishness, duty, altruism, belonging, and social approval: Selfish motives account for only about 15%

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What Motivates People to Vote? The Role of Selfishness, Duty, and Social Motives When Voting. Valentina A. Bali, Lindon J. Robison, Richard ...
Saturday, October 10, 2020

The Case Against Economic Values in the Brain

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Hayden, Benjamin, and Yael Niv. 2020. “The Case Against Economic Values in the Brain.” PsyArXiv. October 5. doi:10.31234/osf.io/7hgup Abstra...

Malaysian Muslims dating in non-private urban spaces (which should not be described along the lines of a colonial, Western liberal, analytically useless private–public dichotomy): Space is constructed in reaction to omnipresent Allah's gaze; the importance of an intimate relationship between a believer and Allah should never be underestimated

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De-colonizing public spaces in Malaysia: dating in Kuala Lumpur. Krzysztof Nawratek, Asma Mehan. cultural geographies, February 28, 2020. ht...