The best estimate of the effects of campaign contact & advertising on Americans' candidates choices in general elections is zero

Kalla, Joshua and Broockman, David E., The Minimal Persuasive Effects of Campaign Contact in General Elections: Evidence from 49 Field Experiments (September 25, 2017). Forthcoming, American Political Science Review; Stanford University Graduate School of Business Research Paper No. 17-65. American Political Science Review, forthcoming, available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3042867

Abstract: Significant theories of democratic accountability hinge on how political campaigns affect Americans' candidate choices. We argue that the best estimate of the effects of campaign contact and advertising on Americans' candidates choices in general elections is zero. First, a systematic meta-analysis of 40 field experiments estimates an average effect of zero in general elections. Second, we present nine original field experiments that increase the statistical evidence in the literature about the persuasive effects of personal contact 10-fold. These experiments' average effect is also zero. In both existing and our original experiments, persuasive effects only appear to emerge in two rare circumstances. First, when candidates take unusually unpopular positions and campaigns invest unusually heavily in identifying persuadable voters. Second, when campaigns contact voters long before election day and measure effects immediately - although this early persuasion decays. These findings contribute to ongoing debates about how political elites influence citizens' judgments.

Blind woman cannot discriminate gender of target faces, but perceives happy, fearful or angry expressions

Affective blindsight in the absence of input from face processing regions in occipital-temporal cortex. Christopher L. Striemer, Robert L. Whitwell, Melvyn A. Goodale. Neuropsychologia, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuropsychologia.2017.11.014

Highlights
•    Patient MC has extensive bilateral lesions to occipital and ventral-temporal cortex
•    MC is completely blind to static stimuli, but has spared motion perception
•    Despite her extensive lesions MC can discriminate between different facial emotions
•    MC cannot discriminate gender from faces, or localize targets
•    Affective blindsight does not depend on V1, or ‘face’ regions in the ventral stream

Abstract: Previous research suggests that the implicit recognition of emotional expressions may be carried out by pathways that bypass primary visual cortex (V1) and project to the amygdala. Some of the strongest evidence supporting this claim comes from case studies of “affective blindsight” in which patients with V1 damage can correctly guess whether an unseen face was depicting a fearful or happy expression. In the current study, we report a new case of affective blindsight in patient MC who is cortically blind following extensive bilateral lesions to V1, as well as face and object processing regions in her ventral visual stream. Despite her large lesions, MC has preserved motion perception which is related to sparing of the motion sensitive region MT+ in both hemispheres.

To examine affective blindsight in MC we asked her to perform gender and emotion discrimination tasks in which she had to guess, using a two-alternative forced-choice procedure, whether the face presented was male or female, happy or fearful, or happy or angry. In addition, we also tested MC in a four-alternative forced-choice target localization task. Results indicated that MC was not able to determine the gender of the faces (53% accuracy), or localize targets in a forced-choice task. However, she was able to determine, at above chance levels, whether the face presented was depicting a happy or fearful (67%, p=.006), or a happy or angry (64%, p=.025) expression. Interestingly, although MC was better than chance at discriminating between emotions in faces when asked to make rapid judgments, her performance fell to chance when she was asked to provide subjective confidence ratings about her performance. These data lend further support to the idea that there is a non-conscious visual pathway that bypasses V1 which is capable of processing affective signals from facial expressions without input from higher-order face and object processing regions in the ventral visual stream.

Keywords: blindsight; emotion; amygdala; face processing

Choices of decreasing value should provoke decreasing anxiety, but it doesn't work that way -- aversive vs. unrewarding

Shenhav, Amitai, Carolyn K D Wolf, and Uma R Karmarkar. 2017. “The Evil of Banality: When Choosing Between the Mundane Feels Like Choosing Between the Worst”. PsyArXiv. August 3. psyarxiv.com/j3yxn

Abstract: Our most important decisions often provoke the greatest anxiety, whether we seek the better of two prizes or the lesser of two evils. Yet many of our choices are more mundane, such as selecting from a slate of mediocre but acceptable restaurants. Previous research suggests that choices of decreasing value should provoke decreasing anxiety. Here we show that this is not the case. Across three behavioral studies and one fMRI study, we find that anxiety and its neural correlates demonstrate a U-shaped function of choice set value, greatest when choosing between both the highest value and lowest value sets. We show that these counterintuitive findings can be accounted for by decision-makers perceiving low-value items as aversive rather than simply unrewarding. Decision-makers thus experience anxiety from competing avoidance motivations when forced to select among such options, comparable to the competing approach motivations they experience when choosing between high-value items.

Global Times shows appretiation of Donald Trump, known to his fans as Uncle Trump, Donald the Strong, etc.

Known for approx. six months, NYTimes readers get to know now that there is appreciation in China for his brashness and perceived authenticity.

It helps a lot a paradoxical effect of nationalism... a rival can be perceived favorably if it stops the sanctimonious speech.


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‘Uncle Trump’ Finds Fans in China. By JAVIER C. HERNÁNDEZ and IRIS ZHAO
The New York Times, Nov 09 2017
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/11/09/world/asia/trump-china-fans.html

[the international edition printed in France is titled < 'Emperor Trump' Finds Fands Abroad >]
[two photos, one with children with flags and soldiers, a second one is the cover of Esquire Chinese edition]

BEIJING — They call him “Donald the Strong.” They heap praise on his family. They fawn over his rapid-fire tweets. They have even created an online fan club.

In America, President Trump faces a feisty press corps, damaging investigations into associates and sagging approval ratings.

But in China, where Mr. Trump arrived Wednesday, he has acquired a legion of admirers who hail him as a straight-talking politician and business mogul with a knack for deal-making.

“He’s true to himself,” said Dai Xiang, a resident of the eastern province of Jiangsu who belongs to an online group of more than 23,000 people that exchanges news and commentary about Mr. Trump. “He’s real, unlike other politicians.”

As in the United States, Mr. Trump can be a polarizing figure in China. He has his share of critics, who mock him as egoistical and erratic, and for fanning the war flames with North Korea. But he also has many ardent supporters, which is perhaps a surprising development for the leader of China’s biggest geopolitical rival.

They refer to him as “Uncle Trump,” “Grand Commander” and “Donald the Strong.” After Mr. Trump’s visit to the Forbidden City on Wednesday with President Xi Jinping, one fan wrote on social media, “Long live Emperor Trump!”

Mr. Trump’s Chinese fans praise his irrepressible style, his skill as an entertainer and his willingness to say what he thinks. Many also like the fact that he seems less inhibited than previous American presidents about recognizing China as a superpower and as an equal on the global stage.

And after years of American presidents lecturing China on issues like political prisoners and democracy, many also say they are relieved to see a leader who seems to care more about making deals than idealism.

They say Mr. Trump has changed the tone of America’s conversation with China.

“People are sort of tired of listening to that criticism,” said Xu Qinduo, a political commentator for China Radio International in Beijing. “Now we can talk to each other.”

It helps that the government-run news media has encouraged a positive portrayal of Mr. Trump, focusing on his warm relationship with Mr. Xi and his praise for China. Even those who do know about Mr. Trump’s troubles at home, including the investigation into his campaign’s ties to Russia, say these don’t detract from his admirable qualities.

“I’m not interested in the Russian investigation or his North Korea strategy,” said Zhang Changjiang, 43, an instructor at Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications. “His purpose is clear. He knows how to whet people’s appetite, how to make a scene and how to leverage his abilities.”

For many Chinese, Mr. Trump is a familiar type: the celebrity businessman. Successful, outspoken tycoons can win godlike status in China’s get-rich society, and Mr. Trump is no exception. His books, including “Trump Never Give Up,” received glowing reviews on Chinese websites. He is presented as a role model, a billionaire with his own empire of golf courses and gilded hotels.

Some believe his boardroom acumen will help him strike trade deals that will also benefit China’s economy.

“As a successful businessman, Trump definitely won’t ignore the huge size of China’s consumer base,” said Li Yang, 25, a designer.

Of course, not everyone is a fan. When asked, some Chinese said they worried that Mr. Trump is inflaming tensions with North Korea, a longtime ally. Others are concerned by his past attacks on China on trade and intellectual property rights. Some described him as mercurial, saying that while he seems to be friendly now, that could suddenly change.

“Trump is a person of ambiguity,” said Sun Caihong, 38, a resident of Beijing. “His policy is not clear. He’s just trying to muddle along.”

Others were more calculating.

“If he’s doing good for China, I like him,” said Liu Chunyu, 56, a deliveryman. “If not, I don’t like him.”

Even some of those who disagree with Mr. Trump’s policies see him as a refreshing iconoclast, willing to discard the tone of moral superiority that some previous American leaders had held toward China, especially on human rights.

Many Chinese “have a strong revulsion and hostility toward ‘political correctness’ in Western society,” Chen Jibing, a political commentator in Shanghai, wrote in a blog post this week. “They see themselves in Trump.”

The Communist Party’s tight grip on information in China might be playing into Mr. Trump’s popularity, experts say. Stanley Rosen, a political science professor at the University of Southern California, said that the Chinese respect unpredictable, confident personalities, which in their own history would include figures like modern China’s founding father, Mao Zedong.

Mr. Trump is showing that he is spontaneous and “beholden to no one,” Mr. Rosen said.

Mr. Trump’s celebrity status also adds to his mystique. Before his election, he was already known in China as the star of “The Apprentice,” which could be viewed online.

Even his physical appearance has drawn attention — although not always in a flattering way. In lighthearted social media posts, his head of flaxen hair is juxtaposed with photos of roosters and pheasants.

Mr. Trump’s most effective tool in winning over Chinese audiences may be his family. His daughter Ivanka, who started her own fashion brand, is regarded as a role model for young Chinese entrepreneurs. His 6-year-old granddaughter, Arabella, became a nationally known figure this year after a video appeared of her singing in Chinese.

On Wednesday, Mr. Trump showed Mr. Xi another video of his granddaughter singing in Chinese, which was shared widely after it was posted online, attracting tens of millions of views in less than 24 hours.

Other Chinese take a more hard-nosed approach, embracing Mr. Trump because of the advantages that they see him offering to China. They regard an American retreat from global affairs as an opening for Beijing to extend its influence. They also say Mr. Trump has helped enhance China’s stature by treating Mr. Xi as an equal partner.

The Global Times, an ardently nationalist state-run tabloid, praised Mr. Trump for showing respect to Mr. Xi, such as when he called last month to congratulate Mr. Xi on winning a second five-year term as Communist Party leader.

“Trump is the first American president to do so,” said the editorial, which appeared on Thursday. This “reflects his respect for China’s system.”

A version of this article appears in print on November 10, 2017, on Page A10 of the New York edition with the headline: ‘Donald the Strong’ Finds Fans in China For His Brash Style.

A longitudinal investigation of the impact of psychotherapist training: Does training improve client outcomes? Seems not.

Erekson, D. M., Janis, R., Bailey, R. J., Cattani, K., & Pedersen, T. R. (2017). A longitudinal investigation of the impact of psychotherapist training: Does training improve client outcomes? Journal of Counseling Psychology, 64(5), 514-524. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/cou0000252

Abstract: This study is a longitudinal examination of the impact of therapist stage of training on client outcomes in psychotherapy. The study included 22 PhD-level psychologists who work in a university counseling center (8 female, 14 male) who had completed at least 2 training periods in the center where data were gathered. Therapists worked with 4,047 clients, and 40,271 sessions were included in our analyses. Clients were given the Outcome Questionnaire-45 (OQ-45) on a session-by-session basis, tracking treatment response. The effect of stage of training on both the magnitude and speed of OQ-45 change was examined through hierarchical linear modeling. Therapists were found to achieve the same amount of change or less change on average in their later stages of training. Therapists were also found, on average, to achieve the same rate of change or a slower rate of change in later stages of training. Findings suggest that as therapists progress through formal stages of training, they do not improve in their ability to effect change in their clients. Given these findings, a better understanding of expertise in psychotherapy practice and how to develop it may be an important area for future theory development, research, and training program development. We call for further work examining if and how an individual therapist can become more effective with time.

Excerpts:

In the field of psychology, as in many professional disciplines, there is a belief among both the professionals and individuals served that training and experience (on the part of the practitioner) improve the quality of the service provided. In other words, as practitioners, we would like to believe that we not only influence outcomes, but that the outcomes of our clients improve as we gain training and experience. In support of this belief, doctoral level psychotherapist have highly structured training programs that they are required to complete in order to independently practice therapy. While it has been established that therapists differ in their effectiveness (Baldwin & Imel, 2013; Crits-Christoph et al., 1991; Kim, Wampold, & Bolt, 2006; Kraus, Castonguay, Boswell, Nordberg, & Hayes, 2011; Lutz, Leon, Martinovich, Lyons, & Stiles, 2007; Saxon & Barkham, 2012; Wampold & Brown, 2005), it is unclear to what extent training contributes to these differences, or to within therapist improvements.

The psychotherapy literature provides mixed results when examining the effect of stage of training and the related concept of therapist experience on psychotherapy outcome. Early studies by Bergin (1971) showed a positive relationship between therapist experience and patient outcome in 20 of 22 studies examined; other reviews, however, found no relationship or a negative relationship (r .01 in Smith & Glass, 1977; r .14 in Shapiro & Shapiro, 1982). Christensen and Jacobson (1994) concluded that the early evidence for the value of gaining professional experience is weak and suggested that training doctoral level psychotherapists is not justified. In the time since this suggestion, therapist experience studies have done little to refute this argument. Studies examining general therapist effects (e.g., Okiishi et al., 2006; Wampold & Brown, 2005) have found that some therapists have better outcomes than others, but that outcomes were not affected by the amount of experience the therapist had. A number of meta-analytic reviews have also been conducted, and have indicated a range of findings, from no effect to a modest effect for the relationship between experience and outcome (e.g., Berman & Norton, 1985; Crits-Christoph et al., 1991; Lyons & Woods, 1991; Stein & Lambert, 1995).

Level of training is perhaps one of the most intuitive definitions for therapist experience, and professional psychology is built on the premise that it is meaningful. Professional practice requires a structured graduate training program, where it is hoped that (contrary to Christensen and Jacobson’s (1994) assertion) the training experience will contribute to improvements in the therapist’s skill. Hill and Knox (2013) reviewed the evidence for changes in trainees’ helping skills and found limited and mixed evidence. They weighed results from analogue studies and self-reports by graduate students, and noted that the evidence for training effectiveness with “real clients” was limited by data being collected over short time periods, lack of control conditions, and a small number of cases (see pp. 782–784). They tentatively concluded that graduate training is effective, though cautioned that they could not rule out “confounds with other experiences” (p. 784).

Other studies examining the effect of training have addressed changes in therapist skills as well as clinical outcomes. Hill et al. (2015) studied multiple dimensions of change in trainees over the course of a period of training, finding evidence that trainees formed better treatment relationships, increased in their ability to facilitate improvements in client interpersonal relationships, and self-rated increases in ability to implement specific clinical skills and “higher order” therapist functioning. However, they did not detect changes in client engagement nor, most notably, in clients’ reductions in distress.

Researchers have also previously examined differences between specific stages of training. In a clinical benchmarking study in a university counseling center, Minami et al. (2009) found that interns and other trainees had pre- to posttreatment effect sizes that were significantly larger than those of staff clinicians, beyond what could be explained by differences in the number of sessions administered. Budge et al. (2013) further examined the effect of stage of training on outcomes and found that interns/postdocs achieved more change in psychological symptoms than licensed psychologists. Further, they found that interns/postdocs also achieved more change in life functioning than both practicum students and psychologists. Owen, Wampold, Kopta, Rousmaniere, and Miller (2016) found that trainees demonstrated improvements in outcomes over a 12-month period. However, client severity moderated this trend such that outcomes improved over time for less distressed clients but did not change for more distressed clients. In addition, they found no difference in the rate of therapist improvement by stage of training (with stages represented by cross-sectional data); that is, practicum students, interns, and postdoctoral therapists all improved with experience at the same rate.

Expanding the timeline to study the effect of experience beyond the training period, as reported above, has resulted in mixed findings. The discrepant findings may reflect discrepancies in the operational definitions of experience between studies. The most common operationalization has been years of practice examined cross-sectionally. When using this definition, Huppert et al. (2001) reported some support for an experience effect when therapists used a standardized cognitive–behavioral treatment for panic disorder. Conversely, Franklin, Abramowitz, Furr, Kalsy, and Riggs (2003), using the same operationalization, found no significant effect of therapist experience in the treatment of obsessive– compulsive disorder. Wampold and Brown (2005) also found no effect of therapist years of experience on outcome in a naturalistic managed care setting.

Long-term longitudinal approaches in research on therapist training and experience have been rare. Recently, Goldberg et al. (2016), examined how increases in the amount of time a therapist has been doing therapy and in the number of sessions a therapist has completed may affect outcomes. They found that an increase in experience had a small, but statistically significant, negative effect on outcome; on average, as therapists gained experience, their clients’ prepost outcomes diminished slightly. This study, while informing the effect of time and cumulative cases on outcome, precludes an interpretation of the effect of therapist progression through stages of training on outcome. This is particularly true because the bulk of the data used by Goldberg et al. (2016) were generated by clinicians that contributed data during only a single stage of training, and the bulk of the cases analyzed were seen by licensed clinicians. The current study is designed to extend Goldberg et al.’s (2016) investigation to examine stage of training. The smaller time intervals represented by stage of training are of particular interest as a subset of the entire dataset, as one might be most likely to find an effect of experience in the training period, as a therapist progresses from novice to licensed therapist. The current study uses data from the same setting, but with a more specific subgroup of the therapists (those with data collected during at least two levels of training) in order to examine a more specific research question—the effect of stage of training on outcome.

Another important differentiation between the current study and Goldbergetal.(2016)is the definition of client outcome.Goldberg et al. (2016) examined outcome as an effect size for a client’s total amount of change in therapy. We agree that this is an important variable, and one that we plan to investigate by stage of training. Another important client outcome variable to examine, however, is rate of client change. Previous studies have found that there are significant differences in the rate of change for clients even if there are no significant differences in the amount of change experienced by clients (see Erekson, Lambert, & Eggett, 2015). When considering stage of training, it seems reasonable to believe that there may be differences between graduate students and licensed practitioners in how quickly they are able to effect change.

Of the studies that have examined stage of training directly (discussed above), the majority have been cross-sectional, allowing for therapist experience to become entangled with individual differences (e.g., personality or theoretical orientation). The aim of the current study was to improve upon the methodological limitations of past studies and better assess the question of whether therapist training is associated with improvements in client outcomes in psychotherapy. In order to do this, our main variable of interest was stage of training rather than cumulative cases or years practicing.

All therapists included in the study were trained in PhD programs in psychology; therefore experience levels could be compared more easily given that these individuals went through a similar training timeline. Perhaps most important, therapists and clients were tracked over time, providing a longitudinal/within-subjects design. In other words, the same therapists were examined at different points in their training, and their clients’ psychological distress was tracked at each session. We are also unaware of any other study examining client rate of change by therapist stage of training over longitudinal periods in a naturalistic setting. Given the naturalistic setting, several aspects of clinical practice could not be controlled (e.g., supervision or case assignment); the use of longitudinal data versus cross-sectional data, however, as well as the clinical utility of practice-based evidence, are considerable strengths of this study. Considering the literature reviewed above and our improvements on previous methods, we hypothesized that (a) stage of training would not be associated with clientchangeintherapy,but that(b)more advanced stages of training would be associated with faster rates of client change.

[Methods, etc.]

Discussion

The current study aimed to assess whether therapist training was associated with psychotherapy client outcomes. Our first hypothesis, that there would be no association between stage of training and total amount of change in therapy, showed mixed results. At best, and when stage of training and therapist experience (cumulative cases) were included in the same model, there were no significant differences associated with either. In other words, therapists effect about the same amount of change regardless of how experienced they are or their level of training. At worst, according to models that include only a single time variable (cumulative cases or stage of training), therapists effect less change in later stages of practice. This finding is consistent with the Goldberg et al. (2016) finding that therapist experience is associated with worse outcomes, and extends the finding to stages of training.

[...]

Forget in a Flash: A Further Investigation of the Photo-Taking-Impairment Effect

Forget in a Flash: A Further Investigation of the Photo-Taking-Impairment Effect. Julia S. Soares, Benjamin C. Storm. Journal of Applied Research in Memory and Cognition, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jarmac.2017.10.004

A photo-taking-impairment effect has been observed such that participants are less likely to remember objects they photograph than objects they only observe. According to the offloading hypothesis, taking photos allows people to offload organic memory onto the camera's prosthetic memory, which they can rely upon to “remember” for them. We tested this hypothesis by manipulating whether participants perceived photo-taking as capable of serving as a form of offloading. In Experiment 1, participants used the ephemeral photo application Snapchat. In Experiment 2, participants manually deleted photos after taking them. In both experiments, participants exhibited a significant photo-taking-impairment effect even though they did not expect to have access to the photos. In fact, the effect was just as large as when participants believed they would have access to the photos. These results suggest that offloading may not be the sole, or even primary, mechanism for the photo-taking-impairment effect.

Keywords: Photo-taking impairment; Offloading; Transactive memory; Snapchat

Surprise, star scientists study the taxes they will pay & act accordingly choosing work location to help reducing them

The Effect of State Taxes on the Geographical Location of Top Earners: Evidence from Star Scientists. Enrico Moretti and Daniel J. Wilson. American Economic Review, vol. 107, no. 7, July 2017, (pp. 1858-1903). https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.20150508

Abstract: We quantify how sensitive is migration by star scientists to changes in personal and business tax differentials across states. We uncover large, stable, and precisely estimated effects of personal and corporate taxes on star scientists' migration patterns. The long-run elasticity of mobility relative to taxes is 1.8 for personal income taxes, 1.9 for state corporate income tax, and —1.7 for the investment tax credit. While there are many other factors that drive when innovative individuals and innovative companies decide to locate, there are enough firms and workers on the margin that state taxes matter.

Decline in US states' capital tax rates is due to synchronous responses to common shocks rather than competitive responses to other state's tax policy

Tax competition among U.S. states: Racing to the bottom or riding on a seesaw? Robert Chirinko and Daniel Wilson. Journal of Public Economics, Volume 155, November 2017, Pages 147-163. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2017.10.001

Highlights
•    The reaction in a given U.S. state to capital tax changes in other states is analyzed.
•    The reaction function slope is negative, contrary to casual evidence and many prior studies.
•    Allowing for delayed reactions and heterogeneous responses to aggregate shocks is crucial.
•    Our empirical results suggest frequently-used static tax competition models are misspecified.
•    Rather than “racing to the bottom,” our findings suggest states are “riding on a seesaw”.


Abstract: Dramatic declines in capital tax rates among U.S. states and European countries have been linked by many commentators to tax competition, an inevitable "race to the bottom," and underprovision of local public goods. This paper analyzes the reaction of capital tax policy in a given U.S. state to changes in capital tax policy by other states. Our study is undertaken with a novel panel data set covering the 48 contiguous U.S. states for the period 1965 to 2006 and is guided by the theory of strategic tax competition. The latter suggests that capital tax policy is a function of "foreign" (out-of-state) tax policy, preferences for government services, home state and foreign state economic and demographic conditions. The slope of the reaction function - the equilibrium response of home state to foreign state tax policy - is negative, contrary to casual evidence and many prior empirical studies of fiscal reaction functions. This result, which stands in contrast to most published findings, is due to two critical elements that allow for delayed responses to foreign tax changes and responses to aggregate shocks. Omitting either of these elements leads to a misspecified model and a positively sloped reaction function. Our results suggest that the secular decline in capital tax rates, at least among U.S. states, reflects synchronous responses among states to common shocks rather than competitive responses to foreign state tax policy. While striking given prior empirical findings, these results are fully consistent with the implications of the theoretical model developed in this paper and presented elsewhere in the literature. Rather than "racing to the bottom," our findings suggest that states are "riding on a seesaw." Consequently, tax competition may lead to an increase in the provision of local public goods, and policies aimed at restricting tax competition to stem the tide of declining capital taxation are likely to be ineffective.

Desirability of Narcissism: The Young Find It More Appealing, Less Undesirable

Age Differences in the Desirability of Narcissism. Kathy R. Berenson, William D. Ellison, and Rachel Clasing. Journal of Individual Differences (2017), 38, pp. 230-240. https://doi.org/10.1027/1614-0001/a000240

Abstract. Young adult narcissism has been the focus of much discussion in the personality literature and popular press. Yet no previous studies have addressed whether there are age differences in the relative desirability of narcissistic and non-narcissistic self-descriptions, such as those presented as answer choices on the Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI; Raskin & Hall, 1979). In Study 1, younger age was associated with less negative evaluations of narcissistic (vs. non-narcissistic) statements in general, and more positive evaluations of narcissistic statements conveying leadership/authority. In Study 2, age was unrelated to perceiving a fictional target person as narcissistic, but younger age was associated with more positive connotations for targets described with narcissistic statements and less positive connotations for targets described with non-narcissistic statements, in terms of the inferences made about the target’s altruism, conscientiousness, social status, and self-esteem. In both studies, age differences in the relative desirability of narcissism remained statistically significant when adjusting for participants’ own narcissism, and the NPI showed measurement invariance across age. Despite perceiving narcissism similarly, adults of different ages view the desirability of NPI answer choices differently. These results are important when interpreting cross-generational differences in NPI scores, and can potentially facilitate cross-generational understanding.

Keywords: narcissism, modesty, age, measurement invariance, Narcissistic Personality Inventory

Smartphone-tracking data & precinct-level voting data show that politically-divided families shortened Thanksgiving dinners by 20-30 minutes following the 2016 election

M. Keith Chen and Ryne Rohla. “Politics Gets Personal: Effects of Political Partisanship and Advertising on Family Ties.” 2017 (Under Review). https://economics.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/sharable_fulldraft.pdf

Abstract: Research on growing American political polarization and antipathy primarily studies effects on public institutions and political processes, ignoring private effects such as damaged family ties. Using smartphone-tracking data and precinct-level voting, we show that politically-divided families shortened Thanksgiving dinners by 20-30 minutes following the divisive 2016 election. This decline survives comparisons with 2015 and extensive demographic and spatial controls, and more than doubles in media markets with heavy political advertising. These effects appear asymmetric: while Democratic voters traveled less in 2016, political differences shortened Thanksgiving dinners more among Republican voters, especially where political advertising was heaviest. Partisan polarization may degrade close family ties with large aggregate implications; we estimate 27 million person-hours of cross-partisan Thanksgiving discourse were lost in 2016 to ad-fueled partisan effects.

One Sentence Summary: Cell-tracking shows that mixed-party families had shorter 2016 Thanksgivings, an effect exacerbated by political advertising.

The left part of the brain is crucial in the construction of novel representations by integrating memory content in new ways and supporting executively demanding mental simulations

To create or to recall original ideas: Brain processes associated with the imagination of novel object uses. Mathias Benedek et al. Cortex, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2017.10.024

Abstract: This fMRI study investigated what brain processes contribute to the generation of new ideas. Brain activation was measured while participants generated new original object uses, recalled original object uses, or recalled common object uses. Post-scan evaluations were used to confirm what ideas were newly generated on the spot or actually retrieved from memory. When compared to the recall of common ideas, the generation of new and old original ideas showed a similar activation pattern including activation of bilateral parahippocampal and mPFC regions, suggesting that the construction of new ideas builds on similar processes like the reconstruction of original ideas from episodic memory. As a difference, the generation of new object uses involved higher activation of a focused cluster in the left supramarginal gyrus compared to the recall of original ideas. This finding adds to the converging evidence that the left supramarginal gyrus is crucially involved in the construction of novel representations, potentially by integrating memory content in new ways and supporting executively demanding mental simulations. This study deepens our understanding of how creative thought builds on and goes beyond memory.

Keywords: fMRI; creativity; memory; SMG; inferior parietal cortex; medial temporal lobe

The origins of social conservatism: an extended twin family study using self- and peer-reports

The origins of social conservatism: an extended twin family study using self- and peer-reports. Edward Bell et al. Behavior Genetics Association 47th Annual Meeting Abstracts (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10519-017-9879-6

Abstract: It has long been recognized that social conservatism forms an important part of people’s political orientations. This study examines key genetic and environmental sources of individual differences in this trait, using data taken from a German sample that included twins, their parents, and their spouses, and which incorporated both self- and peer-reports. The extended twin family design we used allowed for the examination of various aspects of social conservatism, such as: the effects of assortative mating and passive genotype-environment correlation; shared environmental influences originating from mothers only, fathers only, and both together; and non-parental environmental effects shared by twins. A comparison of self-report with peer-report findings indicated that although sex and age differences in social conservatism were comparable across the two rater perspectives, model analyses based on self-reports yielded substantially higher estimates of heritability, as well as higher levels of shared parental environmental influences, assortative mating, and genotype-environment correlation. These results, in particular the higher levels of heritability derived from self-report data, have important implications for how we understand social conservatism.

Sexual insults are linked to narcissistic, non-compliant and misanthropic character, & to socially repugnant behavior like bullying & intimate partner violence

Hyatt, Courtland, Jessica L Maples-Keller, Chelsea Sleep, Donald Lynam, and Josh Miller. 2017. “The Anatomy of an Insult: Popular Derogatory Terms Connote Important Individual Differences in Externalizing Behavior”. PsyArXiv. November 7. psyarxiv.com/8nybx

Abstract: A large body of academic literature on personality has roots in the lexical hypothesis, the idea that the language contains information about the important individual differences among people. In the current series of studies, we investigate the psychosocial connotations of common insults, or terms used to derogate others. In Studies 1 and 2, we investigated the most frequently used insults to denigrate men and women (asshole, dick, bitch), and generated trait profiles that can be considered prototypical of each insult. In Studies 3 and 4, we expanded the scope of our investigation by examining how these insults are relevant to other key indicators of interpersonal functioning, including aggression, social information processing, personality disorders, and substance use. We also gathered thin-slice and informant reports to compare to self-reported insult endorsement. Each of the insults was strongly associated with trait Antagonism, as well as other behaviors that comprise Antagonism’s nomological network (e.g., bullying, psychopathy, social discounting, etc.) Additionally, informants and strangers tended to converge in their insult ratings. Results are discussed in terms of the importance of everyday language to psychological research.