Sexual Orientation and Leadership Suitability: How Being a Gay Man Affects Perceptions of Fit in Gender-Stereotyped Positions

Sexual Orientation and Leadership Suitability: How Being a Gay Man Affects Perceptions of Fit in Gender-Stereotyped Positions. Renzo J. Barrantes, A. Eaton. Sex Roles, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-018-0894-8

Abstract: The current set of studies examines perceptions of gay men’s fitness for leadership positions in the workplace. In two between-subjects experiments we examined the effect of a male employee’s sexuality on perceptions of his suitability for stereotypically feminine, masculine, and gender-neutral managerial positions, as well as potential mediators (perceptions of target agency and communion) and moderators (target out status) of these effects. In Study 1, 341 U.S. college student participants rated a gay male target as more communal and more suitable for feminine managerial positions than an otherwise identical heterosexual target, irrespective of his “out” status. Moreover, ratings of communion mediated the relationship between targets’ sexuality and suitability for feminine leadership. No differences between gay and heterosexual targets in targets’ agency or targets’ suitability for masculine or gender-neutral managerial positions were detected. Study 2 used a sample of 439 U.S. adults and an ambiguous target’s résumé to replicate and expand Study 1. This study provided participants with conflicting information on targets’ agency and communion, and it assessed the same dependent variables of targets’ agency, communion, and leadership suitability for various positions. Study 2 again found that ratings of communion significantly mediated the relationship between male targets’ sexuality and perceived suitability for feminine managerial roles. These findings extend previous research on perceptions of gay men in the workplace and have practical implications for being “out” at work.

Drivers of Rising Housing Construction Costs: city permitting processes, design and building code requirements, workforce regulations and ordinances, procurement requirements, and environmental regulations

Perspectives: Practitioners Weigh in on Drivers of Rising Housing Construction Costs in San Francisco. Carolina Reid and Hayley Raetz | Terner Center for Housing Innovation Blog, January 2018. https://ternercenter.berkeley.edu/blog/archives/2018/01 > http://ternercenter.berkeley.edu/uploads/San_Francisco_Construction_Cost_Brief_-_Terner_Center_January_2018.pdf

To provide just one example from a review of LIHTC cost certifications, in 2000, it cost approximately $265,000 per unit to build a 100-unit affordable housing building for families in the city, accounting for inflation. In 2016, a similar sized family building cost closer to $425,000 per unit, not taking into account other development costs (such as fees or the costs of capital) or changes in land values over this time period. As a result of these cost increases, developers need more subsidy for every unit, at a time when public resources for affordable housing have been dwindling.

[...]

[...] Macroeconomic conditions (including the cost of capital), labor market cycles and lack of skilled subcontractors, and trade policies (that influence the price of materials) all influence the cost of building.

But construction costs in San Francisco are also driven by local decisions and processes that are within the control of city agencies. Interviews and focus groups identified four local drivers of rising construction costs: city permitting processes, design and building code requirements, workforce regulations and ordinances, procurement (small and local business) requirements, and environmental regulations.

Despite participants’ unfamiliarity with the societies represented, the random sampling of each music excerpt, the very short duration, & the enormous diversity of this music, the ratings demonstrated accurate and cross-culturally reliable inferences about song functions on the basis of song forms alone

Form and Function in Human Song. Samuel A. Mehr et al. Current Biology, http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2017.12.042

Highlights
•People in 60 countries listened to songs from 86 mostly small-scale societies
•They successfully inferred song functions on the basis of song form alone
•Listener ratings were guided by both contextual and musical features of the songs
•Human song therefore exhibits widespread form-function associations

Summary: Humans use music for a variety of social functions: we sing to accompany dance, to soothe babies, to heal illness, to communicate love, and so on. Across animal taxa, vocalization forms are shaped by their functions, including in humans. Here, we show that vocal music exhibits recurrent, distinct, and cross-culturally robust form-function relations that are detectable by listeners across the globe. In Experiment 1 , internet users (n = 750) in 60 countries listened to brief excerpts of songs, rating each song’s function on six dimensions (e.g., “used to soothe a baby”). Excerpts were drawn from a geographically stratified pseudorandom sample of dance songs, lullabies, healing songs, and love songs recorded in 86 mostly small-scale societies, including hunter-gatherers, pastoralists, and subsistence farmers. Experiment 1 and its analysis plan were pre-registered. Despite participants’ unfamiliarity with the societies represented, the random sampling of each excerpt, their very short duration (14 s), and the enormous diversity of this music, the ratings demonstrated accurate and cross-culturally reliable inferences about song functions on the basis of song forms alone. In Experiment 2 , internet users (n = 1,000) in the United States and India rated three contextual features (e.g., gender of singer) and seven musical features (e.g., melodic complexity) of each excerpt. The songs’ contextual features were predictive of Experiment 1 function ratings, but musical features and the songs’ actual functions explained unique variance in function ratings. These findings are consistent with the existence of universal links between form and function in vocal music.

Keywords: music, song, form, function, vocalization, culture, evolution, diversity, universality

The Rising Importance of Muscularity in the Thin Ideal Female Body

Thin Is In? Think Again: The Rising Importance of Muscularity in the Thin Ideal Female Body. Frances Bozsik et al. Sex Roles, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-017-0886-0

Abstract: Research has documented an increased emphasis on fitness in media targeting women. However, it is unclear whether this emphasis has resulted in increased muscularity in the perceived ideal female body shape. We sought to evaluate whether the ideal female figure has incorporated increased muscularity into the existing ideal body type that already emphasizes thinness. In Study 1, 78 female undergraduates evaluated images of U.S. beauty pageant winners over the past 15 years on dimensions of thinness, muscularity, and attractiveness. Results indicated that muscularity and thinness ratings of pageant winners significantly increased over time. In Study 2, 64 female undergraduates evaluated two different versions of the same image of a model: a Thin Muscular image and a Thin Only image in which the appearance of muscularity was removed through digital editing. When images were presented in pairs, results indicated that participants found the Thin Muscular image more attractive than the Thin Only image. These results suggest that the current perceived ideal female figure includes both extreme thinness and muscularity and that women prefer this muscular thin figure to a solely thin figure. These findings have implications for clinical treatments related to body image, compulsive exercise, and media literacy.

Will a household return a letter that has been incorrectly addressed? On average, we find that half of all letters were returned

The Misaddressed Letter Experiment. Gweneth Leigh & Andrew Leigh. Applied Economics Letters, https://doi.org/10.1080/13504851.2018.1430323

ABSTRACT: We design a new field experiment to test pro-social behaviour: will a household return a letter that has been incorrectly addressed? On average, we find that half of all letters were returned. Return rates do not vary significantly according to the gender, race or ethnicity of the fictitious addressee. However, return rates are higher in more affluent neighbourhoods.

KEYWORDS: Field experiments, discrimination, altruism

Back burners are desired prospective romantic/sexual partners that people communicate with to establish a future romantic or sexual relationship. Singles did not differ from those in committed romances in the number of back burners reported

Maintaining Relationship Alternatives Electronically: Positive Relationship Maintenance in Back Burner Relationships. Jayson L. Dibble, Narissra M. Punyanunt-Carter & Michelle Drouin. Communication Research Reports, https://doi.org/10.1080/08824096.2018.1425985

Abstract: Back burners are desired prospective romantic/sexual partners that people communicate with to establish a future romantic or sexual relationship. We surveyed 658 college students about the extent to which they reported using various positive relationship maintenance strategies (positivity, openness, assurances) during communication with their most important back burner. Consistent with previous research, singles did not differ from those in committed romances in the number of back burners reported; however, singles and casual daters utilized the positive maintenance strategies to a greater extent than did those in committed relationships. Men reported using more assurances than did women, but the sexes did not differ on the other strategies utilized. Implications and limitations are discussed.

Keywords: Back Burners, Casual Sexual Relationships, Communication Technology, Interpersonal Communication, Positive Relationship Maintenance Behaviors

Letter to Mr Erdogan: "Worried by your health, Mr President"

To: President Erdogan, [xxx]@tccb.gov.tr
Subject: Worried by your health, Mr President

Dear Mr President, I am deeply worried about your health after reading the version of your words that the New York Times published a couple of days ago (https://www.nytimes.com/2018/01/22/world/middleeast/turkey-syria-kurds-us.html):

"
On Monday, he took another swipe at the United States, saying, “Our country does not envy the soil of others.”

“When the operation achieves its aims, it would be over,” Mr. Erdogan told a group of businessmen in the presidential palace. “Some, or America, are asking us about the duration. And I am asking America, ‘Was your timing determined in Afghanistan?’ When the job is done. We are not eager to stay. We know when to pull out. And we do not care to have permission from anyone to do this.”
".

The lack of temperance, absent care with words, acute exhibition of lack of respect for the US and the US President, the null fear for consequences, show that the rumors that you reached a harsh deterioration of mental health are almost a certainty.

Pending a psychiatric evaluation, once we reached this point, to be of help to everyone involved, the people, the peace, the region's stability, the many lives involved, shouldn't be a good decision to leave power?

Those who review your speeches seem not to be really helpful, since comments like those above were, in the end, spoken.

Courage, Mr President! We all must know when to retire. Your age (in this specific case) and your poor decisions (like the the bad advisors you chose) seem to counsel your leaving the great office of the presidency for the many young and capable people that can do a better job for the people and the country.

May I suggest some spa in the Crimea? Or if you like not-so-warm weather, maybe a dacha in the mountains near Sochi, to have good laughs with the Great Statesman Mr Putin while having tea.

Best Regards,

[phone, e-mail, other data]

Mediatization and the Disproportionate Attention to Negative News. The case of airplane crashes

Mediatization and the Disproportionate Attention to Negative News. The case of airplane crashes. Toni G. L. A. van der Meer, Anne C. Kroon, Piet Verhoeven & Jeroen Jonkman. Journalism Studies, https://doi.org/10.1080/1461670X.2018.1423632

Abstract: Do news media increasingly portray a distorted world image when reporting menace? The purpose of this study is to investigate how media attention for negative incidents evolves over time and how this relates to real-world trends and public responses. A longitudinal content analysis (1991–2015) of media coverage of aviation incidents is used to provide a systematic investigation into the trends of media attention related to real-world data. Results show that while the total number of aviation incidents declined across time, relative media attention increased. Time series analysis revealed that media attention for these negative incidents was negatively associated with shifts in public responses—i.e. air travel behavior—whereas real-world statistics on aviation incidents did not seem to explain variation in public behavior. Moreover, when exploring the variation in the coverage of media attention, increasing presence of mediatization facets was observed as a potential explanation for the over-time rise in disproportional attention to negative news. In conclusion, news media may have a blind spot for progression and a distorted media reality can be a predictor of public responses instead of reality itself.

KEYWORDS: mediatization, negative news, news media logics, public responses, time series analysis

Chimpanzees appear to perceive similarity in primate faces in a similar way to humans. Information about perceptual similarity is likely prioritized over the potential influence of previous experience

Visual discrimination of primate species based on faces in chimpanzees. Duncan A. Wilson, Masaki Tomonaga. Primates, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10329-018-0649-8

Abstract: Many primate studies have investigated discrimination of individual faces within the same species. However, few studies have looked at discrimination between primate species faces at the categorical level. This study systematically examined the factors important for visual discrimination between primate species faces in chimpanzees, including: colour, orientation, familiarity, and perceptual similarity. Five adult female chimpanzees were tested on their ability to discriminate identical and categorical (non-identical) images of different primate species faces in a series of touchscreen matching-to-sample experiments. Discrimination performance for chimpanzee, gorilla, and orangutan faces was better in colour than in greyscale. An inversion effect was also found, with higher accuracy for upright than inverted faces. Discrimination performance for unfamiliar (baboon and capuchin monkey) and highly familiar (chimpanzee and human) but perceptually different species was equally high. After excluding effects of colour and familiarity, difficulty in discriminating between different species faces can be best explained by their perceptual similarity to each other. Categorical discrimination performance for unfamiliar, perceptually similar faces (gorilla and orangutan) was significantly worse than unfamiliar, perceptually different faces (baboon and capuchin monkey). Moreover, multidimensional scaling analysis of the image similarity data based on local feature matching revealed greater similarity between chimpanzee, gorilla and orangutan faces than between human, baboon and capuchin monkey faces. We conclude our chimpanzees appear to perceive similarity in primate faces in a similar way to humans. Information about perceptual similarity is likely prioritized over the potential influence of previous experience or a conceptual representation of species for categorical discrimination between species faces.

A Nuclear Twin Family Study of Self-Esteem

Bleidorn, W., Hufer, A., Kandler, C., Hopwood, C. J., and Riemann, R. (2018) A Nuclear Twin Family Study of Self-Esteem. Eur. J. Pers., doi: 10.1002/per.2136

Abstract: Twin studies suggest that both genes and environments influence the emergence and development of individual differences in self-esteem. However, different lines of research have emphasized either the role of genes or of environmental influences in shaping self-esteem, and the pathways through which genes and environments exert their influence on self-esteem remain largely unclear. In this study, we used nationally representative data from over 2000 German twin families and a nuclear twin family design (NTFD) to further our understanding of the genetic and environmental influences on individual differences in self-esteem. Compared with classical twin designs, NTFDs allow for finer-grained descriptions of the genetic and environmental influences on phenotypic variation, produce less biased estimates of those effects, and provide more information about different environmental influences and gene–environment correlation that contribute to siblings' similarity. Our NTFD results suggested that additive and non-additive genetic influences contributed to individual differences in self-esteem as well as environmental influences that are both shared and not shared by twins. The shared environmental component mostly reflected non-parental influences. These findings highlight the increased sensitivity afforded by NTFDs but also remaining limitations that need to be addressed by future behavioural genetic work on the sources of self-esteem.

Effects of physical attractiveness on political beliefs: more attractive individuals are more likely to report higher levels of political efficacy, identify as conservative, and identify as Republican

Effects of physical attractiveness on political beliefs. Rolfe Daus Peterson and Carl L. Palmer. Politics and the Life Sciences, Volume 36, Issue 2, Fall 2017 , pp. 3-16. https://doi.org/10.1017/pls.2017.18

Abstract: Physical attractiveness is an important social factor in our daily interactions. Scholars in social psychology provide evidence that attractiveness stereotypes and the “halo effect” are prominent in affecting the traits we attribute to others. However, the interest in attractiveness has not directly filtered down to questions of political behavior beyond candidates and elites. Utilizing measures of attractiveness across multiple surveys, we examine the relationship between attractiveness and political beliefs. Controlling for socioeconomic status, we find that more attractive individuals are more likely to report higher levels of political efficacy, identify as conservative, and identify as Republican. These findings suggest an additional mechanism for political socialization that has further implications for understanding how the body intertwines with the social nature of politics.

Intelligence and Offending: A Longitudinal Examination of the Differential Detection Hypothesis

Schwartz, Joseph A, and Kevin M Beaver. 2018. “Intelligence and Offending: A Longitudinal Examination of the Differential Detection Hypothesis”. PsyArXiv. January 23. psyarxiv.com/z8wmg

Abstract: A well-developed literature has documented a negative and robust association between IQ and criminal behavior.  At the same time, relatively little is known about the factors that ultimately contribute to the association, with the existing research revealing two possibilities.  First, in line with population heterogeneity, IQ scores may tap internalized sources of influence that collectively increase underlying levels of criminality.  Second, the differential detection hypothesis indicates that lower scores on IQ tests do not necessarily result in increases in criminal behavior, but rather result in a greater likelihood of coming into contact with law enforcement.  The current study analyzed data from the Pathways to Desistance Study (N = 1,354) to examine the merits of these explanations.  The results of survival analysis, which included controls for a time-stable, trait-based measure of criminality (measured using a latent trait-state-occasion approach) and other covariates, revealed a small, but negative and statistically significant, association between IQ and arrest, providing support for the differential detection hypothesis.  Implications for future research and theoretical development are provided along with a discussion of the further incorporation of the concept of intelligence into the criminological literature.

Audio and video increase awareness of incivility cues as well as participants’ evaluations of negative, emotional, and entertaining tone

Platforms for Incivility: Examining Perceptions Across Different Media Formats. Emily Sydnor. Political Communication, Volume 35, 2018 - Issue 1: Studying Politics Across Media. Pages 97-116. https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2017.1355857

Abstract: This article investigates how the mix of attributes present across different media shapes perceptions of incivility. I argue that certain modalities, particularly the channel and structure of a media platform, facilitate the perception of media as more uncivil even if the content is kept the same. To test this argument, I conduct two survey experiments in which participants are randomly assigned to treatments in which the substantive content and text remains the same but is packaged to mimic different media types. Generally, audio and video increase awareness of incivility cues as well as participants’ evaluations of negative, emotional, and entertaining tone. There are also differences in the extent to which individuals notice incivility on Twitter than on other text-based media platforms. The social media platform is also particularly entertaining in comparison to the other platforms studied. This article demonstrates that media attributes interact to shape our understanding and identification of uncivil language. Furthermore, it suggests that more attention should be focused on identifying the different sets of characteristics that make incivility more or less likely or salient in political media.

Keywords: hybridity, incivility, media platforms, mix of attributes theory, perceptions