Acute exposure to blue wavelength light during memory consolidation improves verbal memory performance

Acute exposure to blue wavelength light during memory consolidation improves verbal memory performance. Anna Alkozei et al. PLoS One, September 2017, https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0184884

Abstract: Acute exposure to light within the blue wavelengths has been shown to enhance alertness and vigilance, and lead to improved speed on reaction time tasks, possibly due to activation of the noradrenergic system. It remains unclear, however, whether the effects of blue light extend beyond simple alertness processes to also enhance other aspects of cognition, such as memory performance. The aim of this study was to investigate the effects of a thirty minute pulse of blue light versus placebo (amber light) exposure in healthy normally rested individuals in the morning during verbal memory consolidation (i.e., 1.5 hours after memory acquisition) using an abbreviated version of the California Verbal Learning Test (CVLT-II). At delayed recall, individuals who received blue light (n = 12) during the consolidation period showed significantly better long-delay verbal recall than individuals who received amber light exposure (n = 18), while controlling for the effects of general intelligence, depressive symptoms and habitual wake time. These findings extend previous work demonstrating the effect of blue light on brain activation and alertness to further demonstrate its effectiveness at facilitating better memory consolidation and subsequent retention of verbal material. Although preliminary, these findings point to a potential application of blue wavelength light to optimize memory performance in healthy populations. It remains to be determined whether blue light exposure may also enhance performance in clinical populations with memory deficits.

Changing beliefs about past public events with believable and overtly unbelievable doctored photographs

Changing beliefs about past public events with believable and unbelievable doctored photographs. Robert Nash. Memory, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09658211.2017.1364393

Abstract: Doctored photographs can shape what people believe and remember about prominent public events, perhaps due to their apparent credibility. In three studies, subjects completed surveys about the 2012 London Olympic torch relay (Experiment 1) or the 2011 Royal Wedding of Prince William and Kate Middleton (Experiments 2-3). Some were shown a genuine photo of the event; others saw a doctored photo that depicted protesters and unrest. A third group of subjects saw a doctored photo whose inauthenticity had been made explicit, either by adding a written disclaimer (Experiment 1) or by making the digital manipulation deliberately poor (Experiments 2-3). In all three studies, doctored photos had small effects on a subset of subjects' beliefs about the events. Of central interest though, comparable effects also emerged when the photos were overtly inauthentic. These findings suggest that cognitive mechanisms other than credibility - such as familiarity misattribution and mental imagery - can rapidly influence beliefs about past events even when the low credibility of a source is overt.

KEYWORDS: Belief distortion, photographs, credibility, familiarity, images

Preliminary Evidence For Existence of Oral Sex in a Rural Igbo Community in Southeast Nigeria

Preliminary Evidence For Existence of Oral Sex in a Rural Igbo Community in Southeast Nigeria. Pavol Prokop, Ike E. Onyishi, Chiedozie O. Okafor & Michael N. Pham. Human Ethology Bulletin, Volume 32, No 3, 129-140,  https://doi.org/10.22330/heb/323/129-140

ABSTRACT: There is debate regarding whether oral sex recurred over human evolution. We investigated the occurrence of oral sex (cunnilingus and fellatio) and other sexual activities among a rural Igbo community in south-east Nigeria. We found that giving and receiving oral sex was less common relative to other sexual activities in both men and women. Both sexes reported more frequent vaginal sexual intercourse (particularly ventro-ventral posture compared with dorso-ventral posture) in the past 10 days compared to oral sex. Taken together, our data suggests that vaginal sexual activities follow similar patterns that are documented in other parts of world and that oral sex occurred less frequently in this traditional society.

Keywords: Evolution, human, Igbo people, oral sex.

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Oral sex is a common sexual behavior in humans and non-human animals (primates; short-nosed fruit bat; wolves)

Women's Attraction to Benevolent Sexism: Needing Relationship Security Predicts Greater Attraction to Men who Endorse Benevolent Sexism

Women's Attraction to Benevolent Sexism: Needing Relationship Security Predicts Greater Attraction to Men who Endorse Benevolent Sexism. Emily Cross and Nickola Overall. European Journal of Social Psychology, doi: 10.1002/ejsp.2334.

Abstract: Benevolent sexism prescribes that men should cherish and protect women in intimate relationships. Despite the romantic tone of these attitudes, prior research indicates that benevolent sexism undermines women's competence, ambition and independence. Ambivalent sexism theory proposes that benevolent sexism is able to incur these costs because the promise of a chivalrous protective partner offers women security in their intimate relationships. We tested this key proposition by examining whether women who intensely need relationship security — women higher in attachment anxiety — are more attracted to men who endorse benevolent sexism. Highly anxious women (N = 632) rated men described as endorsing benevolent sexism as relatively more attractive, and reported greater preferences for partners to hold benevolently sexist attitudes. These results advance understanding regarding the underlying reasons women find benevolent sexism appealing and identify who will be most vulnerable to the potential costs of benevolent sexism.

Is Romantic Desire Predictable? Machine Learning Applied to Initial Romantic Attraction

Is Romantic Desire Predictable? Machine Learning Applied to Initial Romantic Attraction. Samantha Joel, Paul Eastwick and Eli Finkel. Psychological Science, http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0956797617714580

Abstract: Matchmaking companies and theoretical perspectives on close relationships suggest that initial attraction is, to some extent, a product of two people’s self-reported traits and preferences. We used machine learning to test how well such measures predict people’s overall tendencies to romantically desire other people (actor variance) and to be desired by other people (partner variance), as well as people’s desire for specific partners above and beyond actor and partner variance (relationship variance). In two speed-dating studies, romantically unattached individuals completed more than 100 self-report measures about traits and preferences that past researchers have identified as being relevant to mate selection. Each participant met each opposite-sex participant attending a speed-dating event for a 4-min speed date. Random forests models predicted 4% to 18% of actor variance and 7% to 27% of partner variance; crucially, however, they were unable to predict relationship variance using any combination of traits and preferences reported before the dates. These results suggest that compatibility elements of human mating are challenging to predict before two people meet.

KEYWORDS: attraction; dating; ensemble methods; machine learning; open data; open materials; random forests; romantic desire; romantic relationships; speed dating; statistical learning

Chief science adviser attacks academic ‘arrogance’ on policy

Chief science adviser attacks academic ‘arrogance’ on policy. By David Matthews. Times Higher Education. September 29, 2017
Sir Peter Gluckman, who advises New Zealand’s prime minister, cautions scientists against overreach
https://www.timeshighereducation.com/news/chief-science-adviser-attacks-academic-arrogance-policy

The chief science adviser to the prime minister of New Zealand has accused scientists of displaying “hubris” and “arrogance” when they comment on government policy.

Sir Peter Gluckman, who also chairs the International Network for Science Advice to Governments, levelled a series of sharp criticisms at researchers and science organisations during an event in Brussels that debated the role of policy and evidence in a “post-fact” world.

He argued that scientists needed to appreciate that politicians made their decisions based on values as well as scientific evidence.

“Individual scientists, professional and scientific organisations too often exhibit hubris in reflecting on policy implications of science,” Sir Peter told delegates at “EU for facts: evidence for policy in a post-fact world”, held on 26 September.

“This arrogance can become the biggest enemy of science effectively engaging with policy – the policy decisions inevitably involve dimensions beyond science.”

Scientists needed to appreciate that political ideology, financial and diplomatic constraints, and “electoral contracts” also had to be taken into account by politicians, Sir Peter said. “It is important that [scientific] knowledge is provided [to policymakers] in a way that does not usurp the ability of policy process to consider these broader dimensions: otherwise trust in advice can be lost as it becomes perceived as advocacy,” he argued.

He also said that he avoided using the “somewhat arrogant” term “evidence-based policy”, preferring “evidence-informed” instead. Meanwhile, “too often academy reports are focused on academic demonstration rather than meeting policy needs or answering an unasked question”, he added.

Similar warnings have come from other figures in science. Last year, Jeremy Berg, the editor-in-chief of Science, said that academics have too often ventured into giving policy prescriptions rather than just explaining the evidence, for example in the area of climate change.

Although he named no names, Sir Peter also warned that “individual scientists” were now using their “scientific standing” to make claims “well beyond the evidence and their expertise”. Universities may also “over-hype” their science, he added.

In addition, the pressures of “performance measurement, bibliometrics, and the quest for societal and industrial impact” also have the potential to undermine public trust in science, he said, “due to perceived or actual conflicts of interest and the potential to affect the behaviour of individual scientists”.

[More at the link above.]

Physicists find we’re not living in a computer simulation

Physicists find we’re not living in a computer simulation

Summary:

https://cosmosmagazine.com/physics/physicists-find-we-re-not-living-in-a-computer-simulation

Ringel and Kovrizhi showed that attempts to use quantum Monte Carlo to model systems exhibiting anomalies, such as the quantum Hall effect, will always become unworkable.

They discovered that the complexity of the simulation increased exponentially with the number of particles being simulated.

If the complexity grew linearly with the number of particles being simulated, then doubling the number of partices would mean doubling the computing power required. If, however, the complexity grows on an exponential scale – where the amount of computing power has to double every time a single particle is added – then the task quickly becomes impossible.

The researchers calculated that just storing information about a couple of hundred electrons would require a computer memory that would physically require more atoms than exist in the universe.



Paper:

Quantized gravitational responses, the sign problem, and quantum complexity. Zohar Ringel and Dmitry L. Kovrizhin. Science Advances, Sep 27 2017, Vol. 3, no. 9, e1701758, DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.1701758

Abstract: It is believed that not all quantum systems can be simulated efficiently using classical computational resources. This notion is supported by the fact that it is not known how to express the partition function in a sign-free manner in quantum Monte Carlo (QMC) simulations for a large number of important problems. The answer to the question—whether there is a fundamental obstruction to such a sign-free representation in generic quantum systems—remains unclear. Focusing on systems with bosonic degrees of freedom, we show that quantized gravitational responses appear as obstructions to local sign-free QMC. In condensed matter physics settings, these responses, such as thermal Hall conductance, are associated with fractional quantum Hall effects. We show that similar arguments also hold in the case of spontaneously broken time-reversal (TR) symmetry such as in the chiral phase of a perturbed quantum Kagome antiferromagnet. The connection between quantized gravitational responses and the sign problem is also manifested in certain vertex models, where TR symmetry is preserved.

Individuals reared together are no more similar to one another in their personalities than if chosen at random in the population

Theoretical Concepts in the Genetics of Personality Development. Elliot M. Tucker-Drob & Daniel A. Briley. To appear in Handbook of Personality Development, by Dan P. McAdams, Rebecca L. Shiner, and Jennifer L. Tackett (Eds.). June 2017. http://labs.la.utexas.edu/tucker-drob/files/2015/02/Tucker-Drob-Briley-Genetics-of-Personality-Development-Chapter.pdf

Conventional work in the behavioral genetics of personality largely focused on single point estimates of heritability of personality. For instance, point estimates for the heritability of all of the Big Five personality traits have been reported to be approximately .40-.60 (for a review see Bouchard & McGue, 2003), with no consistent differences reported across different Big Five traits (Turkheimer, Pettersson, & Horn, 2014). Evidence for genetic influences on personality are derived from the observation that genetically more related individuals (e.g. identical twins) are more similar in their personality traits than genetically less related individuals (e.g. fraternal twins), even when holding shared rearing environment constant across relationship types. Also of note is that, after accounting for genetic relatedness, individuals reared together are no more similar to one another in their personalities than would be expected for individuals chosen at random out of the population. Nongenetic factors that differentiate individuals regardless of whether their rearing environment was shared with one another are termed the nonshared environment. These two important and interesting observations, that the heritability of personality is approximately 40%-60% at the population level and that nongenetic variation in personality is attributable to nonshared environmental factors, are the primary findings from behavioral genetics used to inform conventional personality theories. Yet, they do not do justice to the important developmental patterns in the genetics of personality.

The relative influence of genetic and environmental effects may shift across the lifespan, rather than remain static. Age trends in the heritability of personality have been reported in quantitative syntheses by Kandler (2012) for Neuroticism and Extraversion, and Briley and Tucker-Drob (2014) for all of the Big Five. In both syntheses, age trends have been very similar across each of the Big Five traits. [...] Heritability of personality is estimated at approximately 70% in early childhood, declines to approximately 50% by late adolescence, and subsequently declines to approximately 35% by late adulthood. Nonshared environmentality increases from approximately 30% to 50% to 65% from infancy to late adolescence, to late adulthood. However, at least some of this trend may reflect method bias, as nearly all of the effect sizes for very young children come from parent-reports. These ratings may exaggerate differences between siblings and thus inflate heritability.

Access to other options during drug access can divert the vast majority of rats from continued drug use

Trying to make sense of rodents' drug choice behavior. Serge H. Ahmed. Progress in Neuro-Psychopharmacology and Biological Psychiatry, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.pnpbp.2017.09.027

Highlights
•    Rodents are the most frequently used animal models in experimental addiction research.
•    Rodents discount future delayed reward at a relatively high rate.
•    This behavioral trait seems to be protective against harmful drug use in certain choice settings.
•    In other settings, however, the same trait seems to confer a high vulnerability to harmful drug use.
•    More research effort should be expended to study the interactions between the set, the drug, and the setting.

Abstract: Since the first experimental hint for the existence of “an actual desire or striving for the drug” in nonhuman animals by Sidney Spragg in the late 1930s, much effort has been expended by lab researchers to try to model in a valid manner the key behavioral aspects and signs of addiction in animals, typically in rodents (i.e., mainly rats and, to a lesser extent, mice). Despite much advances, there still remains a lingering doubt about the disordered status of drug use in rodents. This is mainly because drug use occurs in a particular setting where animals have access to a drug for self-administration but without access to other valuable behavioral options that could compete with and divert from drug use. Here I review evidence showing that enriching the drug setting with other behavioral options can dramatically influence the pattern of drug choices in rodents. Overall, access to other options during drug access can divert the vast majority of rats from continued drug use. Only few individuals continue to engage in drug use despite access to and at the expense of other options. However, there exist certain high-risk settings in which virtually all animals are vulnerable to develop a harmful pattern of exclusive drug use that can even become fatal in the long run if not discontinued by an outside intervention. Paradoxically, it appears that the behavioral trait that is hypothesized to uniquely render rodents vulnerable to the latter settings (i.e., a narrow focus on the local, current choice, with no consideration of the global pattern of choice) would also protect most of them from using drugs in other choice settings. I conclude with an attempt to make sense of this peculiar setting-specific behavior and with some general propositions for future research.

If we spend a longer time waiting in a line, we buy more -- a form of mental accounting to offset the cost of the wait

Ulku, Sezer and Hydock, Christopher and Cui, Shiliang, Making the Wait Worthwhile: Experiments on the Effect of Queueing on Consumption (July 24, 2017). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3007786

Abstract: The queueing literature to date has implicitly assumed that customers’ consumption decisions are independent from the time they spent waiting in a line prior to making the decisions. Through a series of studies, we investigate this relationship, and find that when people spend a longer time waiting in a line, they tend to increase their consumption. Next, we identify mental accounting as the underlying mechanism that drives this behavior; a larger purchase allows people to offset the fixed cost of the long wait. Finally, we explore the effect of managerial practices commonly employed by firms to improve customers’ waiting experience. We find that while these practices result in improved customer experience, they actually lead to lower consumption

Keywords: Mental Accounting, Sunk Cost Fallacy, Consumer Behavior in Queues, Behavioral Operations

Officials who aspire to higher office signal decisiveness by accelerating decisions, since voters prefer leaders with low costs of delay and little uncertainty

A Theory of Decisive Leadership. Douglas Bernheim and Aaron Bodoh-Creed. Stanford Working Paper, July 2017. http://faculty.haas.berkeley.edu/acreed/Indecision.htm

Abstract: We present a theory that rationalizes voters' preferences for decisive leaders. Greater decisiveness entails an inclination to reach decisions more quickly conditional on fixed information. Although speed can be good or bad, agency problems between voters and politicians create preferences among voters for leaders who perceive low costs of delay and have little uncertainty about idiosyncratic concerns, and hence who make decisions more rapidly than typical voters. Officials who aspire to higher office therefore signal decisiveness by accelerating decisions. In elections, candidates with reputations for greater decisiveness prevail despite making smaller compromises, and therefore earn larger rents from office holding.

We have much fewer cross-cultural nonverbal emotional vocalizations than primates

Human Non-linguistic Vocal Repertoire: Call Types and Their Meaning. Andrey Anikin, Rasmus Bååth, and Tomas Persson. Journal of Nonverbal Behavior, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10919-017-0267-y

Abstract: Recent research on human nonverbal vocalizations has led to considerable progress in our understanding of vocal communication of emotion. However, in contrast to studies of animal vocalizations, this research has focused mainly on the emotional interpretation of such signals. The repertoire of human nonverbal vocalizations as acoustic types, and the mapping between acoustic and emotional categories, thus remain underexplored. In a cross-linguistic naming task (Experiment 1), verbal categorization of 132 authentic (non-acted) human vocalizations by English-, Swedish- and Russian-speaking participants revealed the same major acoustic types: laugh, cry, scream, moan, and possibly roar and sigh. The association between call type and perceived emotion was systematic but non-redundant: listeners associated every call type with a limited, but in some cases relatively wide, range of emotions. The speed and consistency of naming the call type predicted the speed and consistency of inferring the caller’s emotion, suggesting that acoustic and emotional categorizations are closely related. However, participants preferred to name the call type before naming the emotion. Furthermore, nonverbal categorization of the same stimuli in a triad classification task (Experiment 2) was more compatible with classification by call type than by emotion, indicating the former’s greater perceptual salience. These results suggest that acoustic categorization may precede attribution of emotion, highlighting the need to distinguish between the overt form of nonverbal signals and their interpretation by the perceiver. Both within- and between-call acoustic variation can then be modeled explicitly, bringing research on human nonverbal vocalizations more in line with the work on animal communication.

Black elected officials had a punitive impact on imprisonment and policing

The Racial Politics of Mass Incarceration. John Clegg and Adaner Usmani. NYU Working Paper, February 2017. https://ssrn.com/abstract=3025670

Abstract: Dominant accounts of America's punitive turn assume that black elected officials and their constituents resisted higher levels of imprisonment and policing. We gather new data and find little support for this view. Panel regressions and an analysis of federally-mandated redistricting suggest that black elected officials had a punitive impact on imprisonment and policing. We corroborate this with public opinion and legislative data. Pooling 300,000 respondents to polls between 1955 and 2014, we find that blacks became substantially more punitive over this period, and were consistently more fearful of crime than whites. The punitive impact of black elected officials at the state and federal level was concentrated at the height of public punitiveness. In short, the racial politics of punishment are more complex than the conventional view allows. We find evidence that black elected officials and the black public were more likely than whites to support non-punitive policies, but conclude that they were constrained by the context in which they sought remedies from crime.

Keywords: crime, criminal justice, public opinion, race, mass incarceration

My commentary: Typical of the professoriat is to be surprised of this... Those who live in the middle of the daily bloodletting are retrograde because they support state repression against those who kill. They cannot see the motivation to support Duterte.

Addicted to Hate: Identity Residual among Former White Supremacists

Addicted to Hate: Identity Residual among Former White Supremacists. Pete Simi et al. American Sociological Review, https://doi.org/10.1177/0003122417728719

Abstract: The process of leaving deeply meaningful and embodied identities can be experienced as a struggle against addiction, with continuing cognitive, emotional, and physiological responses that are involuntary, unwanted, and triggered by environmental factors. Using data derived from a unique set of in-depth life history interviews with 89 former U.S. white supremacists, as well as theories derived from recent advances in cognitive sociology, we examine how a rejected identity can persist despite a desire to change. Disengagement from white supremacy is characterized by substantial lingering effects that subjects describe as addiction. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of identity residual for understanding how people leave and for theories of the self.

Fear vs. disgust as affective predictors of absolutist opposition to genetically modified food and other new technologies

What lies beneath? Fear vs. disgust as affective predictors of absolutist opposition to genetically modified food and other new technologies. Edward Royzman, Corey Cusimano, and Robert F. Leeman. Judgment and Decision Making, Vol. 12, No. 5, September 2017, pp. 466-480. http://journal.sjdm.org/17/17625/jdm17625.html

Abstract: In line with earlier research, a multi-phase study found a significant positive association between a widely used measure of trait disgust and people’s tendency to favor absolutist (non-consequentialist) restrictions on genetically modified food (GMF). However, a more nuanced high-granularity approach showed that it was individual sensitivity to fear (specifically, a tendency to feel creeped out by strange and subtly deviant events) rather than a tendency to be disgusted (orally inhibited) by these events that was a unique predictor of absolutist opposition to GMF and other types of new technology. This finding is consistent with prior theorizing and research demonstrating fear to be “the major determiner of public perception and acceptance of risk for a wide range of hazards” related to new technology (e.g., nuclear power) (Slovic & Peters, 2006, p. 322). The present study calls attention to the importance of conducting future assessments of disgust (and other affective constructs) in a manner that, among other things, recognizes the substantial disconnect between theoretical and lay meanings of the term and illustrates how a policy-guiding result may arise from a sheer miscommunication between a researcher and a subject.