Operationalization of Excessive Masturbation—Development of the Excessive Masturbation Scale (EMS)

Operationalization of Excessive Masturbation—Development of the EMS. Wiebke Driemeyer, Jan Snagowski, Christian Laier, Michael Schwarz & Matthias Brand. Sexual Addiction & Compulsivity, Volume 25, 2018 - Issue 2-3, Pages 197-215. https://doi.org/10.1080/10720162.2018.1495586 

Abstract: Research has recently focused on hypersexual behavior and Internet-pornography-viewing disorder as potential psychopathological conditions, but specific aspects of the phenomena have been widely neglected. This study aimed to investigate excessive masturbation as a subset and symptom of hypersexual behaviors. 2 studies with independent samples have been conducted. In study 1 (n = 146), the Excessive Masturbation Scale (EMS) was designed and tested via explorative factor analysis. In study 2 (n = 255), the psychometric properties of the EMS were evaluated by confirmatory factor analysis. A replicable 2-factor structure (“Coping” and “Loss of Control”) was identified. The EMS showed good psychometric properties and provides a promising basis for further research.

No, You Can’t Ignore Email. It’s Rude. Being overwhelmed is no excuse. It’s hard to be good at your job if you’re bad at responding to people.

No, You Can’t Ignore E-mail. It’s Rude. Adam Grant. TNYT Feb 15 2019, https://www.nytimes.com/2019/02/15/opinion/sunday/email-etiquette.html

Being overwhelmed is no excuse. It’s hard to be good at your job if you’re bad at responding to people.

I’m really sorry I didn’t say hi, make eye contact or acknowledge your presence in any way when you waved to me in the hallway the other day. It’s nothing personal. I just have too many people trying to greet me these days, and I can’t respond to everyone.

That sounds ridiculous, right? You would never snub a colleague trying to strike up a conversation. Yet when you ignore a personal email, that’s exactly what you’ve done: digital snubbery.

Yes, we’re all overwhelmed with email. One recent survey suggested that the average American’s inbox has 199 unread messages. But volume isn’t an excuse for not replying. Ignoring email is an act of incivility.

“I’m too busy to answer your email” really means “Your email is not a priority for me right now.” That’s a popular justification for neglecting your inbox: It’s full of other people’s priorities. But there’s a growing body of evidence that if you care about being good at your job, your inbox should be a priority.

When researchers compiled a huge database of the digital habits of teams at Microsoft, they found that the clearest warning sign of an ineffective manager was being slow to answer emails. Responding in a timely manner shows that you are conscientious — organized, dependable and hardworking. And that matters. In a comprehensive analysis of people in hundreds of occupations, conscientiousness was the single best personality predictor of job performance. (It turns out that people who are rude online tend to be rude offline, too.)

I’m not saying you have to answer every email. Your brain is not just sitting there waiting to be picked. If senders aren’t considerate enough to do their homework and ask a question you’re qualified to answer, you don’t owe them anything back.

How do you know if an email you’ve received — or even more important, one you’re considering writing — doesn’t deserve a response? After all, sending an inappropriate email can be as rude as ignoring a polite one.

I have a few general rules. You should not feel obliged to respond to strangers asking you to share their content on social media, introduce them to your more famous colleagues, spend hours advising them on something they’ve created or “jump on a call this afternoon.” If someone you barely know emails you a dozen times a month and is always asking you to do something for him, you can ignore those emails guilt-free.

Along these lines, the last time I made the mistake of admitting in this newspaper that I believe in being responsive to emails, I got a deluge of messages. One reader even wrote, “I just wanted to test you, to find out if it’s true.” So this time, let me be clear: I’m not writing this article as a personal note to your inbox, so it doesn’t require a personal reply to mine.

We all need to set boundaries. People shouldn’t be forced to answer endless emails outside work hours — which is why some companies have policies against checking emails on nights and weekends. Some people I know tell their colleagues they’ll be on email from 9 to 10 a.m. and 2 to 3 p.m. each day, but not in between. If it’s not an emergency, no one should expect you to respond right away.

Spending hours a day answering emails can stand in the way of getting other things done. One recent study shows that on days when managers face heavy email demands, they make less progress toward their goals and end up being less proactive in communicating their vision and setting expectations.

But that same study shows that email load takes a toll only if it’s not central to your job. And let’s face it: These days email is central to most jobs. What we really need to do is to make email something we think carefully about before sending, and therefore feel genuinely bad ignoring.

Whatever boundaries you choose, don’t abandon your inbox altogether. Not answering emails today is like refusing to take phone calls in the 1990s or ignoring letters in the 1950s. Email is not household clutter and you’re not Marie Kondo. Ping!

Your inbox isn’t just a list of other people’s tasks. It’s where other people help you do your job. It allows you to pose questions with a few keystrokes instead of spending the whole day on the phone, and it’s vital to gathering information that you can’t easily find in a Google search.

“My inbox is other people’s priorities” bothers me as a social scientist, but also as a human being. Your priorities should include other people and their priorities. It’s common courtesy to engage with people who are thoughtful in reaching out.

This isn’t just about doing unto others as you’d have them do unto you. Clearing out your inbox can jump-start your own productivity. One set of experiments showed that if you’re behind on a task, you’ll finish it faster if you’re busy, because you know you need to use your time efficiently. As a writer, I like to start the morning by answering a few emails — it helps me get into a productive rhythm of deep work. If you think you have too many emails, maybe you just don’t have enough.

Everyone occasionally misses an email. But if you’re habitually “too busy” to answer legitimate emails, there’s a problem with your process. It sends a signal that you’re disorganized — or that you just don’t care.

If you’re just hopelessly behind on your inbox, at least set up an auto-reply giving people another channel where they can reach you. A Slack channel. Twitter. A phone number. Post-it notes. Carrier pigeon.

Remember that a short reply is kinder and more professional than none at all. If you have too much on your plate, come clean: “I don’t have the bandwidth to add this.” If it’s not your expertise, just say so: “Sorry, this isn’t in my wheelhouse.” And if you want to say no, just say “no.”

We can all learn from the writer E.B. White, who, in response to a 1956 letter asking him to join a committee, responded with two short sentences. The first: a thank-you for the invitation. The second: “I must decline, for secret reasons.”

Adam Grant, an organizational psychologist at Wharton, is the author of “Originals” and the host of the TED podcast “WorkLife.”

Post-truth, anti-truth, and ***can’t-handle-the-truth***: How responses to science are shaped by concerns about its impact

Sutton, Robbie & Petterson, Aino & T. Rutjens, Bastiaan. (2018). Post-truth, anti-truth, and can’t-handle-the-truth: how responses to science are shaped by concerns about its impact. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/327837926

Abstract: Science is valued for its basic and applied functions: producing knowledge and contributing to the common good. Much of the time, these are perceived to work in harmony. However, science is sometimes seen as capable of subverting the common good, by facilitating dangerous technologies (e.g., weapons of mass destruction) or exerting a malign influence on public policy, opinion, and behaviour. Employing the social functionalist framework of Tetlock (2002), we propose that efforts to censor and suppress scientific findings are motivated by concerns about their societal impact. We begin by covering recent political shifts towards more censorial and punitive responses to scientific research in the U.S. and elsewhere. We go on to propose that beyond traditional explanations of how people evaluate scientific findings, such as cognitive consistency motivations, people’s evaluations are shaped by perceptions of the potential societal impact of scientific data. Our recent studies have shown that independently of the extent to which scientific findings contradict people’s beliefs (as in the confirmation bias), people reject and oppose the publication, application, and funding of research to the extent that they judge its findings as threatening to the public interest. In the final part of the chapter, we outline avenues for further theory and research. Here, we particularly emphasize the importance of establishing whether concerns about impact are themselves rationalizations of opposition to research that are motivated by other moral concerns, such as perceived purity violations (Graham et al., 2009). Finally, we underline that it is crucial that further research examines perceptions of science as a dangerous force that must be neutralized, and the potential of these perceptions to obstruct not only the public understanding of scientific research, but ultimately, the research itself.

Reducing Discrimination with Reviews in the Sharing Economy: Evidence from Field Experiments on Airbnb

Cui, Ruomeng and Li, Jun and Zhang, Dennis, Reducing Discrimination with Reviews in the Sharing Economy: Evidence from Field Experiments on Airbnb (December 8, 2016). http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2882982

Abstract: Recent research has found widespread discrimination by hosts against guests of certain races in online marketplaces. In this paper, we explore ways to reduce such discrimination using online reputation systems. We conduct four randomized field experiments among 1,801 hosts on Airbnb by creating fictitious guest accounts and sending accommodation requests to them. We find that requests from guests with African American-sounding names are 19.2 percentage points less likely to be accepted than those with white-sounding names. However, a positive review posted on a guest's page significantly reduces discrimination: When guest accounts receive a positive review, the acceptance rates of guest accounts with white-sounding and African American-sounding names are statistically indistinguishable. We further show that a non-positive review and a blank review without any content can also help attenuate discrimination, but self-claimed information on tidiness and friendliness cannot reduce discrimination, which indicates the importance of encouraging credible peer-generated reviews. Our results offer direct and clear guidance for sharing-economy platforms to reduce discrimination.

Keywords: Discrimination, Field Experiment, Information Sharing, Service Operations, Sharing Economy

Programming of Stress-Sensitive Neurons and Circuits by Early-Life Experiences

Programming of Stress-Sensitive Neurons and Circuits by Early-Life Experiences. Jessica L. Bolton et al. Front. Behav. Neurosci., Feb 18 2019. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2019.00030

Abstract: Early-life experiences influence brain structure and function long-term, contributing to resilience or vulnerability to stress and stress-related disorders. Therefore, understanding the mechanisms by which early-life experiences program specific brain cells and circuits to shape life-long cognitive and emotional functions is crucial. We identify the population of corticotropin-releasing hormone (CRH)-expressing neurons in the hypothalamic paraventricular nucleus (PVN) as a key, early target of early-life experiences. Adverse experiences increase excitatory neurotransmission onto PVN CRH cells, whereas optimal experiences, such as augmented and predictable maternal care, reduce the number and function of glutamatergic inputs onto this cell population. Altered synaptic neurotransmission is sufficient to initiate large-scale, enduring epigenetic re-programming within CRH-expressing neurons, associated with stress resilience and additional cognitive and emotional outcomes. Thus, the mechanisms by which early-life experiences influence the brain provide tractable targets for intervention.

Exploring Sex Differences in the Neural Correlates of Self-and Other-Referential Gender Stereotyping

Exploring Sex Differences in the Neural Correlates of Self-and Other-Referential Gender Stereotyping. Jonas Hornung et al. Front. Behav. Neurosci., February 18 2019. https://doi.org/10.3389/fnbeh.2019.00031

While general self-referential processes and their neural underpinnings have been extensively investigated with neuroimaging tools, limited data is available on sex differences regarding self- and other-referential processing. To fill this gap, we measured 17 healthy women and men who performed a self- vs. other-appraisal task during functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) using gender-stereotypical adjectives. During the self-appraisal task, typical male (e.g., “dominant,” “competitive”) and female adjectives (e.g., “communicative,” “sensitive”) were presented and participants were asked whether these adjectives applied to themselves. During the other-appraisal task, a prototypical male (Brad Pitt) and female actor (Julia Roberts) was presented and participants were asked again to judge whether typical male and female adjectives applied to these actors. Regarding self-referential processes, women ascribed significantly more female compared to male traits to themselves. At the same time both women and men indicated a stronger desire to exhibit male over female traits. While fMRI did not detect general sex differences in the self- and other-conditions, some subtle differences were revealed between the sexes: both in right putamen and bilateral amygdala stronger gender-congruent activation was found which was however not associated with behavioral measures like the number of self-ascribed female or male attributes. Furthermore, sex hormone levels showed some associations with brain activation pointing to a different pattern in women and men. Finally, the self- vs. other-condition in general led to stronger activation of the anterior cingulate cortex while the other- vs. self-condition activated the right precuneus more strongly which is in line with previous findings. To conclude, our data lend support for subtle sex differences during processing of stereotypical gender attributes. However, it remains unclear whether such differences have a behavioral relevance. We also point to several limitations of this study including the small sample size and the lack of control for potentially different hormonal states in women.

Self-identification as a pornography addict: examining the roles of pornography use, religiousness, and moral incongruence

Self-identification as a pornography addict: examining the roles of pornography use, religiousness, and moral incongruence. Joshua B. Grubbs, Jennifer T. Grant & Joel Engelman. Sexual Addiction & Compulsivity, Feb 07 2019. https://doi.org/10.1080/10720162.2019.1565848

Abstract: At present, the scientific community has not reached a consensus regarding whether or not people may be become addicted to or compulsive in use of pornography. Even so, a substantial number of people report feeling that their use of pornography is dysregulated or out of control. Whereas prior works considered self-reported feelings of addiction via indirect scales or dimensional measures, the present work examined what might lead someone to specifically identify as a pornography addict. Consistent with prior research, pre-registered hypotheses predicted that religiousness, moral disapproval, and average daily pornography use would emerge as consistent predictors of self-identification as a pornography addict. Four samples, involving adult pornography users (Sample 1, N = 829, Mage = 33.3; SD = 9.4; Sample 2, N = 424, Mage = 33.6; SD = 9.1; Sample 4, N = 736, Mage = 48.0; SD = 15.8) and undergraduates (Sample 3, N = 231, Mage = 19.3; SD = 1.8), were collected. Across all three samples, male gender, moral incongruence, and average daily pornography use consistently emerged as predictors of self-identification as a pornography addict. In contrast to prior literature indicating that moral incongruence and religiousness are the best predictors of self-reported feelings of addiction (measured dimensionally), results from all four samples indicated that male gender and average daily pornography use were the most strongly associated with self-identification as a pornography addict, although moral incongruence consistently emerged as a robust and unique predictors of such self-identification.

Keywords: Pornography, addiction, religion, morality, shame

Effects of emotions on sexual behavior in men with and without hypersexuality: Findings lend support to conceptualizing HS behavior as a coping strategy for affective arousal

Effects of emotions on sexual behavior in men with and without hypersexuality. Michael H. Miner, Janna Dickenson & Eli Coleman. Sexual Addiction & Compulsivity, https://doi.org/10.1080/10720162.2018.1564408

Abstract: The association between positive and negative affect and sexual behavior in 39 MSM with and without hypersexuality (HS) was explored using ecological momentary assessment. Participants reported their current positive and negative affect three times per day and their sexual behavior each morning and evening. The relationship between affect and sexual behavior differed between men with or without HS. In those with HS, the timing of and interactions between experienced affect differentially predicted types of sexual behavior, indicating differing mechanisms driving partnered sexual behavior and masturbation. These findings lend support to conceptualizing HS behavior as a coping strategy for affective arousal.

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Hypersexual behavior is characterized by intense, distressing, and recurrentsexual urges and fantasies that significantly interfere with a person’s dailyfunctioning (e.g., with personal, interpersonal, and occupational responsi-bilities). Hypersexual behavior is widely disputed with regard to conceptualization, etiology, and nomenclature, and has been dubbed such terms as “sexual addiction” (Carnes, 1983),“compulsive sexual behavior” (Coleman, 1991), “paraphilia related disorder” (Kafka & Prentky, 1997),“hypersexual disorder” (Kafka, 2010), and “out of control sexual behavior” (Braun-Harvey & Vigorito, 2015). Despite such disagreement, one of the hallmarksof all conceptualizations of hypersexuality (Carnes,1983,1991; Coleman, 1991, 2003; Kafka, 1997, 2010) is distress resulting from obsessive, compulsive, impulsive, and/or out of control sexual behavior (Black, Kehrberg, Flumerfelt, & Schlosser, 1997; Coleman et al., 2010; Dickenson, Gleason, Coleman, & Miner, 2018). Moreover, several theoretical models of hyper-sexual behavior indicate that engaging in sexual behavior functions as astrategy to cope with, escape from, or avoid unwanted emotions (Kafka, 2010; Reid & Kafka, 2014). Yet, to date, our understanding of how day-to-day changes in negative and positive affect are related to day-to-day changes in sexual behavior among men who exhibit hypersexual behavior remains limited.

Negative affect (e.g., sadness, fear) and mood (e.g., depressed, anxious) typically impede sexual interest and arousal (Bancroft et al., 2003a, 2003b), although some men have shown increases in sexual interest and arousalafter experiencing negative affect. Moreover, the link between negativeaffect and sexual behavior appears to vary across individuals. For example, men who have sex with men (MSM) show increased sexual risk behavior following anxious affective states, but only if they have low trait anxiety (Mustanski, 2007). Thus, negative affect can either augment or impede sexual interest, arousal, and behavior depending on additional traits of the individual. Perhaps the degree to which negative affect motivates sexual behavior is also different for men who vary in their tendency to exhibit hypersexual behavior.

Research has consistently demonstrated that men with hypersexual behav-ior exhibit emotion regulation difficulties. Many men with hypersexualbehavior exhibit high negative emotionality (Miner et al.,2016); negative emotional states related to their sexual behavior, such as shame, guilt, and hostility toward themselves (Reid, 2010); are more vulnerable to general lifestressors (Laier & Brand,2017); and have greater deficits in their ability to regulate emotions (Leppink, Chamberlain, Redden, & Grant, 2016; Rizor, Callands, Desrosiers, & Kershaw, 2017). Various theoretical models indicatethat hypersexual behavior serves to reduce unwanted emotions (Bancroft & Vukadinovic, 2004; Coleman, 1991). Such behavior initially provides relief, but this relief is temporary and ultimately leads to guilt and shame about engaging in problematic sexual behavior, thus, reentering the cycle.

Yet, the notion that the cycle of hypersexual behavior begins with negative emotionality has proven inconsistent. On one hand, research examining reports of reasons for engaging in sexual behavior has corroborated thehypothesized link between negative emotionality and sexual behavior. Some research has indicated that sexual behavior may be related to difficulties with negative affect regulation among hypersexual men, and hypersexualmen self-report that negative affect motivates sexual behavior (Parsonset al., 2008). Individuals who compulsively view pornography exhibited higher general stress levels, reported viewing sexual imagery for the purposes of sensation seeking or emotional avoidance, and showed an increasein positive affect immediately after viewing sexual imagery (Laier & Brand, 2017). Moreover, hypersexual MSM have reported that they engage in sexual behavior to cope with negative affect and gain a sense of affirmation and validation that they could not obtain from non-sexual social relationships,  whereas  MSM  without  hypersexual  behavior  did  not  (Parsonset al., 2008)

Other research has not substantiated the link between negative affect andsexual activity. Grov, Golub, Mustanski, and Parsons (2010) found that among MSM, daily negative affect was associated with decreased likelihood of partnered sexual activity that same day. Contrary to expectations and the above mentioned studies, men with and without HS did not differ in thedegree to which negative affect was associated with partnered sexual activity. Such inconsistent findings indicate that the role of affective regulation in pre-dicting sexual behavior is not clear and may involve the interaction of positive and negative affective changes.

Such contradictory results may be explained by differences in method-ology. Studies varied in their assessment of state versus trait levels of affect,the valence of the affective state (positive versus negative), assessment oftemporal versus concurrent effects (i.e., does affect lead to sexual behavior?), and assessment of whether the relationship between affective states(or traits) and sexual behavior differ between men with and without HS.To date, no study has examined whether the ways in which negative orpositive affect leads to a greater or lower likelihood of engaging in sexualbehavior differs among men with and without HS.

The current study aims to address this gap by examining the day-to-dayrelation between positive and negative affect and various types of sexualbehavior (viewing sexual imagery, engaging in masturbation and engagingin partnered sexual activity) using a sample of MSM with and without hypersexuality. By using Ecological Momentary Assessment (EMA: Dunton,Liao, Intille, Spruijt-Metz, & Pentz,2011; Shiffman, Stone, & Hufford,2008), we examined  temporal ordering of affect and sexual behavior. Thisstudy extends existing research by focusing on positive affect, as well asnegative affect, and by assessing masturbation and partnered sexual activity. Given prior research and proposed theoretical conceptualizations thathypersexual behavior serves as a coping strategy, we expected that negativeaffect will be associated with greater likelihood of engaging in all threetypes of sexual behavior among hypersexual men. Further, we expected thatpositive affect, but not negative affect, will be associated with greater likeli-hood of engaging in all three types of sexual behavior among MSM without hypersexuality.

Social discounting: A higher weight on future generations changes both climate and fiscal policy; absent fiscal policy adjustments, the social cost of carbon is not the optimal tax

Be careful what you calibrate for: Social discounting in general equilibrium. Lint Barrage. Journal of Public Economics, Volume 160, April 2018, Pages 33-49. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpubeco.2018.02.012

Highlights
•    Social discounting is assessed in a general equilibrium climate-economy model.
•    A higher weight on future generations changes both climate and fiscal policy.
•    Optimal policy includes an effective capital income subsidy.
•    Optimal policy includes labor-consumption wedge that is decreasing over time.
•    Absent fiscal policy adjustments, the social cost of carbon is not the optimal tax.

Abstract: Concerns about intergenerational equity have led to an influential practice of setting social utility discount rates based on ethical considerations rather than to match household behavior, particularly in climate change economics (e.g., Stern, 2006). This paper formalizes the broader policy implications of this approach in general equilibrium by characterizing jointly optimal environmental and fiscal policies in a climate-economy model with differential planner-household discounting. First, I show that decentralizing the optimal allocation requires not only high carbon prices but also fundamental changes to tax policy: If the government discounts the future less than households, implementing the optimal allocation requires an effective capital income subsidy (a negative intertemporal wedge), and, in a setting with distortionary taxation, an effective labor-consumption tax wedge that is decreasing over time. Second, if the government cannot subsidize capital income, the constrained-optimal carbon tax may be up to 50% below the present value of marginal damages (the social cost of carbon) due to the general equilibrium effects of climate policy on household savings. Third, given the choice to optimize either carbon, capital, or labor income taxes, the socially discounting planner's welfare ranking is ambiguous over a standard range of parameters. Overall, in general equilibrium, a policy-maker's choice to adopt differential social discounting may thus overturn conventional recommendations for both environmental and fiscal policy.