Alcohol and Health: Despite the controversy, abstinent countries have the biggest health problems

Alcohol and Health: Controversy Continues. Nigel Barber. Psychology Today, Mar 21 2019. https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/the-human-beast/201903/alcohol-and-health-controversy-continues
Abstinent countries have the biggest health problems.

Excerpts:

We often hear how many people die of alcohol-related diseases. Such research considers the only pathology and ignores the possibility that alcohol has health benefits. Such benefits appear to be enjoyed mainly by the affluent.

In an earlier post, I argued that very damaging drug use is selected against. The best example of this is the phenomenon of genetic alcohol intolerance in Asian populations that had been bedeviled by excessive alcohol use thanks to the easy availability of homemade rice wine (1).

Learning also matters. Tobacco use declines via social learning once its adverse health effects become widely known (2). Why would so many people drink alcohol if it is so bad for health?

Alcohol Use and Adaptation

Alcohol is consumed in most countries and by over 40 percent of the population in countries around the world. Recent research, published in Lancet, found that any level of alcohol consumption increases morbidity and mortality from alcohol-related diseases.

Many scholars argue that this is another case of human behavior going badly off the rails in modern societies that are very different from ancestral environments to which we are supposedly adapted (2).

Yet, this picture of human limitations may be excessively bleak. Humans and other mammals are a great deal more adaptable to their current environments than this approach suggests. Moose growing up in locations where wolves are extinct loose all fear of their ancestral arch enemy.

Humans are more flexible than other species and quickly learn to avoid foods and drugs that are harmful, including highly addictive drugs such as tobacco (2).

Alcohol has complex health effects and there may not be a simple linear effect of increasing alcohol consumption undermining health as the Lancet study concludes.

The U-shaped Function

Research on cardiovascular disease found that there is a U-shaped relationship between illness and alcohol consumption (3). This means that people who drink unusually little have worse health than those who consume a moderate amount whereas heavy consumption is associated with a heavy health cost.

These findings are inconsistent with the conclusion that alcohol in any amount is harmful.

Yet, there is a way in which the contradiction could be resolved. Even if alcohol is always toxic, its use in moderate amounts could have beneficial effects for health if (a) it facilitates social interactions and thereby reduces isolation and increases bonding and social support and (b) the beneficial consequences outweigh the toxicity costs.

Hence wealthy people consume more alcohol than average but also enjoy much better health and longevity than poorer segments of the population.

Who Is Prejudiced, and Toward Whom? The Big Five Traits and Generalized Prejudice

Who Is Prejudiced, and Toward Whom? The Big Five Traits and Generalized Prejudice. Jarret T. Crawford, Mark J. Brandt. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, March 21, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167219832335

Abstract: Meta-analyses show that low levels of Openness and Agreeableness correlate with generalized prejudice. However, previous studies narrowly assessed prejudice toward low-status, disadvantaged groups. Using a broad operationalization of generalized prejudice toward a heterogeneous array of targets, we sought to answer two questions: (a) Are some types of people prejudiced against most types of groups? and (b) Are some types of people prejudiced against certain types of groups? Across four samples (N = 7,543), Openness was very weakly related to broad generalized prejudice, r = −.03, 95% confidence interval (CI) [−.07, −.001], whereas low Agreeableness was reliably associated with broad generalized prejudice, r = −.23, 95% CI [−.31, −.16]. When target characteristics moderated relationships between Big Five traits and prejudice, they implied that perceiver–target dissimilarity on personality traits explains prejudice. Importantly, the relationship between Agreeableness and prejudice remained robust across target groups, suggesting it is the personality trait orienting people toward (dis)liking of others.

Keywords: Big Five, agreeableness, openness, prejudice, generalized prejudice

Humans Trust Central Vision More Than Peripheral Vision Even in the Dark: humans have a default preference for information from the fovea even if this information is not veridical; filling-in precedes the estimation of confidence

Humans Trust Central Vision More Than Peripheral Vision Even in the Dark. Alejandro H.Gloriani, Alexander C.Schütz. Current Biology, March 21 2019. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2019.02.023

Highlights
•    Veridical information from the fovea is preferred under photopic viewing
•    Information missing in the scotopic foveal scotoma is filled in from the surround
•    Inferred information from the fovea is preferred under scotopic viewing
•    Content and properties of the foveal scotopic scotoma are hidden from awareness

Summary: Two types of photoreceptors in the human retina support vision across a wide range of luminances: cones are active under bright daylight illumination (photopic viewing) and rods under dim illumination at night (scotopic viewing). These photoreceptors are distributed inhomogeneously across the retina [1]: cone-receptor density peaks at the center of the visual field (i.e., the fovea) and declines toward the periphery, allowing for high-acuity vision at the fovea in daylight. Rod receptors are absent from the fovea, leading to a functional foveal scotoma in night vision. In order to make optimal perceptual decisions, the visual system requires knowledge about its own properties and the relative reliability of signals arriving from different parts of the visual field [2]. Since cone and rod signals converge on the same pathways [3], and their cortical processing is similar except for the foveal scotoma [4], it is unclear if humans can take into account the differences between scotopic and photopic vision when making perceptual decisions. Here, we show that the scotopic foveal scotoma is filled in with information from the immediate surround and that humans trust this inferred information more than veridical information from the periphery of the visual field. We observed a similar preference under daylight illumination, indicating that humans have a default preference for information from the fovea even if this information is not veridical, like in night vision. This suggests that filling-in precedes the estimation of confidence, thereby shielding awareness from the foveal scotoma with respect to its contents and its properties.

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Discussion

We investigated perceptual decision making under scotopic and photopic viewing. In two experiments, we found that a stimulus with a discontinuity in the scotopic foveal scotoma appeared as continuous, providing evidence for perceptual filling-in of the scotoma. We also found that observers preferred information from central vision, even when it was not veridical under scotopic viewing. This general preference for central vision indicates that humans are not aware of their scotopic foveal scotoma and that it is not taken into account for perceptual decision making.
Under daylight illumination, basic perceptual measures, such as acuity [13] or contrast sensitivity [14], peak at the fovea and decline in the periphery. In addition, the periphery is more vulnerable to crowding—i.e., spatial interference between neighboring elements [15]. Preferring information from central vision might be, therefore, a sensible strategy for decision making under ambiguity in photopic vision. This interpretation is supported by other foveal biases in photopic vision: stimuli with temporal and spatial uncertainty tend to be mislocalized toward the fovea [16], foveal brightness is extrapolated into the periphery [17], peripheral appearance is influenced by predicted foveal appearance [18, 19], and transsaccadic feature integration shows some overweighting of foveal information [20, 21]. However, the observed perceptual bias is not a useful strategy for scotopic vision, where the fovea does not contribute veridical information. Nevertheless, our finding is consistent with other perceptual phenomena where vision in the light and the dark is not calibrated well: perceived speed is underestimated in the dark [22], and the perception of white seems to require signals from cones [23]. Our results are at odds with a recent comparison of photopic and scotopic visual search [24], where eye movement statistics are affected by lighting condition in a qualitatively similar way as an ideal searcher [25], which has knowledge about the scotopic foveal scotoma. These divergent findings could point toward a general dissociation that the scotopic foveal scotoma is taken into account in eye movement control, but not in perceptual decision making. Alternatively, the divergent findings might be caused by different opportunities for learning in the two experimental paradigms. In the visual search task, observers experienced with every eye movement how visual input in the fovea and the periphery relate to each other and therefore had the opportunity to acquire the appropriate weighting of foveal and peripheral information. In the perceptual decision task of the current study, observers never experienced the same stimulus in the fovea and the periphery and therefore could not acquire the appropriate weighting during the experiment.
There are at least two ways how the perceptual bias could be caused in scotopic vision: first, the brain might use a simple heuristic that information from the fovea is more reliable than from the periphery and apply this heuristic to photopic and scotopic vision alike. However, a simple heuristic is unlikely, because humans can estimate uncertainty based on their actual perceptual performance instead of using simple cues, such as contrast or eccentricity in photopic vision [26]. Second, confidence might be assessed for each stimulus individually also in scotopic vision. In this case, our finding that biases in photopic and scotopic vision were similar, suggesting that confidence is assessed at a level of processing where information about the originating photoreceptor type is lost and perceptual filling-in is completed. Such a dissociation is quite likely, because rod and cone photoreceptors converge on the same pathways at the level of retinal ganglion cells [27, 28] and filling-in is preattentive [29] and takes place in visual cortex [9], while confidence in contrast seems to be represented only further downstream in parietal [30] and prefrontal cortex [31] and the striatum [32].
Several basic properties of visual processing, such as pupil size [33] or photoreceptor sensitivity [34], are directly adjusted to the light level during dark adaptation. Our results show that this is not the case for the relative weighting of foveal and peripheral information in perceptual decision making. However, other properties, such as rod-cone interactions [35] or spontaneous cortical activity [36], are controlled by a circadian rhythm rather than by light level. Since our measurements were taken during the day, it is possible that the relative weighting of foveal and peripheral information is also controlled by a circadian rhythm. In this case, the bias for foveal information should be reduced or even reversed at night but possibly in the same way for both scotopic and photopic viewing.
While there are only few and contradictory studies about filling-in of the scotopic foveal scotoma [6, 7, 10], more is known about filling-in at the blind-spot, where photoreceptors are absent because the axons of the ganglion cells exit the eye ball. Here, even complex visual patterns can be filled in from the surround [29], and humans are overconfident for this filled-in information [5]. Filling-in has also been observed for scotomata in the fovea caused by macular disease [37], and these patients need to acquire a new preferred retinal locus for fixation [38]. Our finding of a general preference for foveal information, irrespective of whether it is veridical or not, suggests that preferences in perceptual decision making might not necessarily shift to the preferred retinal locus in those patients, leading to suboptimal perceptual decisions.

Complex societies precede moralizing gods throughout world history

Complex societies precede moralizing gods throughout world history. Harvey Whitehouse, Pieter François, Patrick E. Savage, Thomas E. Currie, Kevin C. Feeney, Enrico Cioni, Rosalind Purcell, Robert M. Ross, Jennifer Larson, John Baines, Barend ter Haar, Alan Covey & Peter Turchin. Nature, Mar 20 2019. https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-019-1043-4

Abstract: The origins of religion and of complex societies represent evolutionary puzzles1–8. The ‘moralizing gods’ hypothesis offers a solution to both puzzles by proposing that belief in morally concerned supernatural agents culturally evolved to facilitate cooperation among strangers in large-scale societies9–13. Although previous research has suggested an association between the presence of moralizing gods and social complexity3,6,7,9–18, the relationship between the two is disputed9–13,19–24, and attempts to establish causality have been hampered by limitations in the availability of detailed global longitudinal data. To overcome these limitations, here we systematically coded records from 414 societies that span the past 10,000 years from 30 regions around the world, using 51 measures of social complexity and 4 measures of supernatural enforcement of morality. Our analyses not only confirm the association between moralizing gods and social complexity, but also reveal that moralizing gods follow—rather than precede—large increases in social complexity. Contrary to previous predictions9,12,16,18, powerful moralizing ‘big gods’ and prosocial supernatural punishment tend to appear only after the emergence of ‘megasocieties’ with populations of more than around one million people. Moralizing gods are not a prerequisite for the evolution of social complexity, but they may help to sustain and expand complex multi-ethnic empires after they have become established. By contrast, rituals that facilitate the standardization of religious traditions across large populations25,26 generally precede the appearance of moralizing gods. This suggests that ritual practices were more important than the particular content of religious belief to the initial rise of social complexity.

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Supernatural agents that punish direct affronts to themselves (for
example, failure to perform sacrifices or observe taboos) are commonly
represented in global history, but rarely are such deities believed to
punish moral violations in interactions between humans
2
. Recent mil-
lennia, however, have seen the rise and spread of several ‘prosocial
religions’, which include either powerful ‘moralizing high gods’ (MHG;
for example, the Abrahamic God) or more general ‘broad supernatu-
ral punishment’ (BSP) of moral transgressions (for example, karma in
Buddhism)
9,12,16–18
. Such moralizing gods may have provided a crucial
mechanism for overcoming the classic free-rider problem in large-scale
societies
11
. The association between moralizing gods and complex
societies has been supported by two forms of evidence: psychological
experiments
3,6,27,28
 and cross-cultural comparative analyses
7,11,14–18,20
.
The contributions of theistic beliefs to cooperation, as well as the his-
torical question of whether moralizing gods precede or follow the estab-
lishment of large-scale cooperation, have been much debated
9,10,12,23,24
.
Three recent studies that explicitly model temporal causality have come
to contrasting conclusions. One study, which applied phylogenetic
comparative methods to infer historical changes in Austronesian reli-
gions, reported that moralizing gods (BSP but not MHG) preceded the
evolution of complex societies
16
. The same conclusion was reached
in an analysis of historical and archaeological data from Viking-age
Scandinavia
18
. By contrast, another study of Eurasian empires has
reported that moralizing gods followed—rather than preceded—the
rise of complex, affluent societies
20
. However, all of these studies are
restricted in geographical scope and use proxies for social complexity
that the authors themselves concede are ‘very crude’
20
 (for example,
thebinary classification of societies as ofeither high or low complexity).
To overcome these limitations, we used ‘Seshat: Global History
Databank’
29
,a repository of standardized data on social structure, reli-
gion and other domains for hundreds of societies throughout world his-
tory. In contrast to other databases that attempt to model history using
contemporary ethnographic data, Seshat directly samples over time as
well as space. Seshat also includes estimates of expert disagreement and
uncertainty, and uses more-detailed variables than many databases.
To test the moralizing gods hypothesis, we coded data on 55var-
iables from 414polities (independent political units) that occupied
30geographical regions from the beginning of the Neolithic period
to the beginning of Industrial and/or colonial periods (Fig.1 and
Supplementary Data). We used a recently developed and validated
measure of social complexity thatcondenses 51social complexity
variables (Extended Data Table5) into a single principal component
thatcaptures three quarters of the observed variation, which we call
‘social complexity’
8
. The remaining four variables were selected to test
the MHG and BSP subtypes of the moralizing gods hypothesis. The
MHG variable was coded following the MHG variable used as stand-
ardin the literature on this topic
11,14–17,30
, whichrequires that a high
god who created and/or governs the cosmos actively enforces human
morality. Because the concept of morality is complex, multidimensional
and in some respects culturally relative—and because not all moralizing
gods are ‘high gods’—we also coded three different variables related to
BSP that are specifically relevant to prosocial cooperation: reciprocity,
fairness and in-group loyalty. For analysis, these three variables were
combined into a single BSP variable. TheMethods, Supplementary
Information and http://seshatdatabank.info/methods/codebook pro-
vide further methodological details, definitions and justifications,
including adiscussion of the relationship between MHG, BSP and big
gods.
Figure1 and Extended Data Table1 show the temporal and geo-
graphical distribution of the appearance of moralizing gods in our
sample. Although societies in all 30regions possessed beliefs about
appeasing supernatural agents through the performance of rituals, in 10
out of the 30regions, there was no evidence for moralizing gods before
their introduction under colonial powers. The remaining 20regions displayed a diverse range of 15different systems of belief in moraliz-
ing gods: in some, the first evidence of moralizing gods came in the
form of MHG and in others it came in the form of BSP (Extended
Data Table1). The first appearance of moralizing gods in our sample 
was in Egypt, where the concept of supernatural enforcement of
Maat (order) is attested by the Second Dynasty, around 2800. This
was followed by sporadic appearances in local religions throughout
Eurasia (Mesopotamia (around 2200), Anatolia (around 1500)
and China (around 1000)) before the wider spread of transnational
religions began during the first millennium  with Zoroastrianism
and Buddhism, followed later by Christianity and Islam. Although
Christianity and Islam would eventually become the most widespread
religions, local forms of moralizing gods were present well before they
arrived in most regions (for example, Roman gods were believed to
punish oath-breaking from as early as 500, almost a millennium
before Christianity was adopted as the official Roman religion). The
diverse range of religious systems represented in our global sample
makes it possible to draw more general conclusions about religion than
have previously been possible.
Although our sampling scheme reduces non-independence, our
polities still cannot be considered statistically independent because
of the historical relationships among them. We controlled for these
using a logistic regression model to account for temporal, geographi-
cal and cultural dependencies in the global distribution of moralizing
gods (seeMethods). This analysis revealed that social complexity was
a stronger predictor of moralizing gods than temporal, geographical or
linguistic relationships, and remained highly significant even after con-
trolling for these relationships (z=6.8, degrees of freedom (d.f.)=800,
P<1×10
−11
; Extended Data Table2), conceptually replicating pre-
vious studies
7,11,14,15
.
The moralizing gods hypothesis posits a ‘statistical causal relation-
ship’
10
 in which moralizing gods facilitate the evolution of complex
societies
9,12,16–18
. This indicates that, on average, social complexity
should increase more rapidly following the appearance of moralizing
gods. To test this prediction, we conducted time-series analyses of the
12regions for which social complexity data were available both before
and after the appearance of moralizing gods (Fig.2, Extended Data
Table1 and Extended Data Fig.1). Notably, average rates of increase
of social complexity were over five times greater before—not after—
the appearance of moralizing gods (paired t-test, t=−6.6, d.f.=199,
P<1×10
−9
; Fig.2). This trend was significant both globally and
individually for 10 out of the 12regional time-series analyses (Extended
Data Table1 and Extended Data Fig.1). None of these 12regions dis-
played a significantly greater rate of increase in social complexity after
the appearance of moralizing gods than before. Robustness analyses
showed that our primary finding of higher rates of increasing social
complexity before the appearance of moralizing gods was present
regardless of the type of moralizing gods (MHG or BSP), the choice of
variables used to estimate social complexity, uncertainty in the timing
of appearance of moralizing gods, or the time windows used to estimate
rates of change in social complexity (Extended Data Table4).
In summary, although our analyses are consistent with previous stud-
ies that show an association between moralizing gods and complex
societies
7,11,14–18,30
, we find that moralizing gods usually follow—rather
than precede—the rise of social complexity. Notably, most societies that
exceeded a certain social complexity threshold developed a conception
of moralizing gods. Specifically, in 10 out of the 12regions analysed,
the transition to moralizing gods came within 100years of exceeding a
social complexity value of 0.6 (which we call a megasociety, as it corre-
sponds roughly to a population in the order of one million; Extended
Data Fig.1). This megasociety threshold does not seem to correspond
to the point at which societies develop writing, which might have sug-
gested that moralizing gods were present earlier but were not preserved
archaeologically. Although we cannot rule out this possibility, the fact
that written records preceded the development of moralizing gods in
9 out of the 12regions analysed (by an average period of 400years;
Supplementary Table2)—combined with the fact that evidence for
moralizing gods is lacking in the majority of non-literate societies
2
—
suggests that such beliefs were not widespread before the invention
of writing. The few small-scale societies that did display precolonial
evidence of moralizing gods came from regions that had previously
been used to support the claim that moralizing gods contributed to the
rise of social complexity (Austronesia
16
 and Iceland
18
), whichsuggests
that such regions are the exception rather than the rule.

Conversely, of the societies in the tenregions that did not develop
precolonial moralizing gods, only one exceeded the megasociety
threshold (the short-lived Inca Empire, social complexity=0.61).
This suggests that, even if moralizing gods do not cause the evolution
of complex societies, they may represent a cultural adaptation that is
necessary to maintain cooperation in such societies once they have
exceeded a certain size, perhaps owing to the need to subject diverse
populations in multi-ethnic empires to a common higher-level power
9
.
This may explain why moralizing gods spread when large empires con-
quer smaller—but still complex—societies (for example, the Spanish
conquest of the Incas). In some cases, moralizing doctrines may have
helped to stabilize empires, while also limiting further expansion;for
example, when emperor Ashoka adopted Buddhism and renounced
war following his final conquest of the Kalinga Kingdom that estab-
lished the maximum extent of the Mauryan empire.
Although our results do not support the view that moralizing gods
were necessary for the rise of complex societies, they also do not
support a leading alternative hypothesis that moralizing gods only
emerged as a byproduct of a sudden increase in affluence during a
first millennium  ‘Axial Age’
19–22
. Instead, in three of our regions
(Egypt, Mesopotamia and Anatolia), moralizing gods appeared before
1500. We propose thatthe standardization of beliefs and practices
via high-frequency repetition and enforcement by religious authorities
enabled the unification of large populations for the first time, establish-
ing common identities across states and empires
25,26
. Our data show
that doctrinal rituals standardized by routinization (that is, those per-
formed weekly or daily) or institutionalized policing (religions with
multiple hierarchical levels) significantly predate moralizing gods, by an
average of 1,100years (t=2.8, d.f.=11, P=0.018; Fig.2a). Doctrinal
rituals precede moralizing gods in 9 out of the 12regions analysed,
and even precede written records in 6 of these cases (by as much as
4,000years in the case of Çatalhöyük in Anatolia; see Supplementary
Table2). Although analyses of rates of change of social complex-
ity before and after the appearance of doctrinal rituals do not offer
conclusive support for the hypothesis that doctrinal rituals facilitate
increasing social complexity (Extended Data Table3), these data do at
least suggest that doctrinal rituals led to the establishment of large-scale
religious identities. In the future, higher-quality and higher-resolution
archaeological data may allow for a more nuanced understanding of
the timing and possible coevolution of the rise of doctrinal rituals and
moralizing gods. Such data appear unlikely to affect our primary claim
that complex societies preceded moralizing gods, but this is an empiri-
cal question open to future testing.
We demonstrate how quantifying cultural characteristics of past
societies can contribute to longstanding debates about the evolution
of social complexity. Our results suggest that belief in moralizing gods
was not the only or even the main factor that enabled the expansion
of human societies, but may have occurred along with other features
of ritual practices and religion to facilitate cooperation in increasingly
complex social systems. In particular, an increase in ritual frequency
and doctrinal control may have facilitated the establishment of large-
scale collective identities before the spread of beliefs in moralizing
gods. Thus, when it comes to the initial rise of social complexity, how
you worship may ultimately have been more important than who you
worship.

Why the Days Seem Shorter as We Get Older: The ‘mind time’ is a sequence of images; the rate at which changes in mental images are perceived decreases with age

Why the Days Seem Shorter as We Get Older. Adrian Bejan. European Review, Mar 18 2019. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1062798718000741

Abstract: Why does it feel that the time passes faster as we get older? What is the physical basis for the impression that some days are slower than others? Why do we tend to focus on the unusual (the surprise), not on the ever present? This article unveils the physics basis for these common observations. The reason is that the measurable ‘clock time’ is not the same as the time perceived by the human mind. The ‘mind time’ is a sequence of images, i.e. reflections of nature that are fed by stimuli from sensory organs. The rate at which changes in mental images are perceived decreases with age, because of several physical features that change with age: saccades frequency, body size, pathways degradation, etc. The misalignment between mental-image time and clock time serves to unite the voluminous observations of this phenomenon in the literature with the constructal law of evolution of flow architecture, as physics.

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Perceptions

Among the most common human perceptions is that time passes faster as an indivi-dual becomes older. The days become shorter, and so do the years. We all have storiesof this kind, from the long days of childhood and the never-ending class hours inelementary school, to days, months and years that now pass in a blur. The mostcommon sayings convey this impression: Timesflies; Where did the time go?; Lastyear was yesterday; Growing up took forever; A watched pot never boils; etc.More subtle, and worth questioning is the impression that some days appear to passmore slowly than others. The‘slower’days are full of productivity, events, and mem-ories of what happened. If you did not notice this difference between slow days and fastdays, then you should pay attention to it, because in this difference lies the explanationfor the lifelong puzzle sketched in the preceding paragraph. The hint is that productivedays happen when the body and mind are rested, after periods of regular sleep, when inthe morning you look in the mirror and you see a younger you, not a tired you.Athletes learn the hard way the correlation between good rest and the speed of thepassing time. Lack of rest makes you miss plays, unable to anticipate, unable to seethe ball before it arrives. While sleep walking, the game is over before you know it.
Young students learn the same physical truth while taking exams during afixedtime interval. The rested mind has more time to go through the problems, tofindmistakes, to go back to the beginning, and try again. Lack of sleep, due to crammingthe night before the exam, makes the time pass faster during the exam period.Cramming does not pay, but rest does, which is why the good coach rests the teambefore the big game.Here is why this is important to you, the reader. Today, many young peopleexperience time distortion because they spend too much time on social media. Thishas serious consequences, ranging from sleep deprivation to mood changes andmental disorder. This is why an understanding of the physics basis of how humansperceive the passing of time is essential.PhysicsTime represents perceived changes in stimuli (observed facts), such as visual images.1,2The human mind perceives reality (nature, physics) through images that occur as visualinputs reach the cortex. The mind senses‘time change’when the perceived image chan-ges. The time arrow in physics is the goal-oriented sequence of changes inflow config-uration, the direction dictated by the constructal law.1-11The present is different from thepast because the mental viewing has changed, not because somebody’s clock rings.The‘clock time’that unites all the liveflow systems, animate and inanimate, ismeasurable. The day–night period lasts 24 hours on allwatches, wall clocks and belltowers. Yet, physical time is not mind time. The time that you perceive is not thesame as the time perceived by another. Why? Because the young mind receives moreimages during one day than the same mind in old age. Said another way, if thelifespan is measured in terms of the number of images perceived during life, then thefrequency of mental images at young age is greater than in old age (Figure 1). Hereis why this should be:

Figure 1.The misalignment between perceived time and clock time during lifetime.

The sensory inputs that travel into the human body to become mental images–‘reflections’of reality in the human mind–are intermittent. They occur at certaintime intervals (t1), and must travel the body length scale (L) with a certain speed (V).In the case of vision,t1is the time interval between successive saccades. The timerequired by one mental image to travel from a sensory organ to the cortex is of ordert2~L/V. During life, the body length scale (L) increases in proportion with the bodymassMraised to the power 1/3, and, like all growth phenomena, the body massincreases over time in S-curve fashion,12monotonically, slow–fast–slow, cf.Figure 2.

Figure 2.All growth phenomena (spreading, collecting) exhibit an S-shaped historycurve8: fourflow systems where the size of theflow space increases monotonically,slow–fast–slow.


Figure 3.The length of theflow path increases as the body size and complexityincrease.9

The length traveled by inputs from external sensors to the cortex is actually greaterthanL, and it increases with age. The reason is that the complexity of theflow pathneeded by one signal to reach one point on the cortex increases as the brain grows andthe complexity of the tree-shapedflow paths increase, cf. Figure 3.13The broad trend then is thatLincreases with age. At the same time,Vdecreasesbecause of the ageing (degradation) of theflow paths. The key feature is that thephysical time (the combined effect oft1andt2) required by the occurrence of one mentalimage increases monotonically during the life of the individual. The frequency ofmental images decreases monotonically, and non-uniformly (i.e. not at constant rate).This trend is illustrated qualitatively in Figure 1. Two summarizing conclusions follow.(i)  More of the recorded mental images should be from youth.(ii)  The‘speed’of the time perceived by the human mind should increaseover life. The rate at which the physical time clock‘ticks’during onechange in the mental image increases with age.ReviewThe misalignment of the clock ticks and the changes perceived by the mind (Figure 1)brings together numerous observations and measurements accumulated in the lit-erature, especially in the study of vision and cognition.First, to define the terms, Fischer and Weber explain that during natural viewingconditions a normal adult subject makes 3–5 saccades in a second separated by per-iods of 200-300 ms during which the eyes do not make large or fast movements.14These periods are usually called‘fixations’. If the retinal image, as a whole, is pre-vented from moving (by successful voluntary attempts not to move the eyes, or bytechnical means), vision rapidly becomes blurred and the perception of the retinalimage fades away completely within 10 seconds. Fischer and Weber14explain that thehighly inhomogeneous structure of the primate retina, with an extremely high densityof receptor and ganglion cells in the center, a specialized fovea, and a rapid decline ofthe cell densities toward the periphery, makes it almost impossible to have a homogeneous and simultaneous percept of the total visualfield without somehowmoving the fovea to different positions and acquiring and integrating informationfrom these successive‘looks’. The existence of a fovea requires both eye movementsand periods offixation, that is, the active suppression of saccadic eye movements.Although the reaction times of saccades is relatively stable (200–250 ms),15theinfantfixation times are shorter than in adults. In primates, there is a constant rela-tionship between the duration, peak velocity and amplitude of saccadic eye move-ment,16–18known as the‘main sequence’, in which saccade trajectories have evolvedtoward optimizing the trade-off between accuracy and duration (speed) of the eyemovement. This is also in accord with the physics basis for the human preference fordisplays shaped in‘golden-ratio’rectangular frames, which is the shape that isscanned the fastest by the two human eyes.2As a result of an interaction betweenafferent, central and efferent neural processes we perceive a complete and stablevisualfield, which can serve as a frame within which we see motion and within whichwe move ourselves or parts of our body.14Bahill and Stark showed that fatigue can produce overlapping saccades in whichthe high-frequency saccadic bursts should show large pauses, glissades in which thehigh-frequency bursts should be much shorter than appropriate for the size of theintended saccades, and low-velocity, long-duration, non-Main Sequence saccades inwhich the mononeuronal bursts should be of lower frequency and longer durationthan normal.19When the saccadic eye movement system fatigues, saccades becomeslower, and the neurological control signal stratagem changes. The term fatigue isused in a broad sense, as it was by McFarland:‘a group of phenomena associatedwith impairment, or loss, of efficiency and skill’.20The intuitive view that the world is processed as a seamless stream of ongoingperception has been challenged in the current literature. Herzoget  al. discussedexperimental evidence supporting the view that perception might be discrete, furthersupporting evidence for discrete theories.21Visual information processing is similarto a sample and hold mechanism in engineering, as in analog/digital converters.Herzoget al. also noted that the brain functions such that we consciously perceiveonly the most plausible solution, and not a confusing manifold of possibilities thatoccur during unconscious processing.21The unconscious feature integration period isthe period of sense-making. The discrete conscious perception is followed byunconscious processing over time. These two modes of absorbing inputs from thesurroundings are analogous to all otherflows from point (e.g. eye) to volume (e.g.brain).1Observing fast and then letting it sink in slowly, is the same dynamicflowdesign as the long and fast, and short and slow that inhabits all nature,1animate andinanimate. Conscious perception and the unconscious processing that follows are the‘invasion’and‘consolidation’phases of the universal S-curve phenomenon.12Cicchiniet al. review the classical model of time perception, which considers asingle centralized clock that ticks at a constant rate.22They point out that muchexperimental evidence seems to cast doubt on this model. The ability to pay‘atten-tion’could modulate the tick rate and hence the duration of the events.23Manystudies found that the most surprising stimulus within a train of events is perceived longer, probably because it engages more transient attention or because the event isless predictable. Brunoet al. show that the apparent duration of moving visual objectsis greater at higher than at lower speeds.24Pöppelet al. argued that cognitive processes cannot be understood without theirtemporal dynamics; furthermore, certain logistical problems the brain has to deal withrequire an understanding of temporal processing.25Eaglemanet al. discussed theflash-lag illusion, where aflash and a moving object in the same location appear to beoffset.26They proposed an alternative in which visual awareness is neither predictivenor online but is postdictive, so that the percept attributed to the time of theflash is afunction of events that happen in the ~ 80 ms after theflash. Interpolation of the past isthe only framework that provides a unified explanation for theflash-lag phenomenon.VanRullen and Koch reconciled the unduly abandoned topic of discrete percep-tion with current views and advances in neuroscience.27Hainlineet al. showed thatfor both infants and adults, linear relationships were found between the peak velo-cities of fast eye movements and their amplitudes (main sequences).28With regard to the effect of aging, Sharpe and Zackon investigated horizontalsaccades in young, middle-aged and elderly normal subjects.29Saccades were elicitedin response to three target conditions: predictable amplitude direct and timing;unpredictable amplitudes and directions at regular intervals; and unpredictably timedtargets of predictable amplitude and direction. Peak velocities were significantlyreduced in the elderly when target amplitude and direction were predictable. Latencieswere prolonged in the elderly under all conditions. Saccadic accuracy was significantlydecreased in elderly subjects. Support for the thesis that age-related cognitive slowing isglobal is provided by Myersonet  al.30Although older adults perform worse thanyounger adults in complex decision-making scenarios, prior experience should be takeninto account in aging studies.31

Conclusion

Summing up, we conclude that the perceived misalignment between mental-imagetime and clock time (Figure 1) is in accord with and unifies the growing number ofobservations that describe aspects of this phenomenon in the literature. The physicsbasis is captured by the constructal law of evolution in nature (see Figures 2 and 3).

Acknowledgement
Professor Adrian Bejan’s research was supported by the US National ScienceFoundation.

In rats, no sex difference found in reward-guided associative learning, but females were more sensitive to probabilistic punishment (but less sensitive when punishment could be avoided with certainty)

Sex differences in reward- and punishment-guided actions. Tara G. Chowdhury et al. bioRxiv, Mar 18 2019. https://doi.org/10.1101/581546

ABSTRACT: Differences in the prevalence and presentation of psychiatric illnesses in men and women suggest that neurobiological sex differences confer vulnerability or resilience in these disorders. Rodent behavioral models are critical for understanding the mechanisms of these differences. Reward processing and punishment avoidance are fundamental dimensions of the symptoms of psychiatric disorders. Here we explored sex differences along these dimensions using multiple and distinct behavioral paradigms. We found no sex difference in reward-guided associative learning but a faster punishment-avoidance learning in females. After learning, females were more sensitive than males to probabilistic punishment but less sensitive when punishment could be avoided with certainty. No sex differences were found in reward-guided cognitive flexibility. Thus, sex differences in goal-directed behaviors emerged selectively when there was an aversive context. These differences were critically sensitive to whether the punishment was certain or unpredictable. Our findings with these new paradigms provide conceptual and practical tools for investigating brain mechanisms that account for sex differences in susceptibility to anxiety and impulsivity. They may also provide insight for understanding the evolution of sex-specific optimal behavioral strategies in dynamic environments.





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INTRODUCTION

Men and women show different rates of diagnosis, symptomology, and treatment responsivity in most brain disorders. For instance, men are more commonly diagnosed with schizophrenia, four times more likely to suffer from attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) (Rowland, Lesesne, & Abramowitz, 2002), and twice as likely to be currently abusing illicit drugs (Abuse, 2013). On the other hand, major depressive disorder (MDD) and anxiety disorders are more common in women (Cyranowski, Frank, Young, & Shear, 2000). These patterns suggest that biological sex differences may underlie the disparities in vulnerability to these illnesses.

Reward-seeking and punishment-avoidance behaviors are fundamental to motivation, and are critical components of the pathophysiology of most psychiatric illnesses. For example, studies have shown that patients with depressive disorders (Pizzagalli et al., 2009), schizophrenia (Juckel, 2016; Kirsch, Ronshausen, Mier, & Gallhofer, 2007; Schlagenhauf et al., 2008), as well as ADHD (Scheres, Milham, Knutson, & Castellanos, 2007; Strohle et al., 2008) have modified brain responses to reward. In particular, major depression is associated with both a hyposensitivity to rewarding stimuli and hypersensitivity to punishment, and associated imaging findings are correlated with increasing frequency of depressive episodes (Kumar et al., 2018). Importantly, disorders where reward and aversive responding are differently affected also show different incidences and symptom profiles in women versus men. For example, in anxiety disorders there is an increased avoidance of aversive stimuli that is more pronounced in women (Sheynin et al., 2014). Similarly, in MDD, men are more likely to exhibit symptoms of aggression, substance abuse, and risky behavior, while females report higher rates of sleep disturbance, stress, and anhedonia (L. A. Martin, Neighbors, & Griffith, 2013). Similarly, it appears that sex influences substance abuse patterns, with women more likely than men to cite stress as the reason for initiating or relapsing drug use (Becker, McClellan, & Reed, 2017).

Finally, in ADHD, females diagnosed with the disorder more frequently experience comorbid anxiety and depression. These findings suggest that distinct responses to punishment may explain some of the observed sex differences in both the prevalence and expression of mental disorders.

Animal models are critical for understanding the behavioral neuroscience of sex differences, allowing assessment of motivated behaviors relevant to psychiatric disorders. Animal behavioral models, however, have been primarily developed and characterized with only male subjects. Additionally, these models often assess reward and punishment contingencies in separate tasks and constructs. In naturalistic environments, appetitive and aversive contexts and outcomes are often intertwined, and the ability to accurately assess and respond to these conflicting situations is critical for optimal decision-making. Females have been shown to respond differently than males to punishing stimuli (Denti & Epstein, 1972; Gruene, Flick, Stefano, Shea, & Shansky, 2015; Orsini, Willis, Gilbert, Bizon, & Setlow, 2016; Voulo & Parsons, 2017) as well as stress (Bangasser & Valentino, 2014; McEwen, 2014); however, little is known about how sex differences translate to tasks that involve both reward and punishment in the same behavioral series. Here, we investigate sex differences in multiple rodent behavioral tasks involving motivated behaviors (defined as behaviors where actions are guided by action-outcome contingencies) that integrate reward-seeking and punishment avoidance.

In the first task, the Punishment Risk Task (PRT), a rewarded action was associated with an escalating probability of punishment (Park & Moghaddam, 2017). Thus, action-reward contingency was certain but different blocks in the same behavioral series were associated with varying probability of receiving a shock after action execution. This task assesses behavior in response to unpredictability and perception of potential threats, which is relevant to human models of anxiety (Cornwell, Garrido, Overstreet, Pine, & Grillon, 2017). Human sex differences in prevalence and expression of anxiety-related behaviors suggest that males and females may respond differently to anxiety-provoking situations. This task, therefore, allowed us to compare motivated actions in male and female rats within a context of anxiety.

A second novel task, the Approach Avoid Task (AAT) measured actions to seek reward or avoid punishment during the same behavioral session. Rats were given simultaneous access to two distinct actions (lever-press or nose-poke), and two discriminative stimuli (a light or tone cue) signaled the trial type, either approach, in which a specific action was reinforced with a pellet, or avoidance, in which the other action prevented onset of a foot-shock. This task is relevant to symptoms of brain disorders such as anxiety, substance abuse, and MDD, which are associated with differences in processing of rewarding and punishing contexts (Dombrovski, Szanto, Clark, Reynolds, & Siegle, 2013; McCabe, Woffindale, Harmer, & Cowen, 2012). In addition to comparing learning and performance of male and female rats in this task, we conducted two experiments to gauge the impact of traditional models of anxiety in the context of this paradigm. These included measuring (1) the dose-response effect of a pharmacological model of anxiety (anxiogenic drug FG7142) on performance of the AAT and (2) elevated plus maze (EPM) performance of animals that had undergone training on the AAT compared to naïve animals.

Finally, we characterized sex differences in reward-motivated tasks that required behavioral inhibition and flexibility. Most disorders with higher prevalence in men than women (autism, ADHD, schizophrenia) involve impaired behavioral inhibition and flexibility. In addition, male predisposition to compulsive behavior may contribute to the higher rates of substance abuse and dependence in men [20]. To investigate these constructs, we used two operant tests of cognitive flexibility: reversal learning and extradimensional shifting. Both tasks required subjects to update behavior in response to changing rules.

More Empathic Responses for Pain in Facial Muscles Are Modulated by Actor’s Disattractiveness and Being Female, & Perspective Taken by Observer

Empathic Responses for Pain in Facial Muscles Are Modulated by Actor’s Attractiveness and Gender, and Perspective Taken by Observer. Kamila Jankowiak-Siuda, Anna Duszyk, Aleksandra Dopierała, Krzysztof Bujwid, Krystyna Rymarczyk and Anna Grabowska. Front. Psychol., March 21 2019. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.00624

Subject: Although empathy for pain is an often studied phenomenon, only few studies employing electromyography (EMG) have investigated either emotional responses to the pain of others or factors that modulate these responses. The present study investigated whether the sex and attractiveness of persons experiencing pain affected muscle activity associated with empathy for pain, the corrugator supercili (CS) and orbicularis oculi (OO) muscles, in male and female participants in two conditions: adopting a perspective of “the other” or “the self.” Fifty one participants (27 females) watched movies showing situations that included the expression of pain, with female and male and more and less attractive actors under both conditions, while the CS and OO EMG were recorded. Perspective did not affect CS muscle activity, but OO muscle activity tended to be higher in women than men under the imagine-self condition. CS muscle activity, but not OO muscle activity, was modulated by the actors’ gender and attractiveness. CS muscle activity was stronger in response to the pain of less attractive than more attractive actors, and to the pain of female actors compared to male actors. Moreover, a positive correlation was found between empathic concern, as a trait, and CS muscle activity, but only in the imagine-self condition.


Introduction

One hundred and fifteen years ago, having described empathy as Einfühlung (“feeling into”), Theodor Lipps suggested that the perception of emotions of other persons triggers analogous emotions in the observer (Montag et al., 2008). The phenomenon assumes the existence of autonomic and somatic reactions in the observer leading to similar emotions, so-called “inner imitation.” Emotional mimicry can be considered an expression of imitation. This phenomenon is also an aspect of contemporary concepts of empathy, such as the perception-action model (PAM) of empathy (Preston and de Waal, 2002). PAM posits that the perception of the emotional state of others leads to the automatic activation of a representation of the same emotion in the observer, including autonomic and somatic reactions. Thus, PAM points to emotional mimicry as the most primal component of empathy (Hatfield et al., 1992; Preston and de Waal, 2002). This idea has received support from findings showing that the prevention of motor imitation of facial expressions makes recognizing emotions and affective sharing difficult (Sonnby-Borgström, 2002; Oberman et al., 2007; Dimberg et al., 2011). However, recent studies have revealed that facial mimicry is a more dynamic process than initially assumed (Sato et al., 2008; Rymarczyk et al., 2016a). Some studies indicate that facial mimicry depends on a number of modulating factors (Hess and Fischer, 2014; Seibt et al., 2015). The reaction of facial muscles to basic emotions depends on the sex or other characteristics of the observer. For example, the facial muscles have a noticeably greater reaction to basic emotions in highly empathic people (Dimberg et al., 2011; Balconi and Canavesio, 2016; Rymarczyk et al., 2016b). In addition, the reaction of the facial muscles is altered by levels of oxytocin (Korb et al., 2016). The type of the stimulus (dynamic vs. static) (Weyers et al., 2006; Sato et al., 2008; Rymarczyk et al., 2016a,b, 2018) also affects the reaction of the facial muscles to basic emotions.

Only a few studies using electromyography (EMG) have investigated emotional responses to the pain of others and the factors that modulate these reactions. Sun et al. (2015) showed that the activity of the corrugator supercili (CS) muscle increased in a group of research subjects who watched a short movie clip in which a person experienced pain (needle sticking), in comparison with a group who watched only part of the same movie (needle sticking the finger). Lamm et al. (2008) showed that the activity of the orbicularis oculi (OO) muscle was higher in study participants who watched a movie showing reactions to pain and who were instructed to imagine that they had experienced the pain (the “imagine-self” perspective), as compared to the “imagine-others” perspective (imagine what the person in the movie feels). In addition, Lepron et al. (2015) showed how a sense of responsibility for the suffering of another person affects emotional mimicry. Greater activity was observed in the OO and CS muscles and greater discomfort was reported by subjects who felt greater responsibility for other people’s pain, compared to subjects in the lesser responsibility condition.

In essence, two muscles (the CS and OO) may have special significance for the processing of empathy with pain. It should be noted that Lamm et al. (2008) and Sun et al. (2015) found positive correlations between the activity of the CS and OO muscles with scales measuring empathy, i.e., empathic concern (feeling compassion for others) and perspective taking (tendency to take another person’s perspective), from the Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) (Davis, 1980).

Attractiveness is considered an important factor in social cognition for perceiving and empathizing with the pain of others (Jankowiak-Siuda et al., 2015). Research has shown that attractiveness has a particularly strong relationship with the reactions of the facial muscles of observers. For example, the attractiveness of a person’s face was found to be negatively correlated with the activation of the CS and the legator labii superioris (LLS) while viewing photographs of attractive and unattractive people (Principe and Langlois, 2011). Less attractive faces activated the LLS and CS more strongly. Neither the gender of the observer nor the gender of the person in the photograph were related to the activity of these facial muscles (Principe and Langlois, 2011). To date no relationship has been found between the reactions of the facial muscles of observers empathizing with a suffering person and the gender or attractiveness of the person suffering from pain. Therefore, the aim of the present study was to examine whether the gender or attractiveness of a person experiencing pain affects the activity of muscles associated with empathy for pain (the CS and OO) in male and female participants. In addition, the study measured the correlations of the electrical activity of the CS and OO facial muscles with the three empathy dimensions of the IRI (Davis, 1980): empathic concern, personal distress (feelings directed toward oneself), and perspective taking.

The perception of pain and empathy depends on adopting perspectives – whether we imagine how another person feels (“imagine-others”) or how we would feel (“imagine-self”) (Batson et al., 1997; Lamm et al., 2008). Imagining others evokes empathic concern, whereas imagining the self produces both empathic concern and personal distress; however, the latter is more in the way of egoistic negative emotions (Batson et al., 2003; Lamm et al., 2007). Thus, it is interesting to test whether perspective taking affects the activity of the CS and OO muscles when the attractiveness of the target varies. Based on available research findings we predict CS activity to be higher when observing unattractive women, no matter what perspective was adopted. However, we also predict OO activity to be higher for the imagine-self perspective than for the imagine-others perspective. Finally, we expect positive correlations between CS activity and empathic concern and between OO activity and perspective-taking.

The participants in the present study were shown dynamic pain stimuli in movies showing natural, everyday situations, in which they saw the whole body and the facial expressions of pain of actors (the targets) and the location of the injury. These stimuli were used because they have higher ecological validity than movies showing only the injured body part or expressions that mimic pain (Sun et al., 2015). Moreover, Sun et al. (2015) suggest that such situations are more likely to elicit empathy for pain. The present research measured relative changes in the activity of the CS and OO muscles during consecutive scenes. This enabled us to determine how the activity of the muscles changed in different scenes (showing the target’s neutral facial expression, the action leading to the pain, the actual pain stimulus, and the target’s facial expression of pain) depending on the sex and attractiveness of the target and the perspective taken by the observer.

Female economists are at some notable points less convinced of market solutions and have more trust in the government in serving the public interest

Values of Economists Matter in the Art and Science of Economics. Hendrik P. van Dalen. Kyklos, March 15 2019. https://doi.org/10.1111/kykl.12208

Summary: What role do personal values play in the practice of economists? By means of a survey among economists working inside and outside academia in the Netherlands, we present novel insights on their personal values, how these differ from the average citizen, and how values impact their economic views and their methodological choices. Three overarching values summarize the value structure of economists: achievement, serving the public interest, and conformity to rules. Subsequent tests are performed to see whether these values affect (1) their opinion on economic propositions and (2) their attitudes towards methodological principles in economics. For the majority of economic propositions, personal values matter. Especially the value of serving the public interest has a strong effect on their economic view. Furthermore, it seems that economists who value achievement are the ones who are more likely to embrace mainstream methodological principles: thinking predominantly in terms of efficiency, rationality, and competition, believing that economic knowledge is objective and transparently produced and in agreement with Milton Friedman's view on positive economics. Female economists are at some notable points less convinced of market solutions and have more trust in the government in serving the public interest.


1 Introduction

    “All scientific work has to be based on value premises. There is no view without a viewpoint.” Gunnar Myrdal (1972)


Economists have been trained to think that their science should be Wertfrei, free of value judgements. Economics is concerned with ‘what is’ rather than ‘what ought to be’ (Coats 1964; Heilbroner 1973; Colander 2001). In large part, this stance may be derived from reading Lionel Robbins’ classic book An Essay on the Nature and Significance of Economic Science (1932). Still, economists do make policy recommendations involving value judgements or at least tacitly invoke ethical principles in making policy statements (Heilbroner 1973; Wight 2017) and some judgements of economists may unwittingly be affected by their personal values. Because of its tacit nature, it is hard to see or detect whether values actually matter, i.e. how do economists weight their values in making judgements. To the best of my knowledge, this article is the first to make the personal value structure of economists explicit (along the lines set out by social psychologist Schwartz (1994)). And subsequently, we examine how these values affect statements and attitudes on methodological principles in economics.

The intermingling of facts, theory and values is practiced by most economists when they judge a situation or try to give policy advice. It is essentially the art of political economy, as John Neville Keynes (1891) once described this grey area between positive and normative economics. And in this area values play a prominent role (Colander and Su 2015). However, these insights do not seem to be shared by most economists. Some ascribe these blind spots to the fact that modern economists lack a firm historical education (Blaug 2001; Colander 2011) or they look down upon economic methodology (Lawson 1994). Or perhaps because the professionals that are most well adapted to studying this aspect – economic methodologists ‐ stick to only criticizing economists. Indeed the lament of Hausman (1989) on the state of economic methodology is directly related to this point and captures the intentions of the current paper: “Although methodologists may find much to criticize, they had better begin by understanding as thoroughly as they can how economists go about their business and why they do what they do.”

Most economists would claim that their judgement or advice is based on Science, without invoking any value judgements. In other words, values do not enter the equation because it would make economists appear less ‘scientific’ and it would suggest that economic policy is ‘just a matter of taste’. This paper tries to uncover the role that values play in making positive and normative claims about the economy as well as explaining attitudes with respect to methodological principles and scientific norms, and hence it is written in exactly the spirit of Hausman's lament (1989). When economics is what economists do, one can learn a lot from the flourishing industry of the economics of economics or the sociology of knowledge literature. Numerous authors over time have added insights into how the economics profession functions, ranging from the sociology and institutional structure of the economics profession (Frey and Eichenberger 1993; Coats 1997; Coats 2005; Fourcade 2006; Fourcade 2009) to the registration of the consensus among economists (Frey et al. 1984; Gordon and Dahl 2013), a focus on elite economists and their education (Klamer and Colander 1990; Colander 2005), or discovering how an economic education changes behavior (Frey and Meier 2003). However, none of these studies have faced the issue of measuring the values of economists directly. 1
In modern tracts on economic methodology (Boumans and Davis 2015) the issue of value‐laden economics is an important issue, but empirical proof of how the economics profession is affected by this issue is conspicuously absent. In short, this paper focuses on a lacuna in the economics literature that might improve our understanding of “how economists go about their business”.

The method of analysis is a survey among economists, working inside and outside academia in the Netherlands. The Netherlands is a country that has achieved a top position within the economics hierarchy in Europe (Kalaitzidakis et al. 2003; Lubrano et al. 2003) and it could function as an appropriate case study for other countries as well because most universities outside the Ivy League have similar ambitions in moving up the various rankings. Furthermore, one should that note of the fact that economics at Dutch universities is certainly no longer a Dutch affair: 43 percent of the Dutch economics faculty consists of foreign born members (Rathenau Institute 2018) and most classes are taught in English.

The traditional null hypothesis to put to the test would be the one that is tacitly taught in economics namely that economic science is free of value judgements. The absence of value judgements will be operationalized by us as the thesis that personal values of economists do not affect their views or attitudes. We will test this hypothesis by focusing on two sets of variables: (1) the positive or normative statements made by economists as they are often used in studies on the consensus of dissensus among economists (Frey et al. 1983; Alston et al. 1992; Fuller and Geide‐Stevenson 2007); and (2) their attitude towards methodological principles in economics. The measurement of personal values relies on the value characterization of Schwartz (2012); a method that is often applied to European or worldwide surveys of individual countries. Because these general population data are available the current survey among economists also offers the possibility of comparing the differences between economists and the average citizen. It is sometimes claimed that economists have estranged themselves from the general public or laypeople. Economists tend to stress efficiency whereas in every day practice people value equity or fairness, as Rees (1993) once noted. Some research focuses on and shows differences of opinion between laypeople and economists but no research on differences in values. Research by Sapienza and Zingales (2013) shows that the opinion of the general public differs quite markedly from economists on technical issues and the reason for this divergence is that laypeople do not trust every link in the economist's logic because actors like governments or market participants are distrusted. And Johnston and Ballard (2016) show in a different setup how economists in the US are met with distrust when it concerns highly salient and polarized issues.

This paper makes three novel contributions. The first contribution is that personal values of the economists differ distinctly from the average citizen: economists in general care less about traditions or rules, they care less about the environment and they are more set on serving the public interest. This applies to both the academic and applied economists. However, at some points the academic economist differs from the applied economist. In particular creativity or innovation and being successful are valued far more by the academic economist. In other words, the academic economist is more oriented towards individual self‐enhancement than the applied economist.

The second contribution is the observation that values matter when it comes to making economic statements, although the influence of values is virtually absent when it concerns statements on monetary issues. And the third contribution is a demonstration that personal values also affect the attitude of academic economists towards methodological principals, and the importance attached to certain assumptions in economic theory. Self‐centered economists who prize ‘achievement’ are more likely to have ‘mainstream’ ideas about economics as a science: thinking solely in terms of efficiency, believing that economic knowledge is objective and transparently produced and in agreement with Friedman's (1953) view on positive economics. Furthermore, they also attach greater importance to the assumption of rationality and perfect competition.

The setup of this paper is as follows. In the next section we discuss how values of economists may impinge on their world view and their attitudes towards scientific principles applied in economics. In the subsequent section we will present the method and data used to test the relationship between values and economic and methodological statements, to be followed by the results of these tests. The final section concludes with a short summary and discussion.



2 The Values of Economists

Values in general express what people believe to be good or bad or what they believe that should or should not be done. In social psychology it is well established how important values are. They not only guide us to select actions and interpret events, values also affect people's focus of attention, the way they interpret information and values can explain their attitudes, decisions and behavior (Verplanken and Holland 2002; Schwartz 2012). If this insight is true, values may also help to interpret how economists make judgements and why their attitudes and decisions in their profession differ. Differences of opinion among economists can exist with respect to how they think about the functioning of markets, governments, families and its agents. These evaluations may to some extent be based on personal valuations about what an economist feels is good or bad. For instance, some may see the freedom to choose and the pursuit of enlightened self‐interest as the cornerstone of making capitalism work. Other economists may see self‐interest as the cause of market failures in the ordinary business of life and value the public interest more highly.

Modern economists may perceive values as the use of an extra‐scientific source in economic discourse. Something that should not belong in economics as a science. Samuelson (1947) is quite clear in his classic Foundations of Economic Analysis why values do not belong in the ‘science department’: “Wishful thinking is a powerful deterrent of good analysis and description, and ethical conclusions cannot be derived in the same way that scientific hypotheses are inferred or verified.” (p. 220). However, the use of values is, of course, not a novel element. Political economists of the past, like Mill and Senior, made a distinction between the art and science of political economy. They acknowledged that the science of economics does not give you sufficient guidance in giving policy advice. As Senior (1836) expressed this stance: “the business of the Political Economist is neither to recommend nor to dissuade, but to state general principles, which it is fatal to neglect, but neither advisable, nor perhaps practicable, to use as the sole, or even the principle guides to the actual conduct of affairs.” (Senior 1836, p. 2‐3) In moving from the science to the art of economics extra‐scientific elements creep in, such as ethical premises. Later, John Neville Keynes (1891) made a more refined distinction in three sections: (1) a “positive science” with the object of establishing uniformities; (2) a “normative or regulative science” with the object of determining ideals; and (3) the “art” of economics, a system of rules for the attainment of given ends and the economists who preoccupied with this art tried to formulate “precepts” or, in modern‐day terms, policy advice. However, with the appearance of Robbins’ (1932) Essay it became more or less an article of faith to refrain from value judgements and the proper economist dedicated to the cause of science, high theory, should focus on the task to understand choice and behavior as reflection of scarce means in search of given ends. What most economists forgot (see, e.g., Ng 1972) was that Robbins was preoccupied in his Essay with ‘high theory’ and economics as a pure science and not with the art of economics (cf. Colander 2009).

Paying attention to the fact that economists have values is done in a strand within economic methodology that has called into question economics’ scientific character. Values permeate in every aspect of economic science (Wilber 1994). This literature deals with the impact of values and ethical judgements on economics as a science and that value neutrality is an unlikely state of affairs. According to Wilber (1994, 2004) the value neutrality argument hinges on two tenets. The first tenet is the one taught to most students and is based on the belief that one cannot derive a normative statement from a positive statement (better known as Hume's guillotine, cf. Blaug 1992), fact and value, descriptive and prescriptive statements need to be separated, cut by the ‘blade of the guillotine’. In the world of John Stuart Mill this separation was quite evident as political economy was understood to be a separate but inexact science. To derive policy recommendations based on this narrow view would be a sign of negating the complexity of society. The second tenet supports the first tenet by claiming that economists have objective access to the empirical world through their sense experience, and because of this access economists “as scientists need not concern themselves with ‘what ought to be’.” (Wilber 1994). This second tenet is the weak spot. This objectivity argument has been rejected by Kuhn (1970). He argued that the empirical world can only be known through the filter of a theory; facts about the real world are thus always theory laden. Worldviews influence the paradigm with which one works and value judgements are closely associated with one's own worldview. Theories must remain coherent with this world view and this world view shapes the questions asked, models used, methods chosen, facts presented, etc. In short, this is exactly what Myrdal (1972) was arguing about when he said that values permeate in every corner of economic science:

    “… valuations enter into research from the start to the finish: determining the approach, the definition of the concepts, used and thus the facts observed, the way of drawing inferences, and even the manner of presenting conclusions reached.” (1972, p. 162)

In that respect one can understand why Myrdal (1973) was very supportive of studying the sociological and psychological mechanisms at work within the economics profession and to see how economists go about in their daily activities to uncover, what McCloskey (1983) calls, the rhetoric of economics. A view similar to that of Myrdal can be found in Boulding (1969) who argues that “knowledge of the social sciences is an essential part of the social system itself, hence objectivity in the sense of investigating a world which is unchanged by the investigation of it is an absurdity.” And he goes on to claim why values matter: “as science moves from pure knowledge towards control, that is, toward creating what it knows, what it creates becomes a problem of ethical choice, and will depend on the common values of the societies in which the scientific subculture is embedded.” (p.3) In short, values permeate every aspect of the way economists work.

We will first focus on a domain– views or judgements on economic topics ‐ by the following (null) hypothesis to reflect the tacit belief among modern economists (cf. Colander and Su 2015) that values do not matter when they express their positive or their normative views:

    Hypothesis on the values‐views nexus: The personal values of economists do not affect either their positive or normative economic views.

A second domain in which values permeate economics concerns the attitudes towards methodological principles and the norms of science. The reason for including this domain is simply related to the argument made by Myrdal (1972) that values permeate in every corner of practicing economics and not just economic judgements as in the first hypothesis. He suggests that ascribing to a particular way of practicing economics – one's methodological principles ‐ is also influenced by one's values. For instance, embracing self‐centered values may be traded off against the value of serving the public interest of science. This trade‐off process could be pushed in the direction of self‐centeredness as most universities use an up‐or‐out system to grant tenure or prizes in general. The key factor in this system are publications and citations generating a publish‐or‐perish culture (van Dalen et al. 2012; Stephan 2012a; Stephan 2012b; Seeber et al. 2019). Success in science is solely defined in terms individual academic success and may set in motion a drive towards self‐centeredness or an inward turn in which economics is the queen of the social sciences, academic economists no longer have an ambition to function as gatekeepers of a public debate or who do not engage in organizational citizenship behavior. Some note that this internal directedness (Colander 2015; Fourcade et al. 2015) may well be the Achilles’ heel of economics. A case in point may well be the recent Great Recession. In the midst of the crisis Krugman (2009) challenged (mainly) economists with a Chicago background on sowing the seeds for the crisis by making economics a beautiful but irrelevant science. Economists had mistaken mathematical beauty for truth and have lost sight of reality in assessing the state of economies. The criticism of Krugman and the ensuing debate (Cochrane 2011; Colander 2011) suggests that methodological principles on the application of theory to policy lay at heart in the answer to how economists got it wrong. Especially the way economists have come to practice ‘positive economics’ in macroeconomics and in finance has blinded economists, according to Krugman. Although, he does not mention it explicitly, the essay on The Methodology of Positive Economics by Friedman (1953) has played a pivotal role in developing economics as an exact science and it certainly is not restricted to economists with a Chicago background. To stay away from value judgements Friedman downplayed the role of values very early on in his essay: “differences about economics policy among disinterested citizens derive predominantly from different predictions about the economic consequences of taking action [..] rather than from fundamental differences in basic values.” (p. 5). Instead he focused on developing positive economics: theories should be judged by their predictions not by the realism of their assumptions.

Friedman's economic methodology has ever since its publication been fiercely debated. To name two criticisms that are relevant in this regard is, first, the objection made by Hausman (1994). He argues that the instrumentalist approach of Friedman precludes serious research in examining the realism of assumptions. ‘Why look under the hood?’ is the implicit message of Friedman. A second and different critique is expressed by Coase (1994) who remarks that the essay of Friedman is not so much a positive theory but a normative theory: “What we are given is not a theory of how economists, in fact, choose between competing theories, but [..] how they ought to choose.” Economists ‐ according to Coase ‐ do not use “valid and meaningful predictions about phenomena not yet observed” as their sole criterion. Many economists do not test theories in their papers at all. Most of the work of pure theory economists consists of “logical constructions based on assumptions about human nature”. And their scientific efforts can best be described as “measurements of an effect, the nature of which was already well established but of which the magnitude was unknown” (Coase 1994). Economists and many other social scientists are unsophisticated positivists (Colander and Su 2015).

The second part of this paper aims first to discover (1) the attitudes economists share with respect to scientific working principles, as they are sometimes summed up in the Mertonian norms of science (Merton 1979); and (2) their assessment of key theoretical assumptions in understanding today's society. We will subsequently test to see whether personal values affect these two elements of scientific practice. The second null hypothesis that we will use as our guide is the following:

    Hypothesis on the values‐principles nexus: The personal values of economists do not affect scientific working principles and their assessment of assumptions in understanding modern‐day society.




6 Conclusions and Discussion

    “Valuations enter into research from the start to the finish” (Myrdal 1972, p. 162).

Economists are often seen by laypeople as a quarrelsome lot who agree to disagree. To know the world of economists and the forces that impinge on the choices they make is of some importance for anyone trying to understand developments in economics and economic policy. This paper has taken the novel and exploratory route by assessing the effects of (personal) values of economists on their view on methodology and the state of the economy. Three general findings stand out.

First, the personal values of economists differ from the man in the street. In particular, economists attach more importance to serving the public interest than the average citizen and the economist is less attached to the status quo, or to put it differently, the economist does not value rules or traditions and the academic economist is someone who values creativity more than the average citizen or the applied economist.

Second, for the majority of economic positive and normative propositions about economic issues personal values matter. Indirectly, these findings affirm what Gunnar Myrdal always claimed: “There is no view without a viewpoint”. Especially the value to serve the public interest has a strong effect on the perception of how the world works, or how it should be changed. It is only in monetary policy matters that values do not seem to matter a lot.

And third, with respect to methodological issues, it seems that economists who value achievement are the ones who are more likely to embrace mainstream methodological principles in economics: thinking predominantly in terms of efficiency, rationality and competition, believing that economic knowledge is objective and transparently produced and agreement with Friedman's view on positive economics.


6.1 Discussion

These findings are not without limitations and should be interpreted with some care. In particular, the personal values as measured in this paper are assumed to be exogenous. Given the extensive experience with research that has been carried out with the Schwartz approach to values this seem like a reasonable assumption, but the question of value formation should not be neglected. For instance, we have noted that economists differ in their values at some crucial points with the average citizen, but the intriguing question is how have economists come to adopt or acquired their values? Is it socialization or is it a question of self‐selection? Gandal et al. (2005) provide some evidence of values for students that suggests that self‐selection is present into the study of economics, where self enhancement is valued more than serving the interests of others by economics students. However, they do not focus on or examine the issue of socialization to dominant group values or education experience. There is a large of body of experimental literature focused on the minds of students that seem to suggest both forces – selection and socialization ‐ are at work (Carter and Irons 1991; Frey and Meier 2003).

Although the picture presented in this paper of economists is limited to one moment in time, the findings are intriguing and warrant some further discussion. The findings may shed light, doubt and may reinforce preconceptions of how the world of economists works. In closing I want to make two remarks on the possible implications of these findings.

First of all, the divergence in values between academic economists and the average citizen helps one to understand why economists with the best of intentions have a hard time convincing the general public. For instance, Barr and Diamond (2009) once discussed the skills that are needed to make a credible pension reform. Such reforms are too often top‐down technical design issues, whereas communication and implementation of a reform is an equally important part of effective reform. The fact that the average citizen likes stability and traditions, whereas the average economist is always on the lookout for improving and changing the status quo is a revealing fact. It helps one understand why economists are perceived as arrogant number‐crunchers, just like in the days of Charles Dickens when political economists were seen as dismal scientists.

Second, ‘achievement’ values are positively associated with economists embracing mainstream principles or having mainstream opinions. This is a novel and important finding as it suggests how ‘normal economic science’ is connected with a particular type of economist, who is focused on his or her own achievements. It is important because it might shed some light on the concerns of insiders (Colander 2011; Osterloh and Frey 2015; Heckman and Moktan 2018) on how the character of economics has changed and has become more focused on internal questions. A likely force seems to be the publish‐or‐perish culture that many sciences have implemented as their selection mechanism. And economics has (more than other disciplines) a tendency to focus on publications and citations as indicators of the quality of ideas. Osterloh and Frey (2015) urge universities to back away from such ranking games as these games end up substituting a ‘taste for science’ by a ‘taste for publication’. ‘Taste’ is here an appropriate phrase as it suggests that values are key in making a science work. Science has this unique mixture where public goods are produced by individuals who are triggered to produce knowledge by means of a non‐market reward system that appeals to their intrinsic motivation (Dasgupta and David 1994). Naturally, economists are influenced by a mix of values. But by making publications and citations the only coin worth having in science, a non‐market reward system is being replaced by a market‐reward system. And under those circumstances one should not be surprised to see the unintended consequence of such a publish‐or‐perish culture materialize. Mimicry could be the result as young and aspiring economists try to adapt to their environment and follow the rules and customs that make the likelihood of publication in top‐tier journals greater or of obtaining grants. Economists who favor and strive for individual success are perhaps also the ones who dislike acting in the public interest, because doing jobs or tasks that have a public good nature generally do not earn the credits deans playing the ‘ranking game’ would like to see. One of the consequences may be that the value structure of economists may change, as one is almost forced to act as an ‘achiever’ and the group may become more homogenous. The basic dangers of a drive towards a homogenous group of economists is uniformity in approach, outlook and advice. Fourcade et al. (2015) and Heckman and Moktan (2018) have registered these tendencies and as Heckman and Moktan note: “The current system of publication and reward does not encourage creativity. It delays the publication and dissemination of new ideas. It centralizes power in the hands of a small group of editors, prevents open discussion and stifles dissent and debate.” It is perhaps the old insight and warning of Kerr (1975) that surfaces in academia: whoever wants to attain A (read: creativity) by rewarding B (read: publication), will not attain A, but will end up with B.

We humans are so defective that even a collective effort like wikipedia outperforms us: "Our findings are the first to demonstrate Wikipedia’s superiority over individuals when it comes to hindsight bias"

Wikipedia outperforms individuals when it comes to hindsight bias. Aileen Oeberst, Ina von der Beck, Ulrike Cress, Steffen Nestler. Psychological Research, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00426-019-01165-7

Abstract: Hindsight bias—the tendency to overestimate in hindsight what one knew in foresight—is a robust and pervasive human error. A recent study with Wikipedia articles, however, found evidence for a hindsight bias only for disasters but not for any other event category (e.g., elections). Although this might suggest Wikipedia articles to be less biased than individuals, alternative explanations had not been ruled out. The present study set out to answer this question by comparing individuals’ and Wikipedia’s representation of the very same event in foresight and hindsight. In particular, we made use of a state election and surveyed one part of participants before and after the outcome and had other participants rate the corresponding Wikipedia article versions with regard to the extent to which the article was suggestive of a particular outcome and presented it as foreseeable and inevitable. In line with prior research and our hypotheses, we found a hindsight bias at the individual level but not in Wikipedia articles. Applying Bayesian statistics, there was substantial support for the null hypothesis (i.e., no hindsight bias) in Wikipedia. By controlling for the potential impact of participants’ own hindsight bias on their article ratings we can rule out alternative explanations of our findings. Therefore, our findings are the first to demonstrate Wikipedia’s superiority over individuals when it comes to hindsight bias.

In a variety of mammalian species, mothers & others care for and/or carry deceased newborns, & sometimes other conspecifics. The rationale for such behavior remains elusive; here, the author tries to give an evolutionary explanation

A comparative perspective on the evolution of mammalian reactions to dead conspecifics. Fred B. Bercovitch. Primates, https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10329-019-00722-3

Abstract: In a variety of mammalian species, mothers and others care for and/or carry deceased newborns, and sometimes other conspecifics. The rationale for such behavior remains elusive. Based upon field observations of olive baboon (Papio anubis), African elephant (Loxodonta africana), and Thornicroft’s giraffe (Giraffa camelopardalis) responses to recently dead conspecifics, combined with reports in the literature, a hypothesis is proposed to account for this activity. Among female mammals, lifetime reproductive success is more dependent upon rearing, than production, of offspring. The successful nurturing of progeny is associated with a strong maternal–offspring bond. One of the most important chemicals involved in both lactation and mother–infant bonding is oxytocin, a tiny molecule that has a lengthy evolutionary history and is implicated in the formation of social bonds across mammals. Evolution has extended the impact of oxytocin by adopting it beyond the original mother–infant bond to the establishment of social bonds that are required among group-living animals. Hence, sociality is a consequence of the same fundamental biological mediator of mother–offspring bonding, and this intricate connection between physiology and behavior has produced a situation where sometimes animals will care for or carry dead companions. Ways to test this hypothesis, as well as a potential way to refute it, are proposed.

Keywords: Olive baboon African elephant Giraffe Sociality Maternal–offspring bond Oxytocin Thanatology

The moral behavior of ethics professors: A replication-extension in German-speaking countries -- there is no positive influence of ethical reflection on moral action

The moral behavior of ethics professors: A replication-extension in German-speaking countries. Philipp Schönegger & Johannes Wagner. Philosophical Psychology, Mar 19 2019. https://doi.org/10.1080/09515089.2019.1587912

ABSTRACT: What is the relation between ethical reflection and moral behavior? Does professional reflection on ethical issues positively impact moral behaviors? To address these questions, Schwitzgebel and Rust empirically investigated if philosophy professors engaged with ethics on a professional basis behave any morally better or, at least, more consistently with their expressed values than do non-ethicist professors. Findings from their original US-based sample indicated that neither is the case, suggesting that there is no positive influence of ethical reflection on moral action. In the study at hand, we attempted to cross-validate this pattern of results in the German-speaking countries and surveyed 417 professors using a replication-extension research design. Our results indicate a successful replication of the original effect that ethicists do not behave any morally better compared to other academics across the vast majority of normative issues. Yet, unlike the original study, we found mixed results on normative attitudes generally. On some issues, ethicists and philosophers even expressed more lenient attitudes. However, one issue on which ethicists not only held stronger normative attitudes but also reported better corresponding moral behaviors was vegetarianism.

KEYWORDS: Experimental philosophy, replication-extension, moral attitudes, moral behavior

The longer something is thought to exist, the better it is evaluated; happens even with aesthetic judgments of art & nature, that were also positively affected by time in existence

Longer is better. Scott Eidelman, Jennifer Pattershall, Christian S. Crandall. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Volume 46, Issue 6, November 2010, Pages 993-998. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2010.07.008

Abstract: The longer something is thought to exist, the better it is evaluated. In Study 1, participants preferred an existing university requirement over an alternative; this pattern was more pronounced when the existing requirement was said to be in place for a longer period of time. In Study 2, participants rated acupuncture more favorably as a function of how old the practice was described. Aesthetic judgments of art (Study 3) and nature (Study 4) were also positively affected by time in existence, as were gustatory evaluations of an edible consumer good (Study 5). Features of the research designs argue against mere exposure, loss aversion, and rational inference as explanations for these findings. Instead, time in existence seems to operate as a heuristic; longer means better.

Check also Chapter Two - The Intuitive Traditionalist: How Biases for Existence and Longevity Promote the Status Quo. Scott Eidelman, Christian S. Crandall. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology, Volume 50, 2014, Pages 53-104. https://doi.org/10.1016/B978-0-12-800284-1.00002-3

Abstract: People tend to like things the way they are. All other things being equal, there is a widespread bias in favor of the status quo. We describe two forms this bias may take: people assume that (1) mere existence makes things good and right (the existence bias) and (2) the longer something is thought to exist, the better and more right it is judged to be (the longevity bias). We take care to distinguish existence and longevity biases from other forms of status quo preference. Our research emphasizes people's automatic, heuristic tendency to ascribe existence and longevity to inherent features. We describe how existence and longevity biases contribute to status quo maintenance and political ideology; we also show how these biases provide novel explanatory power for incumbency effects, social norms, and the legitimization of inequality. We conclude with a consideration of exceptions to what appears to be a general rule: people assume that the status quo is good, right, and the way things ought to be.