The Role of Body-Related Afferent Signals in Human Sense of Agency. Maria Pyasik, Tiziano Furlanetto, Lorenzo Pia. Journal of Experimental Neuroscience, May 16, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1177/1179069519849907
Abstract: At present, most of the neurocognitive models of human sense of agency (ie, “this action is due to my own will”) have been traditionally rooted in a variety of internal efferent signals arising within the motor system. However, recent neuroscientific evidence has suggested that also the body-related afferent signals that subserve body ownership (ie, “this body is mine”) might have a key role in this process. Accordingly, in the present review paper, we briefly examined the literature investigating how and to what extent body ownership contributes to building up human motor consciousness. Evidence suggests that, if required by the context, body ownership per se can act on agency attribution (ie, independently from efferent signals). Hence, a unitary and coherent subjective experience of willed actions (ie, “this willed action is being realized by my own body”) requires both awareness of being an agent and of owning the body.
Keywords: Bodily self, body ownership, sense of agency, afferent signals, efferent signals
---
When we achieve willed actions, we do not feel as though those acts simply happen to us, we strongly sense to be in charge. Such subjective experience of authorship is known as sense of agency.1 In other words, we are aware of intending, initiating, and controlling our volitional movements (so-called “body agency”),2 as well as their consequences in the external world (“external agency”),2 and this awareness is vital for survival. Indeed, perceiving to be an agent allows distinguishing actions that are self-generated from those that are generated by others. This, in turn, contributes to the key signature of human nature, that is, the phenomenological experience of self-consciousness.3
[...]
It is worth emphasizing, however, that whenever we successfully achieve volitional actions, we feel not only being in control of our movements and their consequences but also that those movements are being executed through our own body (body agency). For instance, if I am thirsty and I quickly get a glass of water, I experience that my own body is moving toward the glass. In the absence of any movement, such an embodied and enduring sense of being aware of our own body, termed body ownership,16 is known to be rooted in multisensory integration. In other words, it arises whenever the body-related afferent sensory signals (ie, visual, tactile, proprioceptive, kinesthetic, auditory, etc) that constantly reach our body are integrated in both spatial and temporal terms. For example, if someone else caresses my arm, I experience that body part as my own because I see and I feel the touches at the same time and in the same place. All in all, the stronger the spatiotemporal congruency among these signals, the higher the feeling of body ownership.17–20 It is thought that in the human brain, body ownership is underpinned by the activity of a network including premotor areas, the occipitotemporal cortex, the primary/secondary somatosensory areas, and the anterior insula.18,21–23
Capitalizing on the above-mentioned considerations, it follows that the coherence, the richness, and the completeness of human subjective experience of being the agent of a given voluntary action necessarily requires both awareness of controlling the actions and awareness of owning the body that achieves them. However, whether, how, and to what extent body ownership has a role in building up such experiences is an issue that only very recently has come to the forefront of the scientific investigations. For these reasons, in this article, we aimed at reviewing all studies that, in one way or another, investigated the possible role of body ownership in building up the sense of agency over the body movements.
[...] In summary, this first set of studies showed that if an external object that is perceived as part of one’s own body moves together with the participant’s body, an illusory sense of agency over the movements of that object arises. This does not happen if the moving external object is not perceived as part of one’s own body.
[...]
Another evidence came from a study employing the full-body illusion showing that when a virtual embodied avatar was walking repeatedly along a route, while the participant remained still, an illusion of walking occurred.40 This did not happen when the avatar was not embodied. It is also worth noting that highly automated actions, as walking, are thought to prime the movements and intentions to move in advance. In summary, this second set of studies showed that, if participants’ motor representations (eg, motor intentions, motor imagery or motor plan) match the movements of an external object perceived as part of one’s own body, an illusion of agency arises. This does not happen if the moving external object is not perceived as part of one’s own body.
[...]
To sum up, here we reviewed evidence supporting the idea that body ownership does have a role in human sense of agency, specifically body agency. The review shows that being aware of one’s own body has a role per se in building and maintaining the sense of agency, namely it can act on agency attribution in the absence of any efferent signals, such as motor intentions and feedforward predictions, and causes preceding effects and so on. First, it is worth noticing that giving any role to body ownership is not trivial but, rather, consistent with human nature. Indeed, our actions are achieved mainly through the physical body,50 and the body is a prerequisite for any successful interaction with the environment.51 Indeed, it is already known that body ownership affects motor control, allowing to estimate limb positions,52 to tune motor commands,53 and to adjust errors.54 Hence, discovering its role also within motor consciousness would not be surprising. Here, we suggest that the signals that give rise to body ownership might have a key role in sense of agency by acting on agency attribution in the absence of any efferent signals. How is it possible to reconcile in a concrete manner this idea with the current neurocognitive model of the sense of agency? As already mentioned, the classical motor control model of sense of agency states that the experience of being an agent arises from the comparison between predicted and actual outcomes.4,7-10 This, in turn, means that action preparation is a necessary condition to have any experience of being an agent. We put forward the idea that under some circumstances, only seeing the own body moving would be enough to activate the neurocognitive processes subserving action preparation. At this point, the feeling of agency over that specific given act would be triggered. Such a process could be exemplified by the inference: “since this is my body part, any action performed by it would be intended by me.” Furthermore, in dynamic conditions, that is when we actually achieve the willed actions, body ownership would provide additional signals to the efferent motor-related signals and would contribute to the subjective experience of being an agent. Within this view, sense of agency is conceived as a very flexible neurocognitive mechanism. Indeed, it is rooted in the dynamic and optimal integration among efferent and afferent signals. Any given source of information would be weighted according to the specificity of the context and the actual availability of signals.55
We have to emphasize that the present review did not aim to investigate the interactions between human body ownership and sense of agency but, rather, it focused on the role of the former in the construction of the latter. Therefore, this article cannot provide an exhaustive picture of the complex interplay between the two senses, and future studies in this direction should allow gaining key hints to understand human bodily self-consciousness.
Friday, May 17, 2019
In rodents: Probing learning by omitting reinforcement (treats) uncovers latent knowledge & identifies context -not “smartness”- as the major source of individual variability
Dissociating task acquisition from expression during learning reveals latent knowledge. Kishore V. Kuchibhotla et al. Nature Communications, May 2019. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-019-10089-0
Abstract: Performance on cognitive tasks during learning is used to measure knowledge, yet it remains controversial since such testing is susceptible to contextual factors. To what extent does performance during learning depend on the testing context, rather than underlying knowledge? We trained mice, rats and ferrets on a range of tasks to examine how testing context impacts the acquisition of knowledge versus its expression. We interleaved reinforced trials with probe trials in which we omitted reinforcement. Across tasks, each animal species performed remarkably better in probe trials during learning and inter-animal variability was strikingly reduced. Reinforcement feedback is thus critical for learning-related behavioral improvements but, paradoxically masks the expression of underlying knowledge. We capture these results with a network model in which learning occurs during reinforced trials while context modulates only the read-out parameters. Probing learning by omitting reinforcement thus uncovers latent knowledge and identifies context -not “smartness”- as the major source of individual variability.
---
Popular version -- Study: Treats Might Mask Animal Intelligence. Chanapa Tantibanchachai. News Releases, May 14, 2019. https://releases.jhu.edu/2019/05/14/study-treats-might-mask-animal-intelligence
Rewards are necessary for learning, but may actually mask true knowledge, finds a new Johns Hopkins University study with rodents and ferrets.
The findings, published May 14 in Nature Communications, show a distinction between knowledge and performance, and provide insight into how environment can affect the two.
“Most learning research focuses on how humans and other animals learn ‘content’ or knowledge. Here, we suggest that there are two parallel learning processes: one for content and one for context, or environment. If we can separate how these two pathways work, perhaps we can find ways to improve performance,” says Kishore Kuchibhotla, an assistant professor in The Johns Hopkins University’s department of psychological and brain sciences and the study’s lead author.
While researchers have known that the presence of reinforcement, or reward, can change how animals behave, it’s been unclear exactly how rewards affect learning versus performance.
An example of the difference between learning and performance, Kuchibhotla explains, is the difference between a student studying and knowing the answers at home, and a student demonstrating that knowledge on a test at school.
“What we know at any given time can be different than what we show; the ability to access that knowledge in the right environment is what we’re interested in,” he says.
To investigate what animals know in hopes of better understanding learning, Kuchibhotla and the research team trained mice, rats and ferrets on a series of tasks, and measured how accurately they performed the tasks with and without rewards.
For the first experiment, the team trained mice to lick for water through a lick tube after hearing one tone, and to not lick after hearing a different, unrewarded tone. It takes mice two weeks to learn this in the presence of the water reward. At a time point early in learning, around days 3-5, the mice performed the task at chance levels (about 50%) when the lick tube/reward was present. When the team removed the lick tube entirely on these early days, however, the mice performed the task at more than 90% accuracy. The mice, therefore, seemed to understand the task many days before they expressed knowledge in the presence of a reward.
Abstract: Performance on cognitive tasks during learning is used to measure knowledge, yet it remains controversial since such testing is susceptible to contextual factors. To what extent does performance during learning depend on the testing context, rather than underlying knowledge? We trained mice, rats and ferrets on a range of tasks to examine how testing context impacts the acquisition of knowledge versus its expression. We interleaved reinforced trials with probe trials in which we omitted reinforcement. Across tasks, each animal species performed remarkably better in probe trials during learning and inter-animal variability was strikingly reduced. Reinforcement feedback is thus critical for learning-related behavioral improvements but, paradoxically masks the expression of underlying knowledge. We capture these results with a network model in which learning occurs during reinforced trials while context modulates only the read-out parameters. Probing learning by omitting reinforcement thus uncovers latent knowledge and identifies context -not “smartness”- as the major source of individual variability.
---
Popular version -- Study: Treats Might Mask Animal Intelligence. Chanapa Tantibanchachai. News Releases, May 14, 2019. https://releases.jhu.edu/2019/05/14/study-treats-might-mask-animal-intelligence
Rewards are necessary for learning, but may actually mask true knowledge, finds a new Johns Hopkins University study with rodents and ferrets.
The findings, published May 14 in Nature Communications, show a distinction between knowledge and performance, and provide insight into how environment can affect the two.
“Most learning research focuses on how humans and other animals learn ‘content’ or knowledge. Here, we suggest that there are two parallel learning processes: one for content and one for context, or environment. If we can separate how these two pathways work, perhaps we can find ways to improve performance,” says Kishore Kuchibhotla, an assistant professor in The Johns Hopkins University’s department of psychological and brain sciences and the study’s lead author.
While researchers have known that the presence of reinforcement, or reward, can change how animals behave, it’s been unclear exactly how rewards affect learning versus performance.
An example of the difference between learning and performance, Kuchibhotla explains, is the difference between a student studying and knowing the answers at home, and a student demonstrating that knowledge on a test at school.
“What we know at any given time can be different than what we show; the ability to access that knowledge in the right environment is what we’re interested in,” he says.
To investigate what animals know in hopes of better understanding learning, Kuchibhotla and the research team trained mice, rats and ferrets on a series of tasks, and measured how accurately they performed the tasks with and without rewards.
For the first experiment, the team trained mice to lick for water through a lick tube after hearing one tone, and to not lick after hearing a different, unrewarded tone. It takes mice two weeks to learn this in the presence of the water reward. At a time point early in learning, around days 3-5, the mice performed the task at chance levels (about 50%) when the lick tube/reward was present. When the team removed the lick tube entirely on these early days, however, the mice performed the task at more than 90% accuracy. The mice, therefore, seemed to understand the task many days before they expressed knowledge in the presence of a reward.
Masculine/feminine colors, toys, & objects as more suited for boys/girls or both & boys/girls playing with gender counter-stereotypic toys: The older boys sanctioned counter stereotypical behavior more often than accepted it
Boys Just Don’t! Gender Stereotyping and Sanctioning of Counter-Stereotypical Behavior in Preschoolers. Milica M. Skočajić et al. Sex Roles, May 15 2019. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-019-01051-x
Abstract: Although children start to adopt gender stereotypes by the age of three, there is less evidence about how early they start to sanction other children’s counter-stereotypical behaviors. The present study explored the two processes in a single design, comparing younger/older preschool boys and girls and using a two-task procedure involving (a) categorization of pictures of masculine/feminine colors, toys, and objects as more suited for boys/girls or both and (b) descriptions and evaluations of boys/girls playing with gender counter-stereotypic toys. One hundred Serbian children aged 3–4 or 6–7 years-old, balanced by gender, were individually interviewed. Although all three sets of stimuli were stereotyped, toys were stereotyped more often than colors and objects. Overall stereotyping, as well as stereotyping of colors and toys, was more frequent in the older group. Gender differences were more complex, showing some gender x age interactions wherein boys stereotyped masculine stimuli more often than girls did; the older boys, but not the other groups, sanctioned counter stereotypical behavior more often than accepted it; and boys’ behaviors were sanctioned more often than girls’. Finally, stereotyping and sanctioning were strongly positively related. Our study shows that, at early preschool ages, children are not only aware of gender norms, but also ready to sanction peers violating them. Boys seem to be more likely to stereotype, particularly the masculine stimuli, and be sanctioned for not conforming to stereotypes. The findings can help educators and media identify groups that need to be empowered to explore behaviors beyond gender-prescribed roles.
Keywords: Gender role Gender-stereotypes Counter-stereotypical Sanctions Preschool Child development
Abstract: Although children start to adopt gender stereotypes by the age of three, there is less evidence about how early they start to sanction other children’s counter-stereotypical behaviors. The present study explored the two processes in a single design, comparing younger/older preschool boys and girls and using a two-task procedure involving (a) categorization of pictures of masculine/feminine colors, toys, and objects as more suited for boys/girls or both and (b) descriptions and evaluations of boys/girls playing with gender counter-stereotypic toys. One hundred Serbian children aged 3–4 or 6–7 years-old, balanced by gender, were individually interviewed. Although all three sets of stimuli were stereotyped, toys were stereotyped more often than colors and objects. Overall stereotyping, as well as stereotyping of colors and toys, was more frequent in the older group. Gender differences were more complex, showing some gender x age interactions wherein boys stereotyped masculine stimuli more often than girls did; the older boys, but not the other groups, sanctioned counter stereotypical behavior more often than accepted it; and boys’ behaviors were sanctioned more often than girls’. Finally, stereotyping and sanctioning were strongly positively related. Our study shows that, at early preschool ages, children are not only aware of gender norms, but also ready to sanction peers violating them. Boys seem to be more likely to stereotype, particularly the masculine stimuli, and be sanctioned for not conforming to stereotypes. The findings can help educators and media identify groups that need to be empowered to explore behaviors beyond gender-prescribed roles.
Keywords: Gender role Gender-stereotypes Counter-stereotypical Sanctions Preschool Child development
The Social Price of Constant Connectivity: Smartphones Impose Subtle Costs on Well-Being
The Social Price of Constant Connectivity: Smartphones Impose Subtle Costs on Well-Being. Kostadin Kushlev, Ryan Dwyer, Elizabeth W. Dunn. Current Directions in Psychological Science, May 16, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721419847200
Abstract: Smartphones provide people with a variety of benefits, but they may also impose subtle social costs. We propose that being constantly connected undercuts the emotional benefits of face-to-face social interactions in two ways. First, smartphone use may diminish the emotional benefits of ongoing social interactions by preventing us from giving our full attention to friends and family in our immediate social environment. Second, smartphones may lead people to miss out on the emotional benefits of casual social interactions by supplanting such interactions altogether. Across field experiments and experience-sampling studies, we find that smartphones consistently interfere with the emotional benefits people could otherwise reap from their broader social environment. We also find that the costs of smartphone use are fairly subtle, contrary to proclamations in the popular press that smartphones are ruining our social lives. By highlighting how smartphones affect the benefits we derive from our broader social environment, this work provides a foundation for building theory and research on the consequences of mobile technology for human well-being.
Keywords: subjective well-being, social interactions, smartphones, cyberpsychology, mobile computing
Abstract: Smartphones provide people with a variety of benefits, but they may also impose subtle social costs. We propose that being constantly connected undercuts the emotional benefits of face-to-face social interactions in two ways. First, smartphone use may diminish the emotional benefits of ongoing social interactions by preventing us from giving our full attention to friends and family in our immediate social environment. Second, smartphones may lead people to miss out on the emotional benefits of casual social interactions by supplanting such interactions altogether. Across field experiments and experience-sampling studies, we find that smartphones consistently interfere with the emotional benefits people could otherwise reap from their broader social environment. We also find that the costs of smartphone use are fairly subtle, contrary to proclamations in the popular press that smartphones are ruining our social lives. By highlighting how smartphones affect the benefits we derive from our broader social environment, this work provides a foundation for building theory and research on the consequences of mobile technology for human well-being.
Keywords: subjective well-being, social interactions, smartphones, cyberpsychology, mobile computing
The Frozen Effect: Objects in motion are more aesthetically appealing than objects frozen in time
The Frozen Effect: Objects in motion are more aesthetically appealing than objects frozen in time. Malerie G. McDowell, Jason Haberman. PLOS, May 16, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0215813
Abstract: Videos of moving faces are more flattering than static images of the same face, a phenomenon dubbed the Frozen Face Effect. This may reflect an aesthetic preference for faces viewed in a more ecological context than still photographs. In the current set of experiments, we sought to determine whether this effect is unique to facial processing, or if motion confers an aesthetic benefit to other stimulus categories as well, such as bodies and objects—that is, a more generalized ‘Frozen Effect’ (FE). If motion were the critical factor in the FE, we would expect the video of a body or object in motion to be significantly more appealing than when seen in individual, static frames. To examine this, we asked participants to rate sets of videos of bodies and objects in motion along with the still frames constituting each video. Extending the original FFE, we found that participants rated videos as significantly more flattering than each video’s corresponding still images, regardless of stimulus domain, suggesting that the FFE generalizes well beyond face perception. Interestingly, the magnitude of the FE increased with the predictability of stimulus movement. Our results suggest that observers prefer bodies and objects in motion over the same information presented in static form, and the more predictable the motion, the stronger the preference. Motion imbues objects and bodies with greater aesthetic appeal, which has implications for how one might choose to portray oneself in various social media platforms.
Abstract: Videos of moving faces are more flattering than static images of the same face, a phenomenon dubbed the Frozen Face Effect. This may reflect an aesthetic preference for faces viewed in a more ecological context than still photographs. In the current set of experiments, we sought to determine whether this effect is unique to facial processing, or if motion confers an aesthetic benefit to other stimulus categories as well, such as bodies and objects—that is, a more generalized ‘Frozen Effect’ (FE). If motion were the critical factor in the FE, we would expect the video of a body or object in motion to be significantly more appealing than when seen in individual, static frames. To examine this, we asked participants to rate sets of videos of bodies and objects in motion along with the still frames constituting each video. Extending the original FFE, we found that participants rated videos as significantly more flattering than each video’s corresponding still images, regardless of stimulus domain, suggesting that the FFE generalizes well beyond face perception. Interestingly, the magnitude of the FE increased with the predictability of stimulus movement. Our results suggest that observers prefer bodies and objects in motion over the same information presented in static form, and the more predictable the motion, the stronger the preference. Motion imbues objects and bodies with greater aesthetic appeal, which has implications for how one might choose to portray oneself in various social media platforms.
Thursday, May 16, 2019
New evidence on the link between genes, psychological traits, and political engagement
New evidence on the link between genes, psychological traits, and political engagement. Aaron C. Weinschenk et al. Politics and the Life Sciences, Volume 38, Issue 1, Spring 2019, May 16 2019. https://doi.org/10.1017/pls.2019.3
Abstract: We investigate the link between genes, psychological traits, and political engagement using a new data set containing information on a large sample of young German twins. The TwinLife Study enables us to examine the predominant model of personality, the Big Five framework, as well as traits that fall outside the Big Five, such as cognitive ability, providing a more comprehensive understanding of the underpinnings of political engagement. Our results support previous work showing genetic overlap between some psychological traits and political engagement. More specifically, we find that cognitive ability and openness to experience are correlated with political engagement and that common genes can explain most of the relationship between these psychological traits and political engagement. Relationships between genes, psychological traits, and political engagement exist even at a fairly young age, which is an important finding given that previous work has relied heavily on older samples to study the link between genes, psychological traits, and political engagement.
Abstract: We investigate the link between genes, psychological traits, and political engagement using a new data set containing information on a large sample of young German twins. The TwinLife Study enables us to examine the predominant model of personality, the Big Five framework, as well as traits that fall outside the Big Five, such as cognitive ability, providing a more comprehensive understanding of the underpinnings of political engagement. Our results support previous work showing genetic overlap between some psychological traits and political engagement. More specifically, we find that cognitive ability and openness to experience are correlated with political engagement and that common genes can explain most of the relationship between these psychological traits and political engagement. Relationships between genes, psychological traits, and political engagement exist even at a fairly young age, which is an important finding given that previous work has relied heavily on older samples to study the link between genes, psychological traits, and political engagement.
A behavior's environmental impact is judged differently depending on the intention; is judged less effective when based on environmental than selfish motives; this bias is driven by moral comparison (the feeling of moral reproach)
When good intentions go bad: The biased perception of the environmental impact of a behavior due to reliance on an actor's behavioral intention. Gea Hoogendoorn, Bernadette Sütterlin, Michael Siegrist. Journal of Environmental Psychology, May 16 2019. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2019.05.003
Highlights
• People are subject to intention actor-observer bias when judging environmental impact.
• A behavior's environmental impact is judged differently depending on the intention.
• A behavior is judged less effective when based on environmental than selfish motives.
• The intention bias is driven by moral comparison, i.e., the feeling of moral reproach.
• The costlier it is perceived to conduct a behavior, the larger the moral gap.
Abstract: People engage in pro-environmental behaviors for various reasons. Depending on the intention underlying their behavior, they are perceived differently by others. Thus, the question arises whether the reason why a person performs a behavior not only influences how observers perceive that person, but also how observers evaluate the environmental impact of that person's behavior. We conducted two experiments, in which participants (i.e., observers) read a text describing a person (i.e., actor) engaging in a pro-environmental behavior for either self-serving or environmental reasons. We found that the environmental impact of an identical pro-environmental behavior was judged differently depending on the underlying behavioral intention of the actor. When the behavior was performed by the actor for pro-environmental reasons, the positive environmental impact was perceived to be lower than when the behavior was performed for self-serving reasons. These findings suggest that people are subject to an observer intention bias when judging the environmental impact of others' behavior. In two follow-up experiments, we identified moral comparison to be the mechanism underlying this observer intention bias. When reading about an environmentally motivated actor, participants experienced a stronger feeling of being judged as less moral by the actor, than when they read about an actor conducting the same behavior out of self-serving motivation. To cope with this feeling of being judged by others, people downplay the positive impact of the observed morally superior person's actions.
Highlights
• People are subject to intention actor-observer bias when judging environmental impact.
• A behavior's environmental impact is judged differently depending on the intention.
• A behavior is judged less effective when based on environmental than selfish motives.
• The intention bias is driven by moral comparison, i.e., the feeling of moral reproach.
• The costlier it is perceived to conduct a behavior, the larger the moral gap.
Abstract: People engage in pro-environmental behaviors for various reasons. Depending on the intention underlying their behavior, they are perceived differently by others. Thus, the question arises whether the reason why a person performs a behavior not only influences how observers perceive that person, but also how observers evaluate the environmental impact of that person's behavior. We conducted two experiments, in which participants (i.e., observers) read a text describing a person (i.e., actor) engaging in a pro-environmental behavior for either self-serving or environmental reasons. We found that the environmental impact of an identical pro-environmental behavior was judged differently depending on the underlying behavioral intention of the actor. When the behavior was performed by the actor for pro-environmental reasons, the positive environmental impact was perceived to be lower than when the behavior was performed for self-serving reasons. These findings suggest that people are subject to an observer intention bias when judging the environmental impact of others' behavior. In two follow-up experiments, we identified moral comparison to be the mechanism underlying this observer intention bias. When reading about an environmentally motivated actor, participants experienced a stronger feeling of being judged as less moral by the actor, than when they read about an actor conducting the same behavior out of self-serving motivation. To cope with this feeling of being judged by others, people downplay the positive impact of the observed morally superior person's actions.
Strategies for Reducing Failures of Self-Control
Beyond Willpower: Strategies for Reducing Failures of Self-Control. Angela L. Duckworth, Katherine L. Milkman, David Laibson. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, February 13, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100618821893
Abstract: Almost everyone struggles to act in their individual and collective best interests, particularly when doing so requires forgoing a more immediately enjoyable alternative. Other than exhorting decision makers to “do the right thing,” what can policymakers do to reduce overeating, undersaving, procrastination, and other self-defeating behaviors that feel good now but generate larger delayed costs? In this review, we synthesize contemporary research on approaches to reducing failures of self-control. We distinguish between self-deployed and other-deployed strategies and, in addition, between situational and cognitive intervention targets. Collectively, the evidence from both psychological science and economics recommends psychologically informed policies for reducing failures of self-control.
Keywords: self-control, behavior change, behavioral economics, self-regulation
Abstract: Almost everyone struggles to act in their individual and collective best interests, particularly when doing so requires forgoing a more immediately enjoyable alternative. Other than exhorting decision makers to “do the right thing,” what can policymakers do to reduce overeating, undersaving, procrastination, and other self-defeating behaviors that feel good now but generate larger delayed costs? In this review, we synthesize contemporary research on approaches to reducing failures of self-control. We distinguish between self-deployed and other-deployed strategies and, in addition, between situational and cognitive intervention targets. Collectively, the evidence from both psychological science and economics recommends psychologically informed policies for reducing failures of self-control.
Keywords: self-control, behavior change, behavioral economics, self-regulation
First Study To Investigate How Attachment Style Changes Through Multiple Decades Of Life
Chopik, W. J., Edelstein, R. S., & Grimm, K. J. (2019). Longitudinal changes in attachment orientation over a 59-year period. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 116(4), 598-611. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000167
Abstract: Research on individual differences in attachment—and their links to emotion, cognition, and behavior in close relationships—has proliferated over the last several decades. However, the majority of this research has focused on children and young adults. Little is known about mean-level changes in attachment orientation beyond early life, in part due to a dearth of longitudinal data on attachment across the life span. The current study used a Q-Sort-based measure of attachment to examine mean-level changes in attachment orientation from age 13 to 72 using data from the Block and Block Longitudinal Study, the Intergenerational Studies, and the Radcliffe College Class of 1964 Sample (total N = 628). Multilevel modeling was employed to estimate growth curve trajectories across the combined samples. We found that attachment anxiety declined on average with age, particularly during middle age and older adulthood. Attachment avoidance decreased in a linear fashion across the life span. Being in a relationship predicted lower levels of anxiety and avoidance across adulthood. Men were higher in attachment avoidance at each point in the life span. Taken together, these findings provide much-needed insight into how attachment orientations change over long stretches of time. We conclude with a discussion about the challenges of studying attachment dynamics across the life course and across specific transitions.
Popular version: First Study To Investigate How Attachment Style Changes Through Multiple Decades Of Life. Christian Jarrett. Research Digest, May 9 2019. https://digest.bps.org.uk/2019/05/09/first-study-to-investigate-how-attachment-style-changes-through-multiple-decades-of-life
[...]
The data come from five historic projects, involving personality surveys of 628 US citizens born between 1920 and 1967. The shortest of these was 9 years and the longest was 47 years. They all involved participants being assessed repeatedly over many years using the California Adult Q-sort – a measure that includes 100 personality items. Chopik and his team focused on 14 key items from this measure, allowing them to compile scores for “anxious attachment” and “avoidant attachment” for each participant. People who score highly on “anxious attachment” fear rejection and constantly seek reassurance. People who score highly on “avoidant attachment” find intimacy uncomfortable and find it difficult to provide emotional support to others. Low scores on both anxiety and avoidance is a sign of having a secure attachment style.
The researchers stitched the data from the five historic samples together, so that they had scores for anxious and avoidant attachment spanning 59 years. Past research has already looked at how people of different ages vary in their attachment scores, but one problem with that kind of cross-sectional research is that any differences between people of different ages could be due to generational differences, rather than due to developmental trends. The new research largely overcome that problem, with Chopik and his team able to identify clear age-related trends in the same individuals over time.
Specifically, the team found that people’s anxious attachment tended to be high in adolescence, increasing into their young adulthood, before then declining through life into their middle and old age. Avoidant attachment showed less change with age, but started higher in adolescence and then declined in linear fashion through life.
The researchers surmised that attachment anxiety and avoidance may be high in adolescence due to the stressful transition from having primarily close bonds with parents to having meaningful relationships with peers and first romantic relationships. They also pointed out that mid-life – when anxiety and avoidance tend to decline – is arguably the time when we are most invested in various social roles and relationships and that “…increases in security often result from people becoming more comfortable in their relationships, gaining more evidence that the relationship will last, and having spouses who serve attachment needs and functions that promote close relations.” Meanwhile, in later life, when attachment anxiety and avoidance are typically lowest, they said people tend to be very focused on the here and now – “declines in anxiety and avoidance may reflect the efforts of older adults to become closer to their close friends and family,” they said.
Another finding from the study was that at all times of life, being in a close romantic relationship tended to go hand in hand with scoring lower on attachment anxiety and avoidance. “Romantic partners reward appropriate behaviour and admonish inappropriate behaviour … ,” the researchers said. “By investing in these social roles, individuals adhere to the rules and appropriate behaviour of close relationships and may change how they approach relationships accordingly, perhaps becoming more secure.”
It’s worth noting that this research looked at group averages, which inevitably masks the idiosyncratic ways that some people may change in their attachment style through life. The study is also limited by only involving participants from the US, the fact that it relied on extracting attachment scores from a measure not designed for that purpose, and that data was stitched together from multiple samples so as to cover the period from adolescence to later life. In a way, however, that last point is also a positive: “given the many ways in which these samples differed, the amount of consistency across the samples in estimating changes over time in attachment is even more remarkable. The converging evidence is a testament to the robustness of these results, such that they were found under different conditions in samples collected between 1936 and 2016,” the researchers explained.
[...]
Abstract: Research on individual differences in attachment—and their links to emotion, cognition, and behavior in close relationships—has proliferated over the last several decades. However, the majority of this research has focused on children and young adults. Little is known about mean-level changes in attachment orientation beyond early life, in part due to a dearth of longitudinal data on attachment across the life span. The current study used a Q-Sort-based measure of attachment to examine mean-level changes in attachment orientation from age 13 to 72 using data from the Block and Block Longitudinal Study, the Intergenerational Studies, and the Radcliffe College Class of 1964 Sample (total N = 628). Multilevel modeling was employed to estimate growth curve trajectories across the combined samples. We found that attachment anxiety declined on average with age, particularly during middle age and older adulthood. Attachment avoidance decreased in a linear fashion across the life span. Being in a relationship predicted lower levels of anxiety and avoidance across adulthood. Men were higher in attachment avoidance at each point in the life span. Taken together, these findings provide much-needed insight into how attachment orientations change over long stretches of time. We conclude with a discussion about the challenges of studying attachment dynamics across the life course and across specific transitions.
Popular version: First Study To Investigate How Attachment Style Changes Through Multiple Decades Of Life. Christian Jarrett. Research Digest, May 9 2019. https://digest.bps.org.uk/2019/05/09/first-study-to-investigate-how-attachment-style-changes-through-multiple-decades-of-life
[...]
The data come from five historic projects, involving personality surveys of 628 US citizens born between 1920 and 1967. The shortest of these was 9 years and the longest was 47 years. They all involved participants being assessed repeatedly over many years using the California Adult Q-sort – a measure that includes 100 personality items. Chopik and his team focused on 14 key items from this measure, allowing them to compile scores for “anxious attachment” and “avoidant attachment” for each participant. People who score highly on “anxious attachment” fear rejection and constantly seek reassurance. People who score highly on “avoidant attachment” find intimacy uncomfortable and find it difficult to provide emotional support to others. Low scores on both anxiety and avoidance is a sign of having a secure attachment style.
The researchers stitched the data from the five historic samples together, so that they had scores for anxious and avoidant attachment spanning 59 years. Past research has already looked at how people of different ages vary in their attachment scores, but one problem with that kind of cross-sectional research is that any differences between people of different ages could be due to generational differences, rather than due to developmental trends. The new research largely overcome that problem, with Chopik and his team able to identify clear age-related trends in the same individuals over time.
Specifically, the team found that people’s anxious attachment tended to be high in adolescence, increasing into their young adulthood, before then declining through life into their middle and old age. Avoidant attachment showed less change with age, but started higher in adolescence and then declined in linear fashion through life.
The researchers surmised that attachment anxiety and avoidance may be high in adolescence due to the stressful transition from having primarily close bonds with parents to having meaningful relationships with peers and first romantic relationships. They also pointed out that mid-life – when anxiety and avoidance tend to decline – is arguably the time when we are most invested in various social roles and relationships and that “…increases in security often result from people becoming more comfortable in their relationships, gaining more evidence that the relationship will last, and having spouses who serve attachment needs and functions that promote close relations.” Meanwhile, in later life, when attachment anxiety and avoidance are typically lowest, they said people tend to be very focused on the here and now – “declines in anxiety and avoidance may reflect the efforts of older adults to become closer to their close friends and family,” they said.
Another finding from the study was that at all times of life, being in a close romantic relationship tended to go hand in hand with scoring lower on attachment anxiety and avoidance. “Romantic partners reward appropriate behaviour and admonish inappropriate behaviour … ,” the researchers said. “By investing in these social roles, individuals adhere to the rules and appropriate behaviour of close relationships and may change how they approach relationships accordingly, perhaps becoming more secure.”
It’s worth noting that this research looked at group averages, which inevitably masks the idiosyncratic ways that some people may change in their attachment style through life. The study is also limited by only involving participants from the US, the fact that it relied on extracting attachment scores from a measure not designed for that purpose, and that data was stitched together from multiple samples so as to cover the period from adolescence to later life. In a way, however, that last point is also a positive: “given the many ways in which these samples differed, the amount of consistency across the samples in estimating changes over time in attachment is even more remarkable. The converging evidence is a testament to the robustness of these results, such that they were found under different conditions in samples collected between 1936 and 2016,” the researchers explained.
[...]
Perfectionism is increasing over time; culprits are neoliberalism, meritocracy... and Texan Big Oil :-)
OK, the paper says nothing about Big Oil or Big Pharma... I was just channeling...
The full paper is interesting throughout if you have axes to grind with meritocracy, etc.
---
Curran, T., & Hill, A. P. (2019). Perfectionism is increasing over time: A meta-analysis of birth cohort differences from 1989 to 2016. Psychological Bulletin, 145(4), 410-429. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/bul0000138
Abstract: From the 1980s onward, neoliberal governance in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom has emphasized competitive individualism and people have seemingly responded, in kind, by agitating to perfect themselves and their lifestyles. In this study, the authors examine whether cultural changes have coincided with an increase in multidimensional perfectionism in college students over the last 27 years. Their analyses are based on 164 samples and 41,641 American, Canadian, and British college students, who completed the Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale (Hewitt & Flett, 1991) between 1989 and 2016 (70.92% female, Mage = 20.66). Cross-temporal meta-analysis revealed that levels of self-oriented perfectionism, socially prescribed perfectionism, and other-oriented perfectionism have linearly increased. These trends remained when controlling for gender and between-country differences in perfectionism scores. Overall, in order of magnitude of the observed increase, the findings indicate that recent generations of young people perceive that others are more demanding of them, are more demanding of others, and are more demanding of themselves
---
Multidimensional Perfectionism
Perfectionism is broadly defined as a combination of excessively high personal standards and overly critical self-evaluations [...] One well-studied model of multidimensional perfectionism is that proposed by Hewitt and Flett (1991). In their model, perfectionism is understood in terms of the direction of perfectionistic beliefs and behaviors. When directed toward the self, individuals attach irrational importance to being perfect, hold unrealistic expectations of themselves, and are punitive in their self-evaluations (self-oriented perfectionism). When perceived to come from others, individuals believe their social context is excessively demanding, that others judge them harshly, and that they must display perfection to secure approval (socially prescribed perfectionism). When perfectionistic expectations are directed toward others, individuals impose unrealistic standards on those around them and evaluate others critically (other-oriented perfectionism). [...]
[...]
[...] Socially prescribed perfectionism is the most debilitating of the three dimensions of perfectionism. This is because the perceived expectations of others are experienced as excessive, uncontrollable, and unfair, making failure experiences and negative emotional states common (Hewitt & Flett, 1991). The debilitating nature of socially prescribed perfectionism is evident in research on college students, which has found this dimension of perfectionism to be positively associated with major psychopathology (e.g., anxiety, depressive symptoms, and suicide ideation; Martin, Flett, Hewitt, Krames, & Szanto, 1996; Hewitt, Flett, & Weber, 1994; Sherry, Hewitt, Flett, & Harvey, 2003). These relationships have been replicated in longitudinal and experimental studies (e.g., Flett, Endler, Tassone, & Hewitt, 1995; Hewitt, Flett, & Ediger, 1995; O’Connor, O’Connor, O’Connor, Smallwood, & Miles, 2004). Like self-oriented perfectionism, the reviews of Smith et al. (2016, 2017) showed that socially prescribed perfectionism predicted increases in depressive symptoms and suicide ideation over time, but to a much greater degree.
[...]
Cultural Change and Perfectionism Development
[...]
Emergence of Neoliberalism and Perfectionism
Cultural values in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom have undergone a remarkable change in recent decades. From the late 1970s onward, several events have brought about significant social and economic transformation. The postwar New Deal (United States and Canada), Consensus (United Kingdom), and the emergence of neoliberalism in the industrialized world has reshaped the cultural, political, and economic landscape (Blyth, 2002). Neoliberalism is a model of social studies and economics borne of revived (neo) 19th-century capitalist (liberal) principles. It elevates the market, and market-based systems of interpersonal evaluation, to the level of state-endorsed norms (Davies, 2014). Accordingly, market distortions fashioned by state interventionism (e.g., collective bargaining and public ownership) are minimized under neoliberal governance, replaced instead by efforts to foster unconstrained competition between self-interested individuals (e.g., deregulation and privatization; Harvey, 2005).
As young people internalize the cultural frames of neoliberalism, changes in how they construe a sense of self and identity are evident in various ways. Perhaps most notably, neoliberalism has seen the dominance of collectivism progressively give way to a wave of competitive individualism. For example, more recent generations of college students in the United States report higher levels of narcissism, extraversion, and self-confidence than previous generations (e.g., Twenge, 2001a; Twenge, Campbell, & Gentile, 2012; Twenge, Konrath, Foster, Campbell, & Bushman, 2008). At the same time, communal traits have waned. This is evident in that more recent generations of college students show less empathy toward others and are more likely to blame victims when things go wrong (e.g., Konrath, O’Brien, & Hsing, 2011; Malahy, Rubinlicht, & Kaiser, 2009; Twenge et al., 2012). Young people also appear now to be more self-interested and spend less time doing group activities for fun and more time doing individual activities for instrumental value or sense of personal achievement (see Twenge, 2014).
In the same fashion, behaviors associated with competition and the attainment of social standing have risen (Kasser, Ryan, Couchman, & Sheldon, 2004). In recent years, data suggests that individuals across the industrialized world have become preoccupied with upward social comparison, experience considerable status anxiety, and adopt materialism as a means of perfecting their lives in relation to others (e.g., De Botton, 2004; Marmot, 2004; Scott, Martin, & Schouten, 2014). The increase in materialism is particularly evident in the shifting values and behaviors of young people. Eighty-one percent of Americans born in the 1980s report that getting materially rich is among their most important life goals, a figure that is almost 20% higher than those born in the 1960s and 1970s (Pew Research Center, 2007). More recent generations of young people also borrow more heavily than did older generations at the same period of life span and spend, on average, a far greater proportion of their income on status possessions and image goods than did their parents (e.g., luxury vehicles and designer labels; Bricker, Ramcharan, & Krimmel, 2014; Jiang & Dunn, 2013; Parment, 2013).
Not only more dissatisfied with what they have, young people are also seemingly more dissatisfied with who they are (Eckersley, 2006). Platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat have become ubiquitous, occupying 2 out of every 5 min spent online (GlobalWebIndex, 2016). The popularity of these platforms is, in part, explained by how they allow users to curate a perfect public image (Mendelson & Papacharissi, 2011). Yet rather than alleviate presentational and interpersonal anxieties, studies indicate that exposure to others’ perfect self-representations within social media can intensify one’s own body image concerns and sense of social alienation (Grabe, Ward, & Hyde, 2008; Paik & Sanchagrin, 2013). Other data suggests that young people are struggling to cope with a visual culture which emphases unrealistic body ideals. The most recent cohort data from the United States and the United Kingdom show that incidence of body dysmorphia and eating disorders has risen by approximately 30% among late adolescent girls since the advent of social media (e.g., PwC, 2015; Smink, van Hoeken, & Hoek, 2012; Thompson & Durrani, 2007). In the same countries, increasing numbers of young people are turning to plastic surgery and its promise of bodily perfection (e.g., British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons, 2015; American Society of Plastic Surgeons, 2016; Thomas, 2015).
With general social malaise as a backdrop, neoliberalism has succeeded in shifting cultural values so to now emphasize competitiveness, individualism, and irrational ideals of the perfectible self (Verhaeghe, 2014). These ideals are systemic within contemporary language patterns, the media, and social and civic institutions, and are evident in the rise of competitive and individualistic traits, materialistic behavior, and presentational anxieties among recent generations of young people. Revisiting Hewitt et al.’s (2017) model, it is interesting to consider how young people are coming to construct a sense of self and identity in this kind of culture. The notion of a flawed and disordered self appears especially relevant (Banai, Mikulincer, & Shaver, 2005). That is, a sense of self overwhelmed by pathological worry and a fear of negative social evaluation, characterized by a focus on deficiencies, and sensitive to criticism and failure. This sense of self is a close match to the sense of self constructed by perfectionists and is reflected in many of the recent changes to self, identity, and behavior observed in young people. Young people appear to have internalized irrational social ideals of the perfectible self that, while unrealistic, are to them eminently desirable and obtainable. Broadly speaking, then, increasing levels of perfectionism might be considered symptomatic of the way in which young people are coping—to feel safe, connected, and of worth—in neoliberalism’s new culture of competitive individualism.
The Rise of Meritocracy and Perfectionism
The caveat emptor of neoliberalism lies in its meritocratic starting point. The perfect life and lifestyle—encapsulated by achievement, wealth, and social status—are available to anyone provided you try hard enough (Frank, 2016). According to neoliberal meritocracy, those who reach the top schools and colleges, or gain entry to occupations offering the most profitable employment, receive their due rewards of wealth and social status. For those who do not reach such educational and professional heights, the doctrine of meritocracy dictates they are less deserving and their poor achievement reflects their inadequate personal abilities (e.g., skills, intelligence, and efforts; Hayes, 2012). The doctrine of neoliberal meritocracy therefore falsely and insidiously connects the principles of educational and professional achievement, status, and wealth with innate personal value (e.g., Clark, 1965; Ehrenreich, 1989; Guinier, 2015). In turn, because individuals cannot avoid being sorted, sifted, and ranked by schools, universities, and the workplace, neoliberal meritocracy places a strong need to strive, perform, and achieve at the center of modern life.
Most acutely, the merging of academic and economic meritocracies has redefined the purpose of education. Whereas education has historically sought to provide young people with a broader repertoire of skills and knowledge, neoliberal meritocracy stresses that skills and knowledge are worthless unless they confer economic value (Verhaeghe, 2014). This places considerable pressure on young people to strive, compete, and meet increasingly higher expectations in school and college—less they wish to damage their future market price. The effects of merging academic and economic meritocracies are reflected in the escalating educational expectations of young people. In the United States, where cohort data is available, approximately half of high school seniors in 1976 expected to attain at least some college degree, by 2008 that figure had risen to over 80% (Jacob & Wilder, 2011). Yet actual degree attainment has failed to keep pace with rising expectations. The gap between the percentage of high school seniors expecting to obtain a college degree and the percent of young people with a college degree doubled between 1976 and 2000 and has continued to rise (Johnson & Reynolds, 2013; Reynolds, Stewart, MacDonald, & Sischo, 2006). Together, this research suggests that the expectations of many young people are increasingly unrealistic (Baird, Burge, & Reynolds, 2008).
As young people’s expectations have increased, so have the educational demands placed on them. Intense competition for elite college admission has meant that, relative to previous generations, current high school students in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom are subjected to more numerous and stringent standardized tests (Guinier, 2015). At the same time, although the number of students going to college has increased, the wage premium associated with a college degree has stagnated over the last 20 years (Moretti, 2013). One reason for this stagnation is a saturation of the graduate job market and underemployment among graduates in developed countries (i.e., holding jobs that do not require a degree), which is currently much higher among recent generations of college graduates than it was for older generations at the same period of life (Abel, Deitz, & Su, 2014). Instead, research in the United States and the United Kingdom shows that the college premium is now almost entirely attributable to the income of those with postgraduate degrees (Brynin, 2013; Shierholz & Mishel, 2013). Just 10% of the U.S. workforce, 7% of the Canadian workforce, and 11% of the U.K. workforce have postgraduate qualifications (Lindley & Machin, 2013; Statistics Canada, 2012). Young people, therefore, must complete a college degree, and now must also obtain a postgraduate qualification, if they are to demonstrate their economic merit.
Over time, then, meritocracy raises the bar of society’s expectations such that they become unattainable to the majority—especially for young people, and especially in terms of educational achievement. Perceptions of unrealistic achievement standards are common in models that seek to explain the development of perfectionism. Although written some time ago, Hamachek (1978) stated on the link between the need to achieve and perfectionism that “[perfectionists] may over-value performance and undervalue the self. He learns only through performance that he has a self” (p. 29). The notion that perfectionists come to overvalue accomplishment is also echoed and expanded upon in the recent writing of Hewitt et al. (2017). Here, perfectionism is conceived as a misguided attempt to procure others’ approval and repair feelings of unworthiness and shame through displays of high achievement. Hewitt et al.’s description of perfectionism development is allied to the machinations of meritocratic culture in that striving for high achievement standards and the attainment of perfection are actively encouraged and rewarded. Young people are taught that the principles of meritocracy are good, fair, and just. In response, they are compelled to demonstrate their merit, set increasingly higher and unrealistic goals, and come to define themselves in the strict and narrow terms of personal achievement.
Altered Parental Practices and Perfectionism
As we have described, neoliberalism and its doctrine of meritocracy have combined to shape a culture in which everybody is expected to perfect themselves and their lifestyles by striving to meet unrealistic achievement standards.
The full paper is interesting throughout if you have axes to grind with meritocracy, etc.
---
Curran, T., & Hill, A. P. (2019). Perfectionism is increasing over time: A meta-analysis of birth cohort differences from 1989 to 2016. Psychological Bulletin, 145(4), 410-429. http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/bul0000138
Abstract: From the 1980s onward, neoliberal governance in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom has emphasized competitive individualism and people have seemingly responded, in kind, by agitating to perfect themselves and their lifestyles. In this study, the authors examine whether cultural changes have coincided with an increase in multidimensional perfectionism in college students over the last 27 years. Their analyses are based on 164 samples and 41,641 American, Canadian, and British college students, who completed the Multidimensional Perfectionism Scale (Hewitt & Flett, 1991) between 1989 and 2016 (70.92% female, Mage = 20.66). Cross-temporal meta-analysis revealed that levels of self-oriented perfectionism, socially prescribed perfectionism, and other-oriented perfectionism have linearly increased. These trends remained when controlling for gender and between-country differences in perfectionism scores. Overall, in order of magnitude of the observed increase, the findings indicate that recent generations of young people perceive that others are more demanding of them, are more demanding of others, and are more demanding of themselves
---
Multidimensional Perfectionism
Perfectionism is broadly defined as a combination of excessively high personal standards and overly critical self-evaluations [...] One well-studied model of multidimensional perfectionism is that proposed by Hewitt and Flett (1991). In their model, perfectionism is understood in terms of the direction of perfectionistic beliefs and behaviors. When directed toward the self, individuals attach irrational importance to being perfect, hold unrealistic expectations of themselves, and are punitive in their self-evaluations (self-oriented perfectionism). When perceived to come from others, individuals believe their social context is excessively demanding, that others judge them harshly, and that they must display perfection to secure approval (socially prescribed perfectionism). When perfectionistic expectations are directed toward others, individuals impose unrealistic standards on those around them and evaluate others critically (other-oriented perfectionism). [...]
[...]
[...] Socially prescribed perfectionism is the most debilitating of the three dimensions of perfectionism. This is because the perceived expectations of others are experienced as excessive, uncontrollable, and unfair, making failure experiences and negative emotional states common (Hewitt & Flett, 1991). The debilitating nature of socially prescribed perfectionism is evident in research on college students, which has found this dimension of perfectionism to be positively associated with major psychopathology (e.g., anxiety, depressive symptoms, and suicide ideation; Martin, Flett, Hewitt, Krames, & Szanto, 1996; Hewitt, Flett, & Weber, 1994; Sherry, Hewitt, Flett, & Harvey, 2003). These relationships have been replicated in longitudinal and experimental studies (e.g., Flett, Endler, Tassone, & Hewitt, 1995; Hewitt, Flett, & Ediger, 1995; O’Connor, O’Connor, O’Connor, Smallwood, & Miles, 2004). Like self-oriented perfectionism, the reviews of Smith et al. (2016, 2017) showed that socially prescribed perfectionism predicted increases in depressive symptoms and suicide ideation over time, but to a much greater degree.
[...]
Cultural Change and Perfectionism Development
[...]
Emergence of Neoliberalism and Perfectionism
Cultural values in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom have undergone a remarkable change in recent decades. From the late 1970s onward, several events have brought about significant social and economic transformation. The postwar New Deal (United States and Canada), Consensus (United Kingdom), and the emergence of neoliberalism in the industrialized world has reshaped the cultural, political, and economic landscape (Blyth, 2002). Neoliberalism is a model of social studies and economics borne of revived (neo) 19th-century capitalist (liberal) principles. It elevates the market, and market-based systems of interpersonal evaluation, to the level of state-endorsed norms (Davies, 2014). Accordingly, market distortions fashioned by state interventionism (e.g., collective bargaining and public ownership) are minimized under neoliberal governance, replaced instead by efforts to foster unconstrained competition between self-interested individuals (e.g., deregulation and privatization; Harvey, 2005).
As young people internalize the cultural frames of neoliberalism, changes in how they construe a sense of self and identity are evident in various ways. Perhaps most notably, neoliberalism has seen the dominance of collectivism progressively give way to a wave of competitive individualism. For example, more recent generations of college students in the United States report higher levels of narcissism, extraversion, and self-confidence than previous generations (e.g., Twenge, 2001a; Twenge, Campbell, & Gentile, 2012; Twenge, Konrath, Foster, Campbell, & Bushman, 2008). At the same time, communal traits have waned. This is evident in that more recent generations of college students show less empathy toward others and are more likely to blame victims when things go wrong (e.g., Konrath, O’Brien, & Hsing, 2011; Malahy, Rubinlicht, & Kaiser, 2009; Twenge et al., 2012). Young people also appear now to be more self-interested and spend less time doing group activities for fun and more time doing individual activities for instrumental value or sense of personal achievement (see Twenge, 2014).
In the same fashion, behaviors associated with competition and the attainment of social standing have risen (Kasser, Ryan, Couchman, & Sheldon, 2004). In recent years, data suggests that individuals across the industrialized world have become preoccupied with upward social comparison, experience considerable status anxiety, and adopt materialism as a means of perfecting their lives in relation to others (e.g., De Botton, 2004; Marmot, 2004; Scott, Martin, & Schouten, 2014). The increase in materialism is particularly evident in the shifting values and behaviors of young people. Eighty-one percent of Americans born in the 1980s report that getting materially rich is among their most important life goals, a figure that is almost 20% higher than those born in the 1960s and 1970s (Pew Research Center, 2007). More recent generations of young people also borrow more heavily than did older generations at the same period of life span and spend, on average, a far greater proportion of their income on status possessions and image goods than did their parents (e.g., luxury vehicles and designer labels; Bricker, Ramcharan, & Krimmel, 2014; Jiang & Dunn, 2013; Parment, 2013).
Not only more dissatisfied with what they have, young people are also seemingly more dissatisfied with who they are (Eckersley, 2006). Platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat have become ubiquitous, occupying 2 out of every 5 min spent online (GlobalWebIndex, 2016). The popularity of these platforms is, in part, explained by how they allow users to curate a perfect public image (Mendelson & Papacharissi, 2011). Yet rather than alleviate presentational and interpersonal anxieties, studies indicate that exposure to others’ perfect self-representations within social media can intensify one’s own body image concerns and sense of social alienation (Grabe, Ward, & Hyde, 2008; Paik & Sanchagrin, 2013). Other data suggests that young people are struggling to cope with a visual culture which emphases unrealistic body ideals. The most recent cohort data from the United States and the United Kingdom show that incidence of body dysmorphia and eating disorders has risen by approximately 30% among late adolescent girls since the advent of social media (e.g., PwC, 2015; Smink, van Hoeken, & Hoek, 2012; Thompson & Durrani, 2007). In the same countries, increasing numbers of young people are turning to plastic surgery and its promise of bodily perfection (e.g., British Association of Aesthetic Plastic Surgeons, 2015; American Society of Plastic Surgeons, 2016; Thomas, 2015).
With general social malaise as a backdrop, neoliberalism has succeeded in shifting cultural values so to now emphasize competitiveness, individualism, and irrational ideals of the perfectible self (Verhaeghe, 2014). These ideals are systemic within contemporary language patterns, the media, and social and civic institutions, and are evident in the rise of competitive and individualistic traits, materialistic behavior, and presentational anxieties among recent generations of young people. Revisiting Hewitt et al.’s (2017) model, it is interesting to consider how young people are coming to construct a sense of self and identity in this kind of culture. The notion of a flawed and disordered self appears especially relevant (Banai, Mikulincer, & Shaver, 2005). That is, a sense of self overwhelmed by pathological worry and a fear of negative social evaluation, characterized by a focus on deficiencies, and sensitive to criticism and failure. This sense of self is a close match to the sense of self constructed by perfectionists and is reflected in many of the recent changes to self, identity, and behavior observed in young people. Young people appear to have internalized irrational social ideals of the perfectible self that, while unrealistic, are to them eminently desirable and obtainable. Broadly speaking, then, increasing levels of perfectionism might be considered symptomatic of the way in which young people are coping—to feel safe, connected, and of worth—in neoliberalism’s new culture of competitive individualism.
The Rise of Meritocracy and Perfectionism
The caveat emptor of neoliberalism lies in its meritocratic starting point. The perfect life and lifestyle—encapsulated by achievement, wealth, and social status—are available to anyone provided you try hard enough (Frank, 2016). According to neoliberal meritocracy, those who reach the top schools and colleges, or gain entry to occupations offering the most profitable employment, receive their due rewards of wealth and social status. For those who do not reach such educational and professional heights, the doctrine of meritocracy dictates they are less deserving and their poor achievement reflects their inadequate personal abilities (e.g., skills, intelligence, and efforts; Hayes, 2012). The doctrine of neoliberal meritocracy therefore falsely and insidiously connects the principles of educational and professional achievement, status, and wealth with innate personal value (e.g., Clark, 1965; Ehrenreich, 1989; Guinier, 2015). In turn, because individuals cannot avoid being sorted, sifted, and ranked by schools, universities, and the workplace, neoliberal meritocracy places a strong need to strive, perform, and achieve at the center of modern life.
Most acutely, the merging of academic and economic meritocracies has redefined the purpose of education. Whereas education has historically sought to provide young people with a broader repertoire of skills and knowledge, neoliberal meritocracy stresses that skills and knowledge are worthless unless they confer economic value (Verhaeghe, 2014). This places considerable pressure on young people to strive, compete, and meet increasingly higher expectations in school and college—less they wish to damage their future market price. The effects of merging academic and economic meritocracies are reflected in the escalating educational expectations of young people. In the United States, where cohort data is available, approximately half of high school seniors in 1976 expected to attain at least some college degree, by 2008 that figure had risen to over 80% (Jacob & Wilder, 2011). Yet actual degree attainment has failed to keep pace with rising expectations. The gap between the percentage of high school seniors expecting to obtain a college degree and the percent of young people with a college degree doubled between 1976 and 2000 and has continued to rise (Johnson & Reynolds, 2013; Reynolds, Stewart, MacDonald, & Sischo, 2006). Together, this research suggests that the expectations of many young people are increasingly unrealistic (Baird, Burge, & Reynolds, 2008).
As young people’s expectations have increased, so have the educational demands placed on them. Intense competition for elite college admission has meant that, relative to previous generations, current high school students in the United States, Canada, and the United Kingdom are subjected to more numerous and stringent standardized tests (Guinier, 2015). At the same time, although the number of students going to college has increased, the wage premium associated with a college degree has stagnated over the last 20 years (Moretti, 2013). One reason for this stagnation is a saturation of the graduate job market and underemployment among graduates in developed countries (i.e., holding jobs that do not require a degree), which is currently much higher among recent generations of college graduates than it was for older generations at the same period of life (Abel, Deitz, & Su, 2014). Instead, research in the United States and the United Kingdom shows that the college premium is now almost entirely attributable to the income of those with postgraduate degrees (Brynin, 2013; Shierholz & Mishel, 2013). Just 10% of the U.S. workforce, 7% of the Canadian workforce, and 11% of the U.K. workforce have postgraduate qualifications (Lindley & Machin, 2013; Statistics Canada, 2012). Young people, therefore, must complete a college degree, and now must also obtain a postgraduate qualification, if they are to demonstrate their economic merit.
Over time, then, meritocracy raises the bar of society’s expectations such that they become unattainable to the majority—especially for young people, and especially in terms of educational achievement. Perceptions of unrealistic achievement standards are common in models that seek to explain the development of perfectionism. Although written some time ago, Hamachek (1978) stated on the link between the need to achieve and perfectionism that “[perfectionists] may over-value performance and undervalue the self. He learns only through performance that he has a self” (p. 29). The notion that perfectionists come to overvalue accomplishment is also echoed and expanded upon in the recent writing of Hewitt et al. (2017). Here, perfectionism is conceived as a misguided attempt to procure others’ approval and repair feelings of unworthiness and shame through displays of high achievement. Hewitt et al.’s description of perfectionism development is allied to the machinations of meritocratic culture in that striving for high achievement standards and the attainment of perfection are actively encouraged and rewarded. Young people are taught that the principles of meritocracy are good, fair, and just. In response, they are compelled to demonstrate their merit, set increasingly higher and unrealistic goals, and come to define themselves in the strict and narrow terms of personal achievement.
Altered Parental Practices and Perfectionism
As we have described, neoliberalism and its doctrine of meritocracy have combined to shape a culture in which everybody is expected to perfect themselves and their lifestyles by striving to meet unrealistic achievement standards.
Intercourse frequency decreased with increased length of relationship; ratings of relationship passion were strongly associated with frequency; while men in general might desire sex more, men might be compromising more than women do
How intercourse frequency is affected by relationship length, relationship quality, and sexual strategies using couple data. By Grøntvedt, Trond Viggo; Leif Edward Ottesen Kennair; Mons Bendixen. Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences, Apr 29 , 2019. https://psycnet.apa.org/buy/2019-23163-001
Abstract: The frequency of sexual intercourse within couples is associated with a variety of factors, such as relationship length, sexual and relationship satisfaction, and perceived quality of the relationship. Love, as a commitment device, might reduce interest in extrapair sex. Therefore, one can expect a negative association between measures of passion and sociosexual desire. Further, we wish to explore the effects of decoupling love and sex as measured by sociosexual attitudes on sexual frequency; as there might be a greater willingness to compromise on frequency of sex if sex is less related to expression of emotions and relational quality. We examined how men and women’s sociosexuality, relationship length and various dimensions of relationship quality impact couples’ intercourse frequency. Structural Equation Modeling analyses were performed on data from 92 romantically involved, heterosexual couples recruited at a Norwegian university. Participants’ age ranged from 19 to 30 years. The current relationship length ranged from 1 month to 9 years (M = 21 months). Intercourse frequency decreased with increased length of relationship. Both men and women’s ratings of relationship passion were strongly associated with frequency of having sex, but negatively associated with desire for extrapair sex. Intercourse was more frequent in couples where women reported less restricted attitudes, while men’s level of sociosexuality had no effect on intercourse frequency in any of the models. These novel findings suggest that while men in general might desire sex more, in this sample from a highly egalitarian nation, men might be compromising more than women do.
Abstract: The frequency of sexual intercourse within couples is associated with a variety of factors, such as relationship length, sexual and relationship satisfaction, and perceived quality of the relationship. Love, as a commitment device, might reduce interest in extrapair sex. Therefore, one can expect a negative association between measures of passion and sociosexual desire. Further, we wish to explore the effects of decoupling love and sex as measured by sociosexual attitudes on sexual frequency; as there might be a greater willingness to compromise on frequency of sex if sex is less related to expression of emotions and relational quality. We examined how men and women’s sociosexuality, relationship length and various dimensions of relationship quality impact couples’ intercourse frequency. Structural Equation Modeling analyses were performed on data from 92 romantically involved, heterosexual couples recruited at a Norwegian university. Participants’ age ranged from 19 to 30 years. The current relationship length ranged from 1 month to 9 years (M = 21 months). Intercourse frequency decreased with increased length of relationship. Both men and women’s ratings of relationship passion were strongly associated with frequency of having sex, but negatively associated with desire for extrapair sex. Intercourse was more frequent in couples where women reported less restricted attitudes, while men’s level of sociosexuality had no effect on intercourse frequency in any of the models. These novel findings suggest that while men in general might desire sex more, in this sample from a highly egalitarian nation, men might be compromising more than women do.
Investigating Individual Differences in Chimpanzee Mirror Self-Recognition and Cortical Thickness: Further evidence for the neuroanatomical foundations of mirror self-recognition abilities in chimpanzees
Investigating Individual Differences in Chimpanzee Mirror Self-Recognition and Cortical Thickness: A Vertex-Based and Region-of-Interest Analysis. William D. Hopkins et al. Cortex, May 16 2019. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cortex.2019.05.004
Abstract: Mirror self-recognition (MSR), a recently evolved cognitive trait, is one of the most significant abilities that separate humans and great apes from more distantly related nonhuman primates. MSR may serve as the foundation for a number of related but more complex social cognitive abilities unique to humans and great apes including imitation, empathy, theory-of-mind, perspective taking and deception. However, our understanding of the neural basis of MSR in nonhuman primates remains largely unknown. The current study aimed to begin to fill this gap in the literature by investigating the neuroanatomical foundations of MSR in a sample of 67 captive chimpanzees. Vertex-based and region-of-interest analysis revealed significant differences in cortical thickness, particularly in males, in the cingulate cortex, inferior frontal gyrus and superior temporal and frontal cortex. The current study provides further evidence for the neuroanatomical foundations of mirror self-recognition abilities in chimpanzees.
Abstract: Mirror self-recognition (MSR), a recently evolved cognitive trait, is one of the most significant abilities that separate humans and great apes from more distantly related nonhuman primates. MSR may serve as the foundation for a number of related but more complex social cognitive abilities unique to humans and great apes including imitation, empathy, theory-of-mind, perspective taking and deception. However, our understanding of the neural basis of MSR in nonhuman primates remains largely unknown. The current study aimed to begin to fill this gap in the literature by investigating the neuroanatomical foundations of MSR in a sample of 67 captive chimpanzees. Vertex-based and region-of-interest analysis revealed significant differences in cortical thickness, particularly in males, in the cingulate cortex, inferior frontal gyrus and superior temporal and frontal cortex. The current study provides further evidence for the neuroanatomical foundations of mirror self-recognition abilities in chimpanzees.
The term “digital native” entered popular and academic discourse in the early 1990s to characterize young people who, having grown up surrounded by digital technology, were said to be highly technologically skilled; it's a myth
The Myth of the Digital Native and What It Means for Higher Education. Linda Corrin, Tiffani Apps, Karley Beckman, and Sue Bennett. The Oxford Handbook of Cyberpsychology. Edited by Alison Attrill-Smith, Chris Fullwood, Melanie Keep, and Daria J. Kuss. Sep 2018. DOI: 10.1093/oxfordhb/9780198812746.013.7
Abstract: The term “digital native” entered popular and academic discourse in the early 1990s to characterize young people who, having grown up surrounded by digital technology, were said to be highly technologically skilled. The premise was mobilized to criticize education for not meeting the needs of young people, thereby needing radical transformation. Despite being repeatedly discredited by empirical research and scholarly argument, the idea of the digital native has been remarkably persistent. This chapter explores the myth of the digital native and its implications for higher education. It suggests that the myth’s persistence signals a need to better understand the role of technology in young people’s lives. The chapter conceptualizes technology “practices,” considers how young adults experience technology in their college and university education, and how their practices are shaped by childhood and adolescence. The chapter closes with some propositions for educators, institutions, and researchers.
Keywords: digital literacy, digital native, education, educational technology, higher education, technology practices, young adults, students, college, university
Introduction
In the late 1990s and early 2000s the idea of the “digital native” emerged (Bennett, Maton, & Kervin, 2008). In essence, it was proposed that because young people had grown up surrounded by technology, they had developed sophisticated technology skills superior to the adults around them. This made them “tech savvy” in a way that those from older generations could never be. And because of this difference, young people were dissatisfied with and disengaged from an education system that persisted with oldfashioned approaches to teaching and learning. This argument was used as the basis for calls for revolutionary, transformational change across education systems.
Since then, scholarly critique and empirical research have debunked the notion of the digital native (see Bennett & Corrin, 2017). Critiques have continually called into question the crude characterization of all young people as both highly adept with and avidly interested in digital technologies across the various aspects of their lives as well as the assertions about the implications for education. Research evidence has revealed a much more complex situation. The ways in which young people make use of digital technologies for learning, leisure, socializing, and work are richly diverse and very much dependent on the various contexts in which they engage. These findings reveal that there are indeed young people who are highly engaged with digital technologies, who are using opportunities that technologies provide to create and connect in new ways, and who participate via these technologies in activities and causes that interest them. But not all young people choose to or have the resources available to them to do so. This makes the universality of the digital native label inaccurate and misleading [...]
So what are we to make of the persistence of the notion of digital natives, given the nowsubstantial body of considered scholarship that has discredited this notion? The idea has had widespread popular appeal, perhaps because is seems to be true, based on anecdotal evidence. [...]
Beyond the power of anecdote, however, there are a number of ways to interpret the emergence of and continued interest in the digital native. Generational differences have long been a source of concern in many societies. This is reflected by the labelling and characterization of generations such as the “baby boomers,” “Generation X,” and the “millennials” (e.g., Howe & Strauss, 2000). The idea of the digital native can be seen as a variation of this familiar theme that pits generations against each other and serves to highlight one of many ways in which young people in general are different to older generations. But these generational stereotypes seldom withstand closer scrutiny, and the digital native stereotype, like others, is ultimately unhelpful in genuinely understanding the needs and interests of young people.
Another possible explanation could be that the notion of the digital native reflects a more general concern about the pace of change in modern life, as well as disquiet about the role of technology in driving social change. Again, this concern is not new. The history and sociology of technology reveal long-held misgivings about the ways in which technology has changed the nature of work, civic engagement, and social interaction well before the twenty-first century. Suggestions that an increased rate of change is further risking our ability to adjust to new technologies may explain recent heightened concerns, but the phenomenon itself is not new. From this perspective, characterizing young people as digital natives aligns with the concerns of many older people that technology is driving rapid change to the ways of life with which they are familiar. Thus, the idea of the digital native may reflect the genuine ambivalence that many feel about the role of technology in their lives and, more broadly, its influence on society.
Questions, too, might be posed about the motivations of those advocating for the existence of digital natives. In the field of educational technology, the vested interests of commercial vendors have led to many exaggerated claims that technology can and will revolutionize education (Buckingham, 2013). Education, for its part, has evolved over time, but much too slowly for some technology advocates. Academic reputations are also built on claims that technology will drive pedagogical innovations that will, in turn, increase student engagement and boost learning outcomes. Sceptics have often been labelled as Luddites in debates where polarized positions, untestable claims, and competing ideologies have, at times, overshadowed the findings of research and scholarship that necessarily lags the introduction of the latest technology.
There is clearly further work needed to discover what is at the heart of the concerns about young people and technology. While this is beyond the scope of this chapter, knowing more about why these questions exist is surely important. At the same time, this uncertainty should not prevent seeking to know more about the role technology plays in young people’s lives and consider what that means for education. As noted, scholars and researchers have already begun this quest [...]
We argue that while the idea of the digital native has been shown to be, at best, misleading and unhelpful, its persistence in our discourse, particularly about education, signals there is something underlying it that warrants our attention. It continues to invite us to ask important questions about how young people can, do, and could use technology to enhance their learning. This, in turn, raises important questions about teaching and teachers, educational systems and administrations, and institutional provision of technology infrastructure and learning spaces. [...]
We further argue that this research would benefit from a conceptualization of technology use that is underpinned by the notion of practice. A practice perspective allows us to go beyond regarding digital technologies as tools designed for particular uses to focusing on the ways in which individuals and groups adopt and adapt technologies and embed them in socially-constructed activities. These are technology practices—a notion that captures a range of possibilities and allows for technologies to be adopted and integrated into existing practices, for technologies to shape and so alter existing practice, and for entirely new practices to emerge. In this conceptualization, technologies are never “value free,” but instead carry the values and assumptions of designers and providers. At the same time, it gives possibility for users to adapt or disrupt the intended design or use. [...]
The focus of enquiry then becomes understanding the perspectives and practices of those using technologies, with consideration of the various contexts in which those practices occur. In education, this kind of research uses naturalistic approaches to explore “what is actually taking place when a digital technology meets an educational setting” (Selwyn, 2010, p. 70) rather than studying “state of the art” innovations. Such research complements a well-established and continuing tradition of research into specific pedagogical applications of technology by seeking to understand the nature of technology experiences more broadly. Understanding how students experience technology in their formal education and across their other life contexts is key to understanding how technology might be most effectively integrated [...]
A practice perspective also invites a particular way of considering how technology could best be integrated into education and, specifically, what skills, knowledge, and dispositions young people might need to develop in relation to technology (Bennett, 2014). Contemporary conceptualizations of digital literacy have evolved significantly from their predecessors, for example, computer literacy, ICT literacy. There is growing recognition that to be digitally literate means much more than having the skills to operate technology. [...]
Abstract: The term “digital native” entered popular and academic discourse in the early 1990s to characterize young people who, having grown up surrounded by digital technology, were said to be highly technologically skilled. The premise was mobilized to criticize education for not meeting the needs of young people, thereby needing radical transformation. Despite being repeatedly discredited by empirical research and scholarly argument, the idea of the digital native has been remarkably persistent. This chapter explores the myth of the digital native and its implications for higher education. It suggests that the myth’s persistence signals a need to better understand the role of technology in young people’s lives. The chapter conceptualizes technology “practices,” considers how young adults experience technology in their college and university education, and how their practices are shaped by childhood and adolescence. The chapter closes with some propositions for educators, institutions, and researchers.
Keywords: digital literacy, digital native, education, educational technology, higher education, technology practices, young adults, students, college, university
Introduction
In the late 1990s and early 2000s the idea of the “digital native” emerged (Bennett, Maton, & Kervin, 2008). In essence, it was proposed that because young people had grown up surrounded by technology, they had developed sophisticated technology skills superior to the adults around them. This made them “tech savvy” in a way that those from older generations could never be. And because of this difference, young people were dissatisfied with and disengaged from an education system that persisted with oldfashioned approaches to teaching and learning. This argument was used as the basis for calls for revolutionary, transformational change across education systems.
Since then, scholarly critique and empirical research have debunked the notion of the digital native (see Bennett & Corrin, 2017). Critiques have continually called into question the crude characterization of all young people as both highly adept with and avidly interested in digital technologies across the various aspects of their lives as well as the assertions about the implications for education. Research evidence has revealed a much more complex situation. The ways in which young people make use of digital technologies for learning, leisure, socializing, and work are richly diverse and very much dependent on the various contexts in which they engage. These findings reveal that there are indeed young people who are highly engaged with digital technologies, who are using opportunities that technologies provide to create and connect in new ways, and who participate via these technologies in activities and causes that interest them. But not all young people choose to or have the resources available to them to do so. This makes the universality of the digital native label inaccurate and misleading [...]
So what are we to make of the persistence of the notion of digital natives, given the nowsubstantial body of considered scholarship that has discredited this notion? The idea has had widespread popular appeal, perhaps because is seems to be true, based on anecdotal evidence. [...]
Beyond the power of anecdote, however, there are a number of ways to interpret the emergence of and continued interest in the digital native. Generational differences have long been a source of concern in many societies. This is reflected by the labelling and characterization of generations such as the “baby boomers,” “Generation X,” and the “millennials” (e.g., Howe & Strauss, 2000). The idea of the digital native can be seen as a variation of this familiar theme that pits generations against each other and serves to highlight one of many ways in which young people in general are different to older generations. But these generational stereotypes seldom withstand closer scrutiny, and the digital native stereotype, like others, is ultimately unhelpful in genuinely understanding the needs and interests of young people.
Another possible explanation could be that the notion of the digital native reflects a more general concern about the pace of change in modern life, as well as disquiet about the role of technology in driving social change. Again, this concern is not new. The history and sociology of technology reveal long-held misgivings about the ways in which technology has changed the nature of work, civic engagement, and social interaction well before the twenty-first century. Suggestions that an increased rate of change is further risking our ability to adjust to new technologies may explain recent heightened concerns, but the phenomenon itself is not new. From this perspective, characterizing young people as digital natives aligns with the concerns of many older people that technology is driving rapid change to the ways of life with which they are familiar. Thus, the idea of the digital native may reflect the genuine ambivalence that many feel about the role of technology in their lives and, more broadly, its influence on society.
Questions, too, might be posed about the motivations of those advocating for the existence of digital natives. In the field of educational technology, the vested interests of commercial vendors have led to many exaggerated claims that technology can and will revolutionize education (Buckingham, 2013). Education, for its part, has evolved over time, but much too slowly for some technology advocates. Academic reputations are also built on claims that technology will drive pedagogical innovations that will, in turn, increase student engagement and boost learning outcomes. Sceptics have often been labelled as Luddites in debates where polarized positions, untestable claims, and competing ideologies have, at times, overshadowed the findings of research and scholarship that necessarily lags the introduction of the latest technology.
There is clearly further work needed to discover what is at the heart of the concerns about young people and technology. While this is beyond the scope of this chapter, knowing more about why these questions exist is surely important. At the same time, this uncertainty should not prevent seeking to know more about the role technology plays in young people’s lives and consider what that means for education. As noted, scholars and researchers have already begun this quest [...]
We argue that while the idea of the digital native has been shown to be, at best, misleading and unhelpful, its persistence in our discourse, particularly about education, signals there is something underlying it that warrants our attention. It continues to invite us to ask important questions about how young people can, do, and could use technology to enhance their learning. This, in turn, raises important questions about teaching and teachers, educational systems and administrations, and institutional provision of technology infrastructure and learning spaces. [...]
We further argue that this research would benefit from a conceptualization of technology use that is underpinned by the notion of practice. A practice perspective allows us to go beyond regarding digital technologies as tools designed for particular uses to focusing on the ways in which individuals and groups adopt and adapt technologies and embed them in socially-constructed activities. These are technology practices—a notion that captures a range of possibilities and allows for technologies to be adopted and integrated into existing practices, for technologies to shape and so alter existing practice, and for entirely new practices to emerge. In this conceptualization, technologies are never “value free,” but instead carry the values and assumptions of designers and providers. At the same time, it gives possibility for users to adapt or disrupt the intended design or use. [...]
The focus of enquiry then becomes understanding the perspectives and practices of those using technologies, with consideration of the various contexts in which those practices occur. In education, this kind of research uses naturalistic approaches to explore “what is actually taking place when a digital technology meets an educational setting” (Selwyn, 2010, p. 70) rather than studying “state of the art” innovations. Such research complements a well-established and continuing tradition of research into specific pedagogical applications of technology by seeking to understand the nature of technology experiences more broadly. Understanding how students experience technology in their formal education and across their other life contexts is key to understanding how technology might be most effectively integrated [...]
A practice perspective also invites a particular way of considering how technology could best be integrated into education and, specifically, what skills, knowledge, and dispositions young people might need to develop in relation to technology (Bennett, 2014). Contemporary conceptualizations of digital literacy have evolved significantly from their predecessors, for example, computer literacy, ICT literacy. There is growing recognition that to be digitally literate means much more than having the skills to operate technology. [...]
Wednesday, May 15, 2019
Effects of instructors’ attractiveness on student evaluations of their teaching: Female instructors rated as more attractive receive higher instructional ratings; effect not found in the online environment
Babin, J. Jobu and Hussey, Andrew J. and Nikolsko-Rzhevskyy, Alex and Taylor, David, Beauty Premiums Among Academics (April 23, 2019). SSRN https://ssrn.com/abstract=3376925
Abstract: This paper examines the effects of instructors’ attractiveness on student evaluations of their teaching. We build on previous studies by holding both observed and unobserved characteristics of the instructor and classes constant, capitalizing on a unique panel dataset of instructor evaluations. Our identification strategy exploits the fact that the same faculty, in addition to traditional teaching in the classroom, often also teach in the online environment, where attractiveness is either unknown or less salient. We utilize multiple attractiveness measures, including facial symmetry software, subjective evaluations, and a novel, proxy methodology that resembles a “Keynesian Beauty Contest.” We identify a substantial beauty premium in face-to-face classes for women but not for men. While gender on its own does not impact teaching evaluation scores, female instructors rated as more attractive receive higher instructional ratings. This result holds across several beauty measures, given a multitude of controls and while controlling for unobserved instructor characteristics and skills. Notably, the positive relationship between beauty and teaching effectiveness is not found in the online environment, suggesting the observed premium may be due to taste-based discrimination.
Keywords: Beauty premium, Discrimination, College teaching, Gender gap
JEL Classification: J70, I29, D90
Abstract: This paper examines the effects of instructors’ attractiveness on student evaluations of their teaching. We build on previous studies by holding both observed and unobserved characteristics of the instructor and classes constant, capitalizing on a unique panel dataset of instructor evaluations. Our identification strategy exploits the fact that the same faculty, in addition to traditional teaching in the classroom, often also teach in the online environment, where attractiveness is either unknown or less salient. We utilize multiple attractiveness measures, including facial symmetry software, subjective evaluations, and a novel, proxy methodology that resembles a “Keynesian Beauty Contest.” We identify a substantial beauty premium in face-to-face classes for women but not for men. While gender on its own does not impact teaching evaluation scores, female instructors rated as more attractive receive higher instructional ratings. This result holds across several beauty measures, given a multitude of controls and while controlling for unobserved instructor characteristics and skills. Notably, the positive relationship between beauty and teaching effectiveness is not found in the online environment, suggesting the observed premium may be due to taste-based discrimination.
Keywords: Beauty premium, Discrimination, College teaching, Gender gap
JEL Classification: J70, I29, D90
Progressive Policy Institute: 21st century school systems, founded upon the four pillars of school autonomy, accountability for performance, diversity of school designs, and parental choice
Do-Something Congress No. 10: Fighting Inequality by Reinventing America's Schools. David Osborne, Emily Langhorne, Associate Director. Progressive Policy Institute, May 15 2019. https://www.progressivepolicy.org/projects/reinventing-americas-schools/do-something-congress-no-10-fighting-inequality-by-reinventing-americas-schools/
Progressives are rightly concerned about inequality, but some overlook the crucial role that underperforming public schools play in perpetuating poverty and inequality in America. The poor quality of many school systems is a serious impediment to social mobility for children from low-income and minority families, who can’t easily pick up and move to communities with good schools. The number of students taking college remediation classes has soared, and too many students graduate high school underprepared to enter either college or the workforce.
First-rate schools are key to delivering on America’s core promise of equal opportunity. That’s true for U.S. students everywhere – not just for kids trapped in poor schools in poor communities. In international comparisons, even students from America’s best suburban school districts consistently score below students from other advanced countries in Asia and Europe.
America’s public education system was designed for the Industrial Era. The centralized, bureaucratic approach that we inherited from the 20th century no longer works for the majority of America’s students. We need a new model, and fortunately one is emerging from cities that have embraced profound systems change, including New Orleans, Denver, Washington, D.C., and Camden, N.J. All have experienced rapidly improving student outcomes as a result.
These four cities are building 21st century school systems, founded upon the four pillars of school autonomy, accountability for performance, diversity of school designs, and parental choice. Essentially, 21st century school systems treat many of their public schools like charter schools, even if they call them “innovation schools,” “partnership schools,” or “Renaissance schools.”
Although transforming our K-12 education system to meet the needs of the modern era is primarily the responsible of state and local governments, Washington can play an important catalytic role by creating incentives for change. In particular, Congress can create and for districts that create autonomous schools, hold schools accountable for performance, and replace failing schools.
[full report at the link above]
Progressives are rightly concerned about inequality, but some overlook the crucial role that underperforming public schools play in perpetuating poverty and inequality in America. The poor quality of many school systems is a serious impediment to social mobility for children from low-income and minority families, who can’t easily pick up and move to communities with good schools. The number of students taking college remediation classes has soared, and too many students graduate high school underprepared to enter either college or the workforce.
First-rate schools are key to delivering on America’s core promise of equal opportunity. That’s true for U.S. students everywhere – not just for kids trapped in poor schools in poor communities. In international comparisons, even students from America’s best suburban school districts consistently score below students from other advanced countries in Asia and Europe.
America’s public education system was designed for the Industrial Era. The centralized, bureaucratic approach that we inherited from the 20th century no longer works for the majority of America’s students. We need a new model, and fortunately one is emerging from cities that have embraced profound systems change, including New Orleans, Denver, Washington, D.C., and Camden, N.J. All have experienced rapidly improving student outcomes as a result.
These four cities are building 21st century school systems, founded upon the four pillars of school autonomy, accountability for performance, diversity of school designs, and parental choice. Essentially, 21st century school systems treat many of their public schools like charter schools, even if they call them “innovation schools,” “partnership schools,” or “Renaissance schools.”
Although transforming our K-12 education system to meet the needs of the modern era is primarily the responsible of state and local governments, Washington can play an important catalytic role by creating incentives for change. In particular, Congress can create and for districts that create autonomous schools, hold schools accountable for performance, and replace failing schools.
[full report at the link above]
We found that social media use is not, in and of itself, a strong predictor of life satisfaction across the adolescent population: Social media effects are nuanced, small at best, reciprocal over time, gender specific
Social media’s enduring effect on adolescent life satisfaction. Amy Orben, Tobias Dienlin, and Andrew K. Przybylski. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, May 6, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1902058116
Abstract: In this study, we used large-scale representative panel data to disentangle the between-person and within-person relations linking adolescent social media use and well-being. We found that social media use is not, in and of itself, a strong predictor of life satisfaction across the adolescent population. Instead, social media effects are nuanced, small at best, reciprocal over time, gender specific, and contingent on analytic methods.
Keywords: social mediaadolescentslife satisfactionlongitudinalrandom-intercept cross-lagged panel models
Abstract: In this study, we used large-scale representative panel data to disentangle the between-person and within-person relations linking adolescent social media use and well-being. We found that social media use is not, in and of itself, a strong predictor of life satisfaction across the adolescent population. Instead, social media effects are nuanced, small at best, reciprocal over time, gender specific, and contingent on analytic methods.
Keywords: social mediaadolescentslife satisfactionlongitudinalrandom-intercept cross-lagged panel models
Fewer men (39.1%) than women (80.3%) reported removing some of their pubic hair; the practice was associated with age, sexual activity, relationship status, & partner’s PHR practice & expectations
“To Shave or Not to Shave”: Pubic Hair Removal and Its Association with Relational and Sexual Satisfaction in Women and Men. Paul Enzlin et al. The Journal of Sexual Medicine, May 15 2019. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsxm.2019.04.005
Abstract
Background: Pubic hair removal (PHR) is a widespread practice that entails certain health risks; however, there remains a lack of scientific information on the prevalence and antecedents of PHR, as well as on its association with sexual behavior and relational satisfaction.
Aims: To explore women’s and men’s attitudes regarding PHR and their PHR practices and the associations with demographic, relational, and sexual characteristics.
Methods: A total of 2,687 men and 1,735 women living in Flanders (the Northern part of Belgium) completed an online survey. Participants ranged in age from 15 to 60+ years; they self-identified as heterosexual, bisexual, or homosexual and reported various relationship statuses.
Main Outcome Measures: Demographic items (ie, age, religion, partner relationship status), sexuality-related items (ie, sexual activity, sexual orientation, age at first intercourse, number of sexual partners), PHR items (ie, reasons, inclination to have or not have sex after PHR, perceived partner preferences, partner’s PHR), and relationship satisfaction, assessed with the Maudsley Marital Questionnaire.
Results: Fewer men (39.1%) than women (80.3%) reported (partially) removing their pubic hair. In both men and women, the practice was associated with age, sexual activity, relationship status, and partner’s PHR practice and expectations. In men, sexual and relationship satisfaction were correlated with their partner’s PHR practices and whether these were in line with the men’s expectations. In women, sexual and relationship satisfaction were mostly correlated with whether both partner’s expectations were met. Although both men and women reported that the reasons for PHR were related to their sexual experiences and to their partner’s preference, only women reported that PHR was a way to enhance feelings of femininity. Finally, the reasons for not engaging in PHR were related to partner preferences and side effects.
Conclusion: PHR is a widespread practice and seems strongly associated with personal, partner-related, sexual, and relational factors. Strategies to prevent men and women from being confronted with health risks should take all these factors into account.
Abstract
Background: Pubic hair removal (PHR) is a widespread practice that entails certain health risks; however, there remains a lack of scientific information on the prevalence and antecedents of PHR, as well as on its association with sexual behavior and relational satisfaction.
Aims: To explore women’s and men’s attitudes regarding PHR and their PHR practices and the associations with demographic, relational, and sexual characteristics.
Methods: A total of 2,687 men and 1,735 women living in Flanders (the Northern part of Belgium) completed an online survey. Participants ranged in age from 15 to 60+ years; they self-identified as heterosexual, bisexual, or homosexual and reported various relationship statuses.
Main Outcome Measures: Demographic items (ie, age, religion, partner relationship status), sexuality-related items (ie, sexual activity, sexual orientation, age at first intercourse, number of sexual partners), PHR items (ie, reasons, inclination to have or not have sex after PHR, perceived partner preferences, partner’s PHR), and relationship satisfaction, assessed with the Maudsley Marital Questionnaire.
Results: Fewer men (39.1%) than women (80.3%) reported (partially) removing their pubic hair. In both men and women, the practice was associated with age, sexual activity, relationship status, and partner’s PHR practice and expectations. In men, sexual and relationship satisfaction were correlated with their partner’s PHR practices and whether these were in line with the men’s expectations. In women, sexual and relationship satisfaction were mostly correlated with whether both partner’s expectations were met. Although both men and women reported that the reasons for PHR were related to their sexual experiences and to their partner’s preference, only women reported that PHR was a way to enhance feelings of femininity. Finally, the reasons for not engaging in PHR were related to partner preferences and side effects.
Conclusion: PHR is a widespread practice and seems strongly associated with personal, partner-related, sexual, and relational factors. Strategies to prevent men and women from being confronted with health risks should take all these factors into account.
Could this be useful to design strategies for humans? Voluntary wheel running reduces weight gain in mice by decreasing high-fat food consumption
Voluntary wheel running reduces weight gain in mice by decreasing high-fat food consumption. Joshua Cordeira, Daniel Monahan. Physiology & Behavior, Volume 207, 1 August 2019, Pages 1-6. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physbeh.2019.04.019
Highlights
• Wheel running for 30 min on 5 days per week reduced weight gain and adiposity
• Wheel running decreased energy intake from high-fat food, but not standard chow
• Pair-feeding reduced weight gain and adiposity to the same extent as wheel running
Abstract: We investigated whether wheel running for just 30 min on 5 days each week, an exercise routine based on recommended levels of physical activity for adults, regulates body weight and food intake in mice. Male C57BL/6 mice were divided into groups and given ad libitum access to high-fat food and standard chow or standard chow only. For 30 min on 5 days each week, mice were treated with an in-cage running wheel which was either open to allow voluntary exercise or locked and could not rotate for control. Wheel running reduced weight gain and fat mass among mice fed high-fat food and standard chow, but not mice fed standard chow only. Wheel running decreased high-fat food consumption. Standard chow intake was unchanged. Mice provided with a locked running wheel but pair-fed the same amount of food as wheel running mice also displayed reduced weight gain and fat mass. We conclude that voluntary wheel running for 30 min on 5 days each week reduced weight gain and fat mass in mice by preferentially decreasing high-fat food intake. This model of voluntary wheel running can be used to investigate mechanisms underlying the benefits of exercise on body weight and food intake, informing obesity intervention strategies for humans.
Highlights
• Wheel running for 30 min on 5 days per week reduced weight gain and adiposity
• Wheel running decreased energy intake from high-fat food, but not standard chow
• Pair-feeding reduced weight gain and adiposity to the same extent as wheel running
Abstract: We investigated whether wheel running for just 30 min on 5 days each week, an exercise routine based on recommended levels of physical activity for adults, regulates body weight and food intake in mice. Male C57BL/6 mice were divided into groups and given ad libitum access to high-fat food and standard chow or standard chow only. For 30 min on 5 days each week, mice were treated with an in-cage running wheel which was either open to allow voluntary exercise or locked and could not rotate for control. Wheel running reduced weight gain and fat mass among mice fed high-fat food and standard chow, but not mice fed standard chow only. Wheel running decreased high-fat food consumption. Standard chow intake was unchanged. Mice provided with a locked running wheel but pair-fed the same amount of food as wheel running mice also displayed reduced weight gain and fat mass. We conclude that voluntary wheel running for 30 min on 5 days each week reduced weight gain and fat mass in mice by preferentially decreasing high-fat food intake. This model of voluntary wheel running can be used to investigate mechanisms underlying the benefits of exercise on body weight and food intake, informing obesity intervention strategies for humans.
Unfragranced body odours of real partners are judged more similar than fake couples; no such difference for fragranced body odour; hormonal contraceptives may influence initial odour-mediated assortment
Evidence for odour-mediated assortative mating in humans: The impact of hormonal contraception and artificial fragrances. CarolineAllen et al. Physiology & Behavior, May 15 2019. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physbeh.2019.05.002
Highlights
• Unfragranced body odours of real partners are judged more similar than fake couples.
• There was no such difference for fragranced body odour samples.
• Hormonal contraceptives may influence initial odour-mediated assortment.
• There was a sex difference in favourability of odour similarity within couples.
• Similarity ratings correlated with some verbal labels described by perfumers.
Abstract
There is substantial evidence for assortative partner preferences in humans based on physical characteristics. In contrast, evidence suggests that olfactory preferences tend to be disassortative, with people preferring body odour of potential partners who are dissimilar at key genetic loci, perhaps to gain fitness advantage through offspring heterozygosity. We compared ratings of perceived body odour similarity of real couples with those of randomly paired ‘fake’ couples. Contrary to prediction, we find that odours of real partners are perceived more, rather than less, similar to each other than fake couples. However, this applied only to natural odour samples: there were no differences in similarity levels of real and fake couples' samples which were collected while wearing artificial fragrances. Furthermore, in light of suggestions that hormonal contraception (HC) disrupts disassortative odour preferences in women, we compared odour similarity among real couples in which the female partner was using or not using HC at the time when the relationship began. We find that odours of HC-using couples are of intermediate similarity between non-using and fake couples, suggesting that HC use during partner choice could affect odour-influenced assortment. We also examined the association between relationship satisfaction and perceived similarity of unfragranced odours of real couples. We found that these are positively correlated in male partners but negatively correlated in the female partners, indicative of a sex difference in the relative favourability of odour similarity in partner preference. Finally, by comparing odour similarity ratings with those given by perfumers using a novel olfactory lexicon we found evidence that similarity judgements were based on the Spicy/Animalic aspects of individual odour profiles. Taken together, our results challenge the conventional view that odour-mediated partner preferences in humans are typically disassortative.
Highlights
• Unfragranced body odours of real partners are judged more similar than fake couples.
• There was no such difference for fragranced body odour samples.
• Hormonal contraceptives may influence initial odour-mediated assortment.
• There was a sex difference in favourability of odour similarity within couples.
• Similarity ratings correlated with some verbal labels described by perfumers.
Abstract
There is substantial evidence for assortative partner preferences in humans based on physical characteristics. In contrast, evidence suggests that olfactory preferences tend to be disassortative, with people preferring body odour of potential partners who are dissimilar at key genetic loci, perhaps to gain fitness advantage through offspring heterozygosity. We compared ratings of perceived body odour similarity of real couples with those of randomly paired ‘fake’ couples. Contrary to prediction, we find that odours of real partners are perceived more, rather than less, similar to each other than fake couples. However, this applied only to natural odour samples: there were no differences in similarity levels of real and fake couples' samples which were collected while wearing artificial fragrances. Furthermore, in light of suggestions that hormonal contraception (HC) disrupts disassortative odour preferences in women, we compared odour similarity among real couples in which the female partner was using or not using HC at the time when the relationship began. We find that odours of HC-using couples are of intermediate similarity between non-using and fake couples, suggesting that HC use during partner choice could affect odour-influenced assortment. We also examined the association between relationship satisfaction and perceived similarity of unfragranced odours of real couples. We found that these are positively correlated in male partners but negatively correlated in the female partners, indicative of a sex difference in the relative favourability of odour similarity in partner preference. Finally, by comparing odour similarity ratings with those given by perfumers using a novel olfactory lexicon we found evidence that similarity judgements were based on the Spicy/Animalic aspects of individual odour profiles. Taken together, our results challenge the conventional view that odour-mediated partner preferences in humans are typically disassortative.
Tuesday, May 14, 2019
Many studies of animal culture overlook the possibility of individuals being able to develop behavioral forms without requiring social learning (naïve chimpanzees were provided the materials for wild pestle pounding behavior)
Individual acquisition of “stick pounding” behavior by naïve chimpanzees. Elisa Bandini, Claudio Tennie. American Journal of Primatology, May 13 2019. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajp.22987
Abstract: Many studies investigating culture in nonhuman animals tend to focus on the inferred need of social learning mechanisms that transmit the form of a behavior to explain the population differences observed in wild animal behavioral repertoires. This research focus often results in studies overlooking the possibility of individuals being able to develop behavioral forms without requiring social learning. The disregard of individual learning abilities is most clearly observed in the nonhuman great ape literature, where there is a persistent claim that chimpanzee behaviors, in particular, require various forms of social learning mechanisms. These special social learning abilities have been argued to explain the acquisition of the relatively large behavioral repertoires observed across chimpanzee populations. However, current evidence suggests that although low‐fidelity social learning plays a role in harmonizing and stabilizing the frequency of behaviors within chimpanzee populations, some (if not all) of the forms that chimpanzee behaviors take may develop independently of social learning. If so, they would be latent solutions—behavioral forms that can (re‐)emerge even in the absence of observational opportunities, via individual (re)innovations. Through a combination of individual and low‐fidelity social learning, the population‐wide patterns of behaviors observed in great ape species are then established and stably maintained. This is the Zone of Latent Solutions (ZLS) hypothesis. The current study experimentally tested the ZLS hypothesis for pestle pounding, a wild chimpanzee behavior. We tested the reinnovation of this behavior in semi‐wild chimpanzees at Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage in Zambia, Africa, (N = 90, tested in four social groups). Crucially, all subjects were naïve to stick pounding before testing. Three out of the four tested groups reinnovated stick pounding—clearly demonstrating that this behavioral form does not require social learning. These findings provide support for the ZLS hypothesis alongside further evidence for the individual learning abilities of chimpanzees.
HIGHLIGHTS
* Naïve chimpanzees were provided the materials for wild pestle pounding behavior.
* Chimpanzees spontaneously demonstrated the same behavioral form as wild counterparts.
* Individual learning, contra to previous claims, is sufficient to drive this behavioral form in chimpanzees.
Abstract: Many studies investigating culture in nonhuman animals tend to focus on the inferred need of social learning mechanisms that transmit the form of a behavior to explain the population differences observed in wild animal behavioral repertoires. This research focus often results in studies overlooking the possibility of individuals being able to develop behavioral forms without requiring social learning. The disregard of individual learning abilities is most clearly observed in the nonhuman great ape literature, where there is a persistent claim that chimpanzee behaviors, in particular, require various forms of social learning mechanisms. These special social learning abilities have been argued to explain the acquisition of the relatively large behavioral repertoires observed across chimpanzee populations. However, current evidence suggests that although low‐fidelity social learning plays a role in harmonizing and stabilizing the frequency of behaviors within chimpanzee populations, some (if not all) of the forms that chimpanzee behaviors take may develop independently of social learning. If so, they would be latent solutions—behavioral forms that can (re‐)emerge even in the absence of observational opportunities, via individual (re)innovations. Through a combination of individual and low‐fidelity social learning, the population‐wide patterns of behaviors observed in great ape species are then established and stably maintained. This is the Zone of Latent Solutions (ZLS) hypothesis. The current study experimentally tested the ZLS hypothesis for pestle pounding, a wild chimpanzee behavior. We tested the reinnovation of this behavior in semi‐wild chimpanzees at Chimfunshi Wildlife Orphanage in Zambia, Africa, (N = 90, tested in four social groups). Crucially, all subjects were naïve to stick pounding before testing. Three out of the four tested groups reinnovated stick pounding—clearly demonstrating that this behavioral form does not require social learning. These findings provide support for the ZLS hypothesis alongside further evidence for the individual learning abilities of chimpanzees.
HIGHLIGHTS
* Naïve chimpanzees were provided the materials for wild pestle pounding behavior.
* Chimpanzees spontaneously demonstrated the same behavioral form as wild counterparts.
* Individual learning, contra to previous claims, is sufficient to drive this behavioral form in chimpanzees.
Consumers believe similar others would use the same products more often and would find them more useful than they themselves would; this is due to an overestimation of other people’s materialism
Ziano, Ignazio, and Daniel Villanova. 2019. “You’d Use It More Than Me: Overestimating Products’ Usefulness to Others Because of Self-serving Materialism Attributions.” PsyArXiv. May 14. doi:10.31234/osf.io/938m7
Abstract: Six experiments (total n = 3,552, four preregistered, three incentivized) show that consumers believe similar others would use the same products more often and would find them more useful than they themselves would. Overestimation of usefulness of the same product to others is caused by the overestimation of other people’s materialism: we find that this bias reverses when consumers estimate products’ usefulness for someone very low on materialism, and is muted for less materialistic purchases. Overestimation of usefulness is muted for well-known others, as estimation accuracy increases with personal knowledge. Our findings help explain the “X effect,” which is the belief that others are willing to pay more for products (Frederick 2012). These findings connect previously parallel literature streams about self-serving bias in social comparison and biases in self-other monetary evaluations. We discuss theoretical implications for consumers’ above and below average biases, materialism, and the X effect. We discuss practical implications for pricing, negotiation, proxy decision-making, and gift-giving.
Abstract: Six experiments (total n = 3,552, four preregistered, three incentivized) show that consumers believe similar others would use the same products more often and would find them more useful than they themselves would. Overestimation of usefulness of the same product to others is caused by the overestimation of other people’s materialism: we find that this bias reverses when consumers estimate products’ usefulness for someone very low on materialism, and is muted for less materialistic purchases. Overestimation of usefulness is muted for well-known others, as estimation accuracy increases with personal knowledge. Our findings help explain the “X effect,” which is the belief that others are willing to pay more for products (Frederick 2012). These findings connect previously parallel literature streams about self-serving bias in social comparison and biases in self-other monetary evaluations. We discuss theoretical implications for consumers’ above and below average biases, materialism, and the X effect. We discuss practical implications for pricing, negotiation, proxy decision-making, and gift-giving.
From 2017: The magnitude of pain sensitivity correlated with the extent to which participants experienced unfairness, due to the shared human alarm system of unfairness and pain sensitivity
From 2017: Individual differences in pain sensitivity predict the experience of unfairness. Haixia Wang, Kefeng Li, Xiaofei Xie. Journal of Health Psychology, January 5, 2017. https://doi.org/10.1177/1359105316685902
Abstract: Pain has shaped our evolutionary history, and pain-free experiences are critical for our health. There are, however, enormous individual differences in pain sensitivity, and the psychological consequences of this heterogeneity are only poorly understood. Here, we investigated whether individual differences in pain sensitivity predicted the experience of unfairness. We found that the magnitude of pain sensitivity correlated with the extent to which participants experienced unfairness. This association was due to the shared human alarm system of unfairness and pain sensitivity. This finding may elucidate mechanisms for producing a new and positive cycle of a healthy experience between fairness and feeling pain-free.
Keywords: experience of unfairness, individual differences, pain sensitivity, pain threshold, pain tolerance
Abstract: Pain has shaped our evolutionary history, and pain-free experiences are critical for our health. There are, however, enormous individual differences in pain sensitivity, and the psychological consequences of this heterogeneity are only poorly understood. Here, we investigated whether individual differences in pain sensitivity predicted the experience of unfairness. We found that the magnitude of pain sensitivity correlated with the extent to which participants experienced unfairness. This association was due to the shared human alarm system of unfairness and pain sensitivity. This finding may elucidate mechanisms for producing a new and positive cycle of a healthy experience between fairness and feeling pain-free.
Keywords: experience of unfairness, individual differences, pain sensitivity, pain threshold, pain tolerance
Perception of love regulation: Participants thought that they could exaggerate & suppress expressions of infatuation, attachment, & sexual desire, but that they could not start and stop infatuation and attachment, or start sexual desire
Perceived ability to regulate love. Kruti Surti, Sandra J. E. Langeslag. PLOS, May 13, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0216523
Abstract: Research has shown that romantic love can be regulated. We investigated perceptions about love regulation, because these perceptions may impact mental health and influence love regulation application. Two-hundred eighty-six participants completed a series of items online via Qualtrics that assessed perceived ability to up- and down-regulate, exaggerate and suppress the expression of, and start and stop different love types. We also tested individual differences in perceived love regulation ability. Participants thought that they could up- but not down-regulate love in general and that they could up-regulate love in general more than down-regulate it. Participants thought that they could up-regulate infatuation less than attachment and sexual desire. Participants also thought that they could exaggerate and suppress expressions of infatuation, attachment, and sexual desire, but that they could not start and stop infatuation and attachment, or start sexual desire. The more participants habitually used cognitive reappraisal, the more they thought that they could up- and down-regulate infatuation and attachment and up-regulate sexual desire. The more participants were infatuated with their beloved, the more they thought that they could up- but not down-regulate infatuation, attachment, and sexual desire. Finally, participants thought that they could up- and down-regulate happiness more than infatuation These findings are a first step toward the development of psychoeducation techniques to correct inaccurate love regulation perceptions, which may improve mental health and love regulation in daily life.
Abstract: Research has shown that romantic love can be regulated. We investigated perceptions about love regulation, because these perceptions may impact mental health and influence love regulation application. Two-hundred eighty-six participants completed a series of items online via Qualtrics that assessed perceived ability to up- and down-regulate, exaggerate and suppress the expression of, and start and stop different love types. We also tested individual differences in perceived love regulation ability. Participants thought that they could up- but not down-regulate love in general and that they could up-regulate love in general more than down-regulate it. Participants thought that they could up-regulate infatuation less than attachment and sexual desire. Participants also thought that they could exaggerate and suppress expressions of infatuation, attachment, and sexual desire, but that they could not start and stop infatuation and attachment, or start sexual desire. The more participants habitually used cognitive reappraisal, the more they thought that they could up- and down-regulate infatuation and attachment and up-regulate sexual desire. The more participants were infatuated with their beloved, the more they thought that they could up- but not down-regulate infatuation, attachment, and sexual desire. Finally, participants thought that they could up- and down-regulate happiness more than infatuation These findings are a first step toward the development of psychoeducation techniques to correct inaccurate love regulation perceptions, which may improve mental health and love regulation in daily life.
Monday, May 13, 2019
Impact of public sector salary disclosure laws on university faculty salaries in Canada: The laws reduced salaries on average, although they reduced the gender pay gap between men and women
Pay Transparency and the Gender Gap. Michael Baker, Yosh Halberstam, Kory Kroft, Alexandre Mas, Derek Messacar. NBER Working Paper No. 25834. May 2019. https://www.nber.org/papers/w25834
Abstract: We examine the impact of public sector salary disclosure laws on university faculty salaries in Canada. The laws, which enable public access to the salaries of individual faculty if they exceed specified thresholds, were introduced in different provinces at different points in time. Using detailed administrative data covering the universe of faculty in Canada and an event-study research design, we document three key findings. First, the disclosure laws reduced salaries on average. Second, the laws reduced the gender pay gap between men and women. Third, the closure of the gender gap is primarily in universities where faculty are unionized.
Abstract: We examine the impact of public sector salary disclosure laws on university faculty salaries in Canada. The laws, which enable public access to the salaries of individual faculty if they exceed specified thresholds, were introduced in different provinces at different points in time. Using detailed administrative data covering the universe of faculty in Canada and an event-study research design, we document three key findings. First, the disclosure laws reduced salaries on average. Second, the laws reduced the gender pay gap between men and women. Third, the closure of the gender gap is primarily in universities where faculty are unionized.
Relationship between paraphilic interests, sex, and sexual and life satisfaction in non-clinical samples: Those with paraphilic interests rarely felt negatively affected
Exploring the relationship between paraphilic interests, sex, and sexual and life satisfaction in non-clinical samples. Crystal L. Mundy, Jan D. Cioe. The Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality, May 13, 2019. https://doi.org/10.3138/cjhs.2018-0041
Abstract: Limited research has indicated that paraphilic interests and behaviours do not necessarily decrease sexual and life satisfaction; some research suggests such interests may actually enhance satisfaction. The present study assessed how paraphilic-associated interests and behaviours were related to sexual and life satisfaction in a sample of 173 men and 356 women. Paraphilic interest rates were similar to existing population-based studies. Men reported significantly higher levels of most paraphilic interests than women, apart from masochism. Those with paraphilic interests rarely felt negatively affected. However, those interested in criminal paraphilic interests or both criminal and legally feasible paraphilic interests had lower levels of sexual satisfaction when they did not engage in paraphilia-associated sexual behaviour. The sexual satisfaction of those interested only in legally feasible paraphilic interests was not impacted whether or not they engaged in paraphilia-associated sexual behaviour. Further analyses indicated that those without a paraphilic interest and those who have a paraphilic interest and have disclosed to their partner have higher levels of sexual satisfaction than those who have not disclosed to their partner or who do not have a stable partner. Additionally, among those who had disclosed to a partner, sexual satisfaction was not affected whether the individual engaged in the paraphilic interest with or without their partner. These results suggest a multifaceted relationship that warrants further consideration and examination.
Key Words: Gender differences, paraphilia, paraphilic interests, sexual behaviour, sexual satisfaction
Abstract: Limited research has indicated that paraphilic interests and behaviours do not necessarily decrease sexual and life satisfaction; some research suggests such interests may actually enhance satisfaction. The present study assessed how paraphilic-associated interests and behaviours were related to sexual and life satisfaction in a sample of 173 men and 356 women. Paraphilic interest rates were similar to existing population-based studies. Men reported significantly higher levels of most paraphilic interests than women, apart from masochism. Those with paraphilic interests rarely felt negatively affected. However, those interested in criminal paraphilic interests or both criminal and legally feasible paraphilic interests had lower levels of sexual satisfaction when they did not engage in paraphilia-associated sexual behaviour. The sexual satisfaction of those interested only in legally feasible paraphilic interests was not impacted whether or not they engaged in paraphilia-associated sexual behaviour. Further analyses indicated that those without a paraphilic interest and those who have a paraphilic interest and have disclosed to their partner have higher levels of sexual satisfaction than those who have not disclosed to their partner or who do not have a stable partner. Additionally, among those who had disclosed to a partner, sexual satisfaction was not affected whether the individual engaged in the paraphilic interest with or without their partner. These results suggest a multifaceted relationship that warrants further consideration and examination.
Key Words: Gender differences, paraphilia, paraphilic interests, sexual behaviour, sexual satisfaction
Rolf Degen summarizing: Changing implicit biases did neither affect explicit biases nor actual behavior (co-authored by Brian A. Nosek, who was significantly involved in developing the IAT)
Forscher, Patrick S., Calvin K. Lai, Jordan Axt, Charles R. Ebersole, Michelle Herman, Patricia G. Devine, and Brian A. Nosek. 2016. “A Meta-analysis of Procedures to Change Implicit Measures.” PsyArXiv. August 15. doi:10.31234/osf.io/dv8tu
Abstract: Using a novel technique known as network meta-analysis, we synthesized evidence from 492 studies (87,418 participants) to investigate the effectiveness of procedures in changing implicit measures, which we define as response biases on implicit tasks. We also evaluated these procedures’ effects on explicit and behavioral measures. We found that implicit measures can be changed, but effects are often relatively weak (|ds| < .30). Most studies focused on producing short-term changes with brief, single-session manipulations. Procedures that associate sets of concepts, invoke goals or motivations, or tax mental resources changed implicit measures the most, whereas procedures that induced threat, affirmation, or specific moods/emotions changed implicit measures the least. Bias tests suggested that implicit effects could be inflated relative to their true population values. Procedures changed explicit measures less consistently and to a smaller degree than implicit measures and generally produced trivial changes in behavior. Finally, changes in implicit measures did not mediate changes in explicit measures or behavior. Our findings suggest that changes in implicit measures are possible, but those changes do not necessarily translate into changes in explicit measures or behavior.
Abstract: Using a novel technique known as network meta-analysis, we synthesized evidence from 492 studies (87,418 participants) to investigate the effectiveness of procedures in changing implicit measures, which we define as response biases on implicit tasks. We also evaluated these procedures’ effects on explicit and behavioral measures. We found that implicit measures can be changed, but effects are often relatively weak (|ds| < .30). Most studies focused on producing short-term changes with brief, single-session manipulations. Procedures that associate sets of concepts, invoke goals or motivations, or tax mental resources changed implicit measures the most, whereas procedures that induced threat, affirmation, or specific moods/emotions changed implicit measures the least. Bias tests suggested that implicit effects could be inflated relative to their true population values. Procedures changed explicit measures less consistently and to a smaller degree than implicit measures and generally produced trivial changes in behavior. Finally, changes in implicit measures did not mediate changes in explicit measures or behavior. Our findings suggest that changes in implicit measures are possible, but those changes do not necessarily translate into changes in explicit measures or behavior.
It is reported that identification as a liberal or conservative shapes lifestyle orientations & behaviors; apply caution against wide‐ranging claims
How Much Do Liberal and Conservative Identifiers Differ in the United States? Clem Brooks, Adam Nicholson. Sociological Inquiry, May 12 2019. https://doi.org/10.1111/soin.12286
We thank Catherine Bolzendahl, Paul Burstein, Brian Powell, Patricia McManus, and Amanda Weiss for comments.
Abstract: Recent scholarship has reported that identification as a liberal or conservative shapes lifestyle orientations and behaviors. Liberal/conservative differences with respect to such arenas as family and religion go beyond ideological identification research's traditional focus on policy attitudes and political processes. But are differences on non‐political issues as large as those relating to political ones? This question has yet to be addressed, and it is critical to putting in firmer perspective the degree to which liberal and conservative identifiers differ in the United States. We take up investigation through analysis of 106 items from the General Social Survey 2006 panel. We compare ideological identification's influence with respect to political versus non‐political orientations and behaviors. Application of Morgan and Winship's model of causal inference builds from past studies’ cross‐sectional analysis. Results extend ideological identification scholarship, while cautioning against wide‐ranging claims advanced by several public commentators.
The Influence of Ideological Identification
Established Scholarship
Traditionally, the focus of ideological identification scholarship has been on political phenomena, what we will refer to by shorthand as government, law, and politicians. In the United States, there is ample evidence that liberal and conservative identifiers tend to differ across a range of policy attitudes and with respect to their choice of candidate in national elections (e.g., Abramowitz 2013; Abramson et al. 2015; Chapter 6; Erikson and Tedin 2016, Chapter 3). Ideological identification is relevant for political behavior and attitude formation in other nations as well (e.g., Hellwig 2008; Jou and Dalton 2017; Mair 2007), albeit with variation across context.
Identification as a liberal or conservative has traditionally been viewed as a powerful and potentially self‐reinforcing heuristic (Sniderman, Brody, and Tetlock 1991; see also Lau and Sears 1986). When ideological identification is made salient by political cues in the environment, liberal identifiers form positive attitudes toward objects they associate with liberals/liberalism (e.g., government, legal activism) and oppose those associated with conservatives/conservatism (e.g., unregulated markets, traditional social arrangements) (Fuchs and Klingemann 1990; Miller and Shanks 1996). Conservative identifiers follow the reverse expectation. Ideological identification's influence can be self‐reinforcing if identifiers’ choices feed back into their perceptions (Lodge and Taber 2013; see also Granberg and Brent 1980; Merrill, Grofman, and Adams 2001).
Research on polarization among U.S. politicians is relevant to ideological identification scholarship. Poole and Rosenthal's agenda‐setting analysis of roll call voting in Congress (1997; see also McCarty, Poole, and Rosenthal 2006) finds that since the 1960s, Democratic Senators and House Members have moved to the left and their Republican counterparts have moved to the right. For over four decades, American voters have formed policy attitudes and made electoral choices in an environment increasingly defined by cues regarding prototypically liberal versus conservative politicians and policies. This buttresses the established scholarly view of ideological identification as a source of influence as regards voting and policy‐attitude formation.2
We thank Catherine Bolzendahl, Paul Burstein, Brian Powell, Patricia McManus, and Amanda Weiss for comments.
Abstract: Recent scholarship has reported that identification as a liberal or conservative shapes lifestyle orientations and behaviors. Liberal/conservative differences with respect to such arenas as family and religion go beyond ideological identification research's traditional focus on policy attitudes and political processes. But are differences on non‐political issues as large as those relating to political ones? This question has yet to be addressed, and it is critical to putting in firmer perspective the degree to which liberal and conservative identifiers differ in the United States. We take up investigation through analysis of 106 items from the General Social Survey 2006 panel. We compare ideological identification's influence with respect to political versus non‐political orientations and behaviors. Application of Morgan and Winship's model of causal inference builds from past studies’ cross‐sectional analysis. Results extend ideological identification scholarship, while cautioning against wide‐ranging claims advanced by several public commentators.
The Influence of Ideological Identification
Established Scholarship
Traditionally, the focus of ideological identification scholarship has been on political phenomena, what we will refer to by shorthand as government, law, and politicians. In the United States, there is ample evidence that liberal and conservative identifiers tend to differ across a range of policy attitudes and with respect to their choice of candidate in national elections (e.g., Abramowitz 2013; Abramson et al. 2015; Chapter 6; Erikson and Tedin 2016, Chapter 3). Ideological identification is relevant for political behavior and attitude formation in other nations as well (e.g., Hellwig 2008; Jou and Dalton 2017; Mair 2007), albeit with variation across context.
Identification as a liberal or conservative has traditionally been viewed as a powerful and potentially self‐reinforcing heuristic (Sniderman, Brody, and Tetlock 1991; see also Lau and Sears 1986). When ideological identification is made salient by political cues in the environment, liberal identifiers form positive attitudes toward objects they associate with liberals/liberalism (e.g., government, legal activism) and oppose those associated with conservatives/conservatism (e.g., unregulated markets, traditional social arrangements) (Fuchs and Klingemann 1990; Miller and Shanks 1996). Conservative identifiers follow the reverse expectation. Ideological identification's influence can be self‐reinforcing if identifiers’ choices feed back into their perceptions (Lodge and Taber 2013; see also Granberg and Brent 1980; Merrill, Grofman, and Adams 2001).
Research on polarization among U.S. politicians is relevant to ideological identification scholarship. Poole and Rosenthal's agenda‐setting analysis of roll call voting in Congress (1997; see also McCarty, Poole, and Rosenthal 2006) finds that since the 1960s, Democratic Senators and House Members have moved to the left and their Republican counterparts have moved to the right. For over four decades, American voters have formed policy attitudes and made electoral choices in an environment increasingly defined by cues regarding prototypically liberal versus conservative politicians and policies. This buttresses the established scholarly view of ideological identification as a source of influence as regards voting and policy‐attitude formation.2
Randomized experiments are criticized on ethical grounds even as similar, untested interventions are implemented without objection; aversion is also among those with higher educational attainment & science literacy & among professionals
Objecting to experiments that compare two unobjectionable policies or treatments. Michelle N. Meyer, Patrick R. Heck, Geoffrey S. Holtzman, Stephen M. Anderson, William Cai, Duncan J. Watts, and Christopher F. Chabris. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, May 9, 2019 https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1820701116
Significance: Randomized experiments—long the gold standard in medicine—are increasingly used throughout the social sciences and professions to evaluate business products and services, government programs, education and health policies, and global aid. We find robust evidence—across 16 studies of 5,873 participants from three populations spanning nine domains—that people often approve of untested policies or treatments (A or B) being universally implemented but disapprove of randomized experiments (A/B tests) to determine which of those policies or treatments is superior. This effect persists even when there is no reason to prefer A to B and even when recipients are treated unequally and randomly in all conditions (A, B, and A/B). This experimentation aversion may be an important barrier to evidence-based practice.
Abstract: Randomized experiments have enormous potential to improve human welfare in many domains, including healthcare, education, finance, and public policy. However, such “A/B tests” are often criticized on ethical grounds even as similar, untested interventions are implemented without objection. We find robust evidence across 16 studies of 5,873 participants from three diverse populations spanning nine domains—from healthcare to autonomous vehicle design to poverty reduction—that people frequently rate A/B tests designed to establish the comparative effectiveness of two policies or treatments as inappropriate even when universally implementing either A or B, untested, is seen as appropriate. This “A/B effect” is as strong among those with higher educational attainment and science literacy and among relevant professionals. It persists even when there is no reason to prefer A to B and even when recipients are treated unequally and randomly in all conditions (A, B, and A/B). Several remaining explanations for the effect—a belief that consent is required to impose a policy on half of a population but not on the entire population; an aversion to controlled but not to uncontrolled experiments; and a proxy form of the illusion of knowledge (according to which randomized evaluations are unnecessary because experts already do or should know “what works”)—appear to contribute to the effect, but none dominates or fully accounts for it. We conclude that rigorously evaluating policies or treatments via pragmatic randomized trials may provoke greater objection than simply implementing those same policies or treatments untested.
Keywords: field experimentsA/B testsrandomized controlled trialspragmatic trialsresearch ethics
Significance: Randomized experiments—long the gold standard in medicine—are increasingly used throughout the social sciences and professions to evaluate business products and services, government programs, education and health policies, and global aid. We find robust evidence—across 16 studies of 5,873 participants from three populations spanning nine domains—that people often approve of untested policies or treatments (A or B) being universally implemented but disapprove of randomized experiments (A/B tests) to determine which of those policies or treatments is superior. This effect persists even when there is no reason to prefer A to B and even when recipients are treated unequally and randomly in all conditions (A, B, and A/B). This experimentation aversion may be an important barrier to evidence-based practice.
Abstract: Randomized experiments have enormous potential to improve human welfare in many domains, including healthcare, education, finance, and public policy. However, such “A/B tests” are often criticized on ethical grounds even as similar, untested interventions are implemented without objection. We find robust evidence across 16 studies of 5,873 participants from three diverse populations spanning nine domains—from healthcare to autonomous vehicle design to poverty reduction—that people frequently rate A/B tests designed to establish the comparative effectiveness of two policies or treatments as inappropriate even when universally implementing either A or B, untested, is seen as appropriate. This “A/B effect” is as strong among those with higher educational attainment and science literacy and among relevant professionals. It persists even when there is no reason to prefer A to B and even when recipients are treated unequally and randomly in all conditions (A, B, and A/B). Several remaining explanations for the effect—a belief that consent is required to impose a policy on half of a population but not on the entire population; an aversion to controlled but not to uncontrolled experiments; and a proxy form of the illusion of knowledge (according to which randomized evaluations are unnecessary because experts already do or should know “what works”)—appear to contribute to the effect, but none dominates or fully accounts for it. We conclude that rigorously evaluating policies or treatments via pragmatic randomized trials may provoke greater objection than simply implementing those same policies or treatments untested.
Keywords: field experimentsA/B testsrandomized controlled trialspragmatic trialsresearch ethics
Acne, Human Capital, & the Labor Market: Having acne is strongly positively associated with overall grade point average in high school, grades in high school English, history, math, and science, & the completion of a college degree
Do Pimples Pay? Acne, Human Capital, and the Labor Market. Hugo M. Mialon, Erik T. Nesson. Journal of Human Capital, Volume 13, Number 1, Spring 2019. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/701436
Abstract: We use data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health to investigate the association between having acne in middle to high school and subsequent educational and labor market outcomes. We find that having acne is strongly positively associated with overall grade point average in high school, grades in high school English, history, math, and science, and the completion of a college degree. We also find evidence that acne is associated with higher personal labor market earnings for women. We further explore a possible channel through which acne may affect education and earnings.
Abstract: We use data from the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health to investigate the association between having acne in middle to high school and subsequent educational and labor market outcomes. We find that having acne is strongly positively associated with overall grade point average in high school, grades in high school English, history, math, and science, and the completion of a college degree. We also find evidence that acne is associated with higher personal labor market earnings for women. We further explore a possible channel through which acne may affect education and earnings.
Sexual identity & wellbeing: Gender is found to play a significant role only for homosexuals; lesbians tend to be happier than heterosexuals; bisexuals of any gender are the least satisfied with life of all sexual groups
Sexual identity and wellbeing: A distributional analysis. Samuel Mann, David Blackby, Nigel O’Leary. Economics Letters, May 13 2019. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.econlet.2019.04.023
Highlights
• Heterosexual and sexual minority wellbeing gaps differ across sexual identities.
• The effect on wellbeing of being a sexual minority differs across the distribution.
• Gender is found to play a significant role only for homosexuals.
• Lesbians tend to be happier than their heterosexual counterparts.
• Bisexuals are the least satisfied with life of all sexual groups.
Abstract: The relationship between sexual identity and wellbeing is analysed in an unconditional panel quantile setting. There is heterogeneity across sexual identity and gender for homosexuals and, for all but lesbians, sexual minorities are less satisfied than heterosexuals below the median of the wellbeing distribution. Meanwhile, bisexuals of any gender are the least satisfied of any sexual group, and this is apparent across the entire wellbeing distribution. In contrast, the happiest individuals who report an ‘other’ sexual orientation are happier than the happiest heterosexuals.
Highlights
• Heterosexual and sexual minority wellbeing gaps differ across sexual identities.
• The effect on wellbeing of being a sexual minority differs across the distribution.
• Gender is found to play a significant role only for homosexuals.
• Lesbians tend to be happier than their heterosexual counterparts.
• Bisexuals are the least satisfied with life of all sexual groups.
Abstract: The relationship between sexual identity and wellbeing is analysed in an unconditional panel quantile setting. There is heterogeneity across sexual identity and gender for homosexuals and, for all but lesbians, sexual minorities are less satisfied than heterosexuals below the median of the wellbeing distribution. Meanwhile, bisexuals of any gender are the least satisfied of any sexual group, and this is apparent across the entire wellbeing distribution. In contrast, the happiest individuals who report an ‘other’ sexual orientation are happier than the happiest heterosexuals.
Strange-face illusions during eye-to-eye gazing in dyads: specific effects on derealization, depersonalization and dissociative identity
Strange-face illusions during eye-to-eye gazing in dyads: specific effects on derealization, depersonalization and dissociative identity. Giovanni B Caputo. Journal of Trauma & Dissociation, April 2019, DOI: 10.1080/15299732.2019.1597807
Abstract: Experimentally induced strange-face illusions can be perceived when two individuals look at each other in the eyes under low illumination for about 10 minutes. This task of subject-other eye-to-eye gazing produces the following perceptions by the subject: (i) mild to huge deformations and color/shape changes of face and facial features; (ii) lifeless, unmoving faces and immaterial presences akin to out-of-body experiences; (iii) pseudo-hallucinations, enlightened ‘idealized’ faces and personalities – rather than the other’s actual face. Dissociative phenomena seem to be involved, whereas the effects of non-pathological dissociation on strange-face illusions have not yet been directly investigated. In the present study, dissociative perceptions and strange-face illusions were measured through self-report questionnaires on a large sample (N = 90) of healthy young individuals. Results of correlation and factor analyses suggest that strange-face illusions can involve, respectively: (i) strange-face illusions correlated to derealization; (ii) strange-face illusions correlated to depersonalization; and (iii) strange-face illusions of identity, which are supposedly correlated to identity dissociation. The findings support the separation between detachment and compartmentalization in dissociative processes. Effects of gender show that strange-face illusions are more frequent in men with respect to women if dyads are composed of individuals of different-gender. Furthermore, drawings of strange-faces, which were perceived by portrait artists in place the others’ faces, allowed a direct illustration of examples of dissociative identities. Findings are discussed in relation to the three-level model of self-referential processing.
---
Popular version: Locking Eyes with a Monster: Staring at somebody’s face for ten minutes may give you nightmares. Susana Martinez-Conde and Stephen L. Macknik. Scientific American blog, May 7, 2019. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/illusion-chasers/locking-eyes-with-a-monster
"Caputo asked 50 subjects to gaze at their reflected faces in a mirror for a 10-minute session. After less than a minute, most observers began to perceive the “strange-face illusion.” The participants’ descriptions included huge deformations of their own faces; seeing the faces of alive or deceased parents; archetypal faces such as an old woman, child or the portrait of an ancestor; animal faces such as a cat, pig or lion; and even fantastical and monstrous beings. All 50 participants reported feelings of “otherness” when confronted with a face that seemed suddenly unfamiliar. Some felt powerful emotions."
Abstract: Experimentally induced strange-face illusions can be perceived when two individuals look at each other in the eyes under low illumination for about 10 minutes. This task of subject-other eye-to-eye gazing produces the following perceptions by the subject: (i) mild to huge deformations and color/shape changes of face and facial features; (ii) lifeless, unmoving faces and immaterial presences akin to out-of-body experiences; (iii) pseudo-hallucinations, enlightened ‘idealized’ faces and personalities – rather than the other’s actual face. Dissociative phenomena seem to be involved, whereas the effects of non-pathological dissociation on strange-face illusions have not yet been directly investigated. In the present study, dissociative perceptions and strange-face illusions were measured through self-report questionnaires on a large sample (N = 90) of healthy young individuals. Results of correlation and factor analyses suggest that strange-face illusions can involve, respectively: (i) strange-face illusions correlated to derealization; (ii) strange-face illusions correlated to depersonalization; and (iii) strange-face illusions of identity, which are supposedly correlated to identity dissociation. The findings support the separation between detachment and compartmentalization in dissociative processes. Effects of gender show that strange-face illusions are more frequent in men with respect to women if dyads are composed of individuals of different-gender. Furthermore, drawings of strange-faces, which were perceived by portrait artists in place the others’ faces, allowed a direct illustration of examples of dissociative identities. Findings are discussed in relation to the three-level model of self-referential processing.
---
Popular version: Locking Eyes with a Monster: Staring at somebody’s face for ten minutes may give you nightmares. Susana Martinez-Conde and Stephen L. Macknik. Scientific American blog, May 7, 2019. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/illusion-chasers/locking-eyes-with-a-monster
"Caputo asked 50 subjects to gaze at their reflected faces in a mirror for a 10-minute session. After less than a minute, most observers began to perceive the “strange-face illusion.” The participants’ descriptions included huge deformations of their own faces; seeing the faces of alive or deceased parents; archetypal faces such as an old woman, child or the portrait of an ancestor; animal faces such as a cat, pig or lion; and even fantastical and monstrous beings. All 50 participants reported feelings of “otherness” when confronted with a face that seemed suddenly unfamiliar. Some felt powerful emotions."
Sunday, May 12, 2019
Why books and lectures/school don’t work, according to Andy Matuschak
Why books don’t work. Andy Matuschak. Blog, May 11 2019. https://andymatuschak.org/books
[...]
Picture some serious non-fiction tomes. The Selfish Gene; Thinking, Fast and Slow; Guns, Germs, and Steel; etc. Have you ever had a book like this—one you’d read—come up in conversation, only to discover that you’d absorbed what amounts to a few sentences? I’ll be honest: it happens to me regularly. Often things go well at first. I’ll feel I can sketch the basic claims, paint the surface; but when someone asks a basic probing question, the edifice instantly collapses. Sometimes it’s a memory issue: I simply can’t recall the relevant details. But just as often, as I grasp about, I’ll realize I had never really understood the idea in question, though I’d certainly thought I understood when I read the book. Indeed, I’ll realize that I had barely noticed how little I’d absorbed until that very moment.
I know I’m not alone here. When I share this observation with others—even others, like myself, who take learning seriously—it seems that everyone has had a similar experience. The conversation often feels confessional: there’s some bashfulness, almost as if these lapses reveal some unusual character flaw. I don’t think it’s a character flaw, but whatever it is, it’s certainly not unusual. In fact, I suspect this is the default experience for most readers. The situation only feels embarrassing because it’s hard to see how common it is.
Now, the books I named aren’t small investments. Each takes around 6–9 hours to read. Adult American college graduates read 24 minutes a day on average, so a typical reader might spend much of a month with one of these books. Millions of people have read each of these books, so that’s tens of millions of hours spent. In exchange for all that time, how much knowledge was absorbed? How many people absorbed most of the knowledge the author intended to convey? Or even just what they intended to acquire? I suspect it’s a small minority
[...]
I’m not suggesting that all those hours were wasted. Many readers enjoyed reading those books. That’s wonderful! Certainly most readers absorbed something, however ineffable: points of view, ways of thinking, norms, inspiration, and so on. Indeed, for many books (and in particular most fiction), these effects are the point.
This essay is not about that kind of book. It’s about explanatory non-fiction like the books I mentioned above, which aim to convey detailed knowledge. Some people may have read Thinking, Fast and Slow for entertainment value, but in exchange for their tens of millions of collective hours, I suspect many readers—or maybe even most readers—expected to walk away with more. Why else would we feel so startled when we notice how little we’ve absorbed from something we’ve read?
All this suggests a peculiar conclusion: as a medium, books are surprisingly bad at conveying knowledge, and readers mostly don’t realize it.
[...]
Why lectures don’t work
We’ve been discussing books so far, but have you ever had the same type of experience with a lecture? It’s easy to attend a lecture and feel that you understand, only to discover over that night’s problem set that you understood very little. Memory feels partly to blame: you might sense that you knew certain details at one time, but you’ve forgotten. Yet we can’t pin this all on memory. When you pull on certain strings from the lecture, you might discover that you had never really understood, though you’d certainly thought you understood during the lecture.
[...]
Like books, lectures can be entertaining or influential; like books, lectures do seem to work… sometimes, for some people. But you probably don’t believe that lectures are a reliable way to convey knowledge.
Books don’t work for the same reason that lectures don’t work: neither medium has any explicit theory of how people actually learn things, and as a result, both mediums accidentally (and mostly invisibly) evolved around a theory that’s plainly false.
To illustrate what I mean, I’ll try to draw on your own learning experiences. You’ve probably discovered that certain strategies help you absorb new ideas: solving interesting problems, writing chapter summaries, doing creative projects, etc. Whatever strategies you prefer, they’re not magic. There’s a reason they work (when they do): they’re leveraging some underlying truth about your cognition—about the way you think and learn. In many cases, the truth is not just about your cognition but about human cognition in general.
If we collect enough of these underlying “truths,” some shared themes might emerge, suggesting a more coherent theory of how learning happens. We’ll call such theories cognitive models. Some learning strategies suggest the same model; others suggest conflicting models. Some of these models are empirically testable; others aren’t; still others are already known to be false. By focusing on these models, instead of a herd of one-off strategies, we can seek more general implications. We can ask: if we take a particular cognitive model seriously, what does it suggest will (or won’t) help us understand something?
That’s an important question because it’s hard to convey knowledge. Most lecture attendees don’t absorb the intended knowledge; most book readers don’t absorb the intended knowledge. Failure is the default here. So if you hope to help others understand things, you had better draw on some great ideas about how people learn. It would be nice if this weren’t true. It would be nice if one could simply explain an idea clearly to someone, then trust that they’ve understood it. Unfortunately, as you’ve likely seen in classrooms and in your own life, complex ideas are rarely understood so automatically.
Lectures, as a medium, have no carefully-considered cognitive model at their foundation. Yet if we were aliens observing typical lectures from afar, we might notice the implicit model they appear to share: “the lecturer says words describing an idea; the class hears the words and maybe scribbles in a notebook; then the class understands the idea.” In learning sciences, we call this model “transmissionism.” It’s the notion that knowledge can be directly transmitted from teacher to student, like transcribing text from one page onto another. If only! The idea is so thoroughly discredited that “transmissionism” is only used pejoratively [...].
Of course, good lecturers don’t usually believe that simply telling their audience about an idea causes them to understand it. It’s just that lectures, as a format, are shaped as if that were true, so lecturers mostly behave as if it were true.
If pressed, many lecturers would offer a more plausible cognitive model: understanding actually comes after the lecture, when attendees solve problem sets, write essays, etc. The lecture provides the raw information for those later activities. Great: that’s a real model, and parts of it are supported by cognitive science. But if we’d begun with this model, would we have chosen live, ninety-minute speeches to convey raw information for a problem set?
Listeners’ attention wanders after a few minutes, so wouldn’t we want to interleave the problem-solving sessions with the lecture? Live speeches can’t be paused or rewound, so aren’t they awfully lossy for conveying raw information? People can read much more quickly than a lecturer speaks, so wouldn’t text be more efficient? And so on—it’s already clear that the traditional lecture format isn’t particularly informed by this model.
The lectures-as-warmup model is a post-hoc rationalization, but it does gesture at a deep theory about cognition: to understand something, you must actively engage with it. That notion, taken seriously, would utterly transform classrooms. We’d prioritize activities like interactive discussions and projects; we’d deploy direct instruction only when it’s the best way to enable those activities. [...]
In summary: lectures don’t work because the medium lacks a functioning cognitive model. It’s (implicitly) built on a faulty idea about how people learn—transmissionism—which we can caricaturize as “lecturer says words describing an idea; students hear words; then they understand.” When lectures do work, it’s generally as part of a broader learning context (e.g. projects, problem sets) with a better cognitive model. But the lectures aren’t pulling their weight. If we really wanted to adopt the better model, we’d ditch the lectures, and indeed, that’s what’s been happening in US K–12 education.
[...]
[...]
Picture some serious non-fiction tomes. The Selfish Gene; Thinking, Fast and Slow; Guns, Germs, and Steel; etc. Have you ever had a book like this—one you’d read—come up in conversation, only to discover that you’d absorbed what amounts to a few sentences? I’ll be honest: it happens to me regularly. Often things go well at first. I’ll feel I can sketch the basic claims, paint the surface; but when someone asks a basic probing question, the edifice instantly collapses. Sometimes it’s a memory issue: I simply can’t recall the relevant details. But just as often, as I grasp about, I’ll realize I had never really understood the idea in question, though I’d certainly thought I understood when I read the book. Indeed, I’ll realize that I had barely noticed how little I’d absorbed until that very moment.
I know I’m not alone here. When I share this observation with others—even others, like myself, who take learning seriously—it seems that everyone has had a similar experience. The conversation often feels confessional: there’s some bashfulness, almost as if these lapses reveal some unusual character flaw. I don’t think it’s a character flaw, but whatever it is, it’s certainly not unusual. In fact, I suspect this is the default experience for most readers. The situation only feels embarrassing because it’s hard to see how common it is.
Now, the books I named aren’t small investments. Each takes around 6–9 hours to read. Adult American college graduates read 24 minutes a day on average, so a typical reader might spend much of a month with one of these books. Millions of people have read each of these books, so that’s tens of millions of hours spent. In exchange for all that time, how much knowledge was absorbed? How many people absorbed most of the knowledge the author intended to convey? Or even just what they intended to acquire? I suspect it’s a small minority
[...]
I’m not suggesting that all those hours were wasted. Many readers enjoyed reading those books. That’s wonderful! Certainly most readers absorbed something, however ineffable: points of view, ways of thinking, norms, inspiration, and so on. Indeed, for many books (and in particular most fiction), these effects are the point.
This essay is not about that kind of book. It’s about explanatory non-fiction like the books I mentioned above, which aim to convey detailed knowledge. Some people may have read Thinking, Fast and Slow for entertainment value, but in exchange for their tens of millions of collective hours, I suspect many readers—or maybe even most readers—expected to walk away with more. Why else would we feel so startled when we notice how little we’ve absorbed from something we’ve read?
All this suggests a peculiar conclusion: as a medium, books are surprisingly bad at conveying knowledge, and readers mostly don’t realize it.
[...]
Why lectures don’t work
We’ve been discussing books so far, but have you ever had the same type of experience with a lecture? It’s easy to attend a lecture and feel that you understand, only to discover over that night’s problem set that you understood very little. Memory feels partly to blame: you might sense that you knew certain details at one time, but you’ve forgotten. Yet we can’t pin this all on memory. When you pull on certain strings from the lecture, you might discover that you had never really understood, though you’d certainly thought you understood during the lecture.
[...]
Like books, lectures can be entertaining or influential; like books, lectures do seem to work… sometimes, for some people. But you probably don’t believe that lectures are a reliable way to convey knowledge.
Books don’t work for the same reason that lectures don’t work: neither medium has any explicit theory of how people actually learn things, and as a result, both mediums accidentally (and mostly invisibly) evolved around a theory that’s plainly false.
To illustrate what I mean, I’ll try to draw on your own learning experiences. You’ve probably discovered that certain strategies help you absorb new ideas: solving interesting problems, writing chapter summaries, doing creative projects, etc. Whatever strategies you prefer, they’re not magic. There’s a reason they work (when they do): they’re leveraging some underlying truth about your cognition—about the way you think and learn. In many cases, the truth is not just about your cognition but about human cognition in general.
If we collect enough of these underlying “truths,” some shared themes might emerge, suggesting a more coherent theory of how learning happens. We’ll call such theories cognitive models. Some learning strategies suggest the same model; others suggest conflicting models. Some of these models are empirically testable; others aren’t; still others are already known to be false. By focusing on these models, instead of a herd of one-off strategies, we can seek more general implications. We can ask: if we take a particular cognitive model seriously, what does it suggest will (or won’t) help us understand something?
That’s an important question because it’s hard to convey knowledge. Most lecture attendees don’t absorb the intended knowledge; most book readers don’t absorb the intended knowledge. Failure is the default here. So if you hope to help others understand things, you had better draw on some great ideas about how people learn. It would be nice if this weren’t true. It would be nice if one could simply explain an idea clearly to someone, then trust that they’ve understood it. Unfortunately, as you’ve likely seen in classrooms and in your own life, complex ideas are rarely understood so automatically.
Lectures, as a medium, have no carefully-considered cognitive model at their foundation. Yet if we were aliens observing typical lectures from afar, we might notice the implicit model they appear to share: “the lecturer says words describing an idea; the class hears the words and maybe scribbles in a notebook; then the class understands the idea.” In learning sciences, we call this model “transmissionism.” It’s the notion that knowledge can be directly transmitted from teacher to student, like transcribing text from one page onto another. If only! The idea is so thoroughly discredited that “transmissionism” is only used pejoratively [...].
Of course, good lecturers don’t usually believe that simply telling their audience about an idea causes them to understand it. It’s just that lectures, as a format, are shaped as if that were true, so lecturers mostly behave as if it were true.
If pressed, many lecturers would offer a more plausible cognitive model: understanding actually comes after the lecture, when attendees solve problem sets, write essays, etc. The lecture provides the raw information for those later activities. Great: that’s a real model, and parts of it are supported by cognitive science. But if we’d begun with this model, would we have chosen live, ninety-minute speeches to convey raw information for a problem set?
Listeners’ attention wanders after a few minutes, so wouldn’t we want to interleave the problem-solving sessions with the lecture? Live speeches can’t be paused or rewound, so aren’t they awfully lossy for conveying raw information? People can read much more quickly than a lecturer speaks, so wouldn’t text be more efficient? And so on—it’s already clear that the traditional lecture format isn’t particularly informed by this model.
The lectures-as-warmup model is a post-hoc rationalization, but it does gesture at a deep theory about cognition: to understand something, you must actively engage with it. That notion, taken seriously, would utterly transform classrooms. We’d prioritize activities like interactive discussions and projects; we’d deploy direct instruction only when it’s the best way to enable those activities. [...]
In summary: lectures don’t work because the medium lacks a functioning cognitive model. It’s (implicitly) built on a faulty idea about how people learn—transmissionism—which we can caricaturize as “lecturer says words describing an idea; students hear words; then they understand.” When lectures do work, it’s generally as part of a broader learning context (e.g. projects, problem sets) with a better cognitive model. But the lectures aren’t pulling their weight. If we really wanted to adopt the better model, we’d ditch the lectures, and indeed, that’s what’s been happening in US K–12 education.
[...]
Cryptoassets, DLT and smart contracts – UK Jurisdiction Taskforce consultation. Questions to be addressed in the Legal Statement
Cryptoassets, DLT and smart contracts – UK Jurisdiction Taskforce consultation, Annex 1. May 9 2019, https://www.lawsociety.org.uk/news/documents/ukjt-consultation-cryptoassets-smart-contracts-may-2019/
Annex 1
Questions to be addressed in the Legal Statement
Each of the following questions is posed as a matter of English law.
1 Legal status of cryptoassets
1.1 Principal question
Under what circumstances, if any, would the following be characterised as personal property:
1.1.1 a cryptoasset; and
1.1.2 a private key 10?
1.2 Ancillary questions
General law
1.2.1 If a cryptoasset is capable of being property:
(i) is that as a chose in possession, a chose in action or another form of personal property?
(ii) how is title to that property capable of being transferred?
1.2.2 Is a cryptoasset capable of being the object of a bailment?
1.2.3 What factors would be relevant in determining whether English law governs the proprietary aspects of dealings in cryptoassets?
Security
1.2.4 Can security validly be granted over a cryptoasset and, if so, how?
1.2.5 If so, what forms of security may validly be granted over a cryptoasset?
Insolvency
1.2.6 Can a cryptoasset be characterised as “property” for the purposes of the Insolvency Act 1986?
Transferability and negotiability
Under what circumstances, if any, would a cryptoasset be characterised as:
1.2.7 a documentary intangible;
1.2.8 a document of title;
1.2.9 negotiable 11; or
1.2.10 an “instrument” under the Bills of Exchange Act 1882?
Goods
1.2.11 Can cryptoassets be characterised as “goods” under the Sale of Goods Act 1979?
Register
1.2.12 In what circumstances is a distributed ledger capable of amounting to a register for the purposes of evidencing, constituting and transferring title to assets?
2 Enforceability of smart contracts
2.1 Principal question
In what circumstances is a smart contract capable of giving rise to binding legal obligations, enforceable in accordance with its terms (a “smart legal contract”)?
2.2 Ancillary questions
2.2.1 How would an English court apply general principles of contractual interpretation to a smart contract written wholly or in part in computer code?
2.2.2 Under what circumstances would an English court look beyond the mere outcome of the running of any computer code that is or is part of a smart contract in determining the agreement between the parties?
2.2.3 Is a smart contract between anonymous or pseudo-anonymous parties capable of giving rise to binding legal obligations?
2.2.4 Could a statutory signature requirement 12 be met by using a private key?
2.2.5 Could a statutory “in writing” requirement be met in the case of a smart contract composed partly or wholly of computer code?
Notes
10 To the extent it is considered as distinct from the relevant “cryptoasset”.
11 In the sense that a transferee may, by its mere transfer, acquire better title than that of its transferor.
12 For example, in the context of a disposition of an equitable interest (under s53(1)(c) Law of Property Act 1925 (LPA)) or of a legal assignment (under s136(1) LPA)?
Annex 1
Questions to be addressed in the Legal Statement
Each of the following questions is posed as a matter of English law.
1 Legal status of cryptoassets
1.1 Principal question
Under what circumstances, if any, would the following be characterised as personal property:
1.1.1 a cryptoasset; and
1.1.2 a private key 10?
1.2 Ancillary questions
General law
1.2.1 If a cryptoasset is capable of being property:
(i) is that as a chose in possession, a chose in action or another form of personal property?
(ii) how is title to that property capable of being transferred?
1.2.2 Is a cryptoasset capable of being the object of a bailment?
1.2.3 What factors would be relevant in determining whether English law governs the proprietary aspects of dealings in cryptoassets?
Security
1.2.4 Can security validly be granted over a cryptoasset and, if so, how?
1.2.5 If so, what forms of security may validly be granted over a cryptoasset?
Insolvency
1.2.6 Can a cryptoasset be characterised as “property” for the purposes of the Insolvency Act 1986?
Transferability and negotiability
Under what circumstances, if any, would a cryptoasset be characterised as:
1.2.7 a documentary intangible;
1.2.8 a document of title;
1.2.9 negotiable 11; or
1.2.10 an “instrument” under the Bills of Exchange Act 1882?
Goods
1.2.11 Can cryptoassets be characterised as “goods” under the Sale of Goods Act 1979?
Register
1.2.12 In what circumstances is a distributed ledger capable of amounting to a register for the purposes of evidencing, constituting and transferring title to assets?
2 Enforceability of smart contracts
2.1 Principal question
In what circumstances is a smart contract capable of giving rise to binding legal obligations, enforceable in accordance with its terms (a “smart legal contract”)?
2.2 Ancillary questions
2.2.1 How would an English court apply general principles of contractual interpretation to a smart contract written wholly or in part in computer code?
2.2.2 Under what circumstances would an English court look beyond the mere outcome of the running of any computer code that is or is part of a smart contract in determining the agreement between the parties?
2.2.3 Is a smart contract between anonymous or pseudo-anonymous parties capable of giving rise to binding legal obligations?
2.2.4 Could a statutory signature requirement 12 be met by using a private key?
2.2.5 Could a statutory “in writing” requirement be met in the case of a smart contract composed partly or wholly of computer code?
Notes
10 To the extent it is considered as distinct from the relevant “cryptoasset”.
11 In the sense that a transferee may, by its mere transfer, acquire better title than that of its transferor.
12 For example, in the context of a disposition of an equitable interest (under s53(1)(c) Law of Property Act 1925 (LPA)) or of a legal assignment (under s136(1) LPA)?
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
