The Oxford Handbook of Gossip and Reputation: Women's interest in other women, as seen by Francis T McAndrew

Likelihood of break-up following imagined sexual or emotional infidelity: The contribution of perceived threat, attribution of blame, and forgiveness

Likelihood of break-up following imagined sexual or emotional infidelity: The contribution of perceived threat, attribution of blame, and forgiveness. Trond Viggo Grøntvedt, Leif Edward Ottesen Kennair, Mons Bendixen. Human Behavior and Evolution Society 31st annual meeting. Boston 2019. http://tiny.cc/aa1w6y

Abstract: Infidelity is a major threat to relationships, often resulting in the dissolution of the dyad. Despite this, the process from infidelity to potential break-up is not well understood. In this study we examined factors affecting the likelihood of break-up following partner’s imagined infidelity. Coupled women and men (N = 92 + 92) responded individually to questionnaires concerning hypothetical infidelity scenarios (sexual and emotional). Measurements included relationship quality, threat of transgression to the current relationship, attribution of blame, forgiveness (operationalized as keeping distance and wanting revenge), and likelihood of break-up. SEM analyses of couple data for both sexual and emotional infidelity suggest that for both men and women the level of threat was the main predictor of likelihood of breakup. Following imagined infidelity, this effect was partly mediated by the keeping distance aspect of forgiveness. No such mediation of wanting revenge was found. For emotional infidelity blame was associated with break-up, but fully mediated by keeping distance. Unlike previous studies, we found no associations between relationship quality and forgiveness following hypothetical infidelity. The findings are discussed in relation to the dyadic forgiveness model.

How group identification distorts beliefs: Identification with a randomly composed group leads to overconfident beliefs about fellow group members’ performance on an intelligence test

How group identification distorts beliefs. Maria Paula Cacault, Manuel Grieder. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Volume 164, August 2019, Pages 63-76. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2019.05.027

Abstract: This paper investigates how group identification distorts people’s beliefs about the ability of their peers in social groups. We find that experimentally manipulated identification with a randomly composed group leads to overconfident beliefs about fellow group members’ performance on an intelligence test. This result cannot be explained by individual overconfidence, i.e., participants overconfident in their own skill believing that their group performed better because of them, as this was ruled out by experimental design. Moreover, we find that participants with stronger group identification put more weight on positive signals about their group when updating their beliefs. These in-group biases in beliefs can have important economic consequences when group membership is used to make inference about an individual’s characteristics as, for instance, in hiring decisions.

Inventor CEOs: Firms file a greater number of patents & more valuable patents in technology classes where the CEO's hands-on experience lies, due to superior ability to evaluate, select and execute

Inventor CEOs. Emdad Islam, Jason Zein. Journal of Financial Economics, June 18 2019. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jfineco.2019.06.009

Abstract: One in five U.S. high-technology firms are led by CEOs with hands-on innovation experience as inventors. Firms led by “Inventor CEOs” are associated with higher quality innovation, especially when the CEO is a high-impact inventor. During an Inventor CEO's tenure, firms file a greater number of patents and more valuable patents in technology classes where the CEO's hands-on experience lies. Utilizing plausibly exogenous CEO turnovers to address the matching of CEOs to firms suggests these effects are causal. The results can be explained by an Inventor CEO's superior ability to evaluate, select, and execute innovative investment projects related to their own hands-on experience.

Parasomnias: Lots of emotional faces, negative speech, worries, profanities, insults; smiling sleep is rare in these adults

Parasomnia: a window into dreaming process? Isabelle Arnulf. Keynote to International Association for the Study of Dreams' June 2019 Conference. http://iasdconferences.org/2019/wp-content/uploads/2019/04/2019-Abstracts-Final.pdf

Abstract: The parasomnias include sleep talking (REM and NREM sleep), sleepwalking, night terrors (NREM sleep) and REM sleep behavior disorder (RBD), sleep-related hallucinations and sleep paralysis (REM sleep). Many can cause injuries and sleep disturbances, thereby needing to be diagnosed and treated. Of note, sleep talking, sleepwalking and RBD correspond to dream-enacted behaviors, thanks to isomorphism between behaviors and later dream recall. The gestures, speeches and facial expressions of the dreamers render the dreaming scenario visible for external observers. We first performed an ethological repertory of all visible behaviors, speeches and, more recently, emotional face expressions, in RBD and sleepwalking in a large (>200 subjects) adult cohort. Aggression by animals and humans predominated in RBD (the dreamer counterattacking the aggressor) whereas natural catastrophes predominated in sleepwalking/night terror (the dreamer trying to escape the imminent danger by running away), suggesting a “flight (NREM) and fight (REM)” answer to threat simulation. Similarly, the sleep-associated speeches (whether in genuine sleep talkers or in patients with RBD and sleepwalking) were mostly negative, worried, and repeated. Verbal violence (more frequent in male sleep talkers) contained more profanities in NREM sleep and insults in REM sleep. However, non-violent, elaborate behaviors and speeches were also visible, although less frequent than violent ones. Smiling asleep was rare in normal adults, but quite frequent in RBD patients. This narrow but fascinating window helped test some hypotheses about dreaming, including which motor and verbal systems are at play during dreaming, whether episodic memories are included into the nocturnal behaviors, whether the eyes scan the dream scenario during REM sleep, whether non-dreamers do not dream or do not recall their dreams, without the bias of dream recall.

A Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Cross-Cutting Exposure on Political Participation: No effect, positive or negative, on participation

A Meta-Analysis of the Effects of Cross-Cutting Exposure on Political Participation. Jörg Matthes, Johannes Knoll, Sebastián Valenzuela, David Nicolas Hopmann & Christian Von Sikorski. Political Communication, Jul 19 2019. https://doi.org/10.1080/10584609.2019.1619638

Abstract: Scholars have advanced many theoretical explanations for expecting a negative or positive relationship between individuals’ cross-cutting exposure—either through interpersonal or mediated forms of communication—and their political participation. However, whether cross-cutting exposure is a positive or negative predictor of participation is still an unsettled question. To help fill this gap, we conducted a meta-analysis of 48 empirical studies comprising more than 70,000 participants examining the association between cross-cutting exposure and political participation. The meta-analysis produced two main findings. First, it shows that, over all studies, there is no significant relationship, r = .002, Zr = .002 (95% CI = −.04 to .05). Second, the null relationship cannot be explained by variations in the characteristics of cross-cutting environments (e.g., topic, place, or source of exposure), participation outcomes (e.g., online vs. offline activities), or methods employed (e.g., experiment vs. survey). Taken together, these results should alleviate concerns about negative effects of cross-cutting exposure on political engagement. Implications for future research are discussed.

Keywords: disagreement, political participation, cross-cutting exposure, political discussion, meta-analysis

Sleep talking: A viable access to mental processes during sleep

Sleep talking: A viable access to mental processes during sleep. Valentina Alfonsi et al. Sleep Medicine Reviews, Volume 44, April 2019, Pages 12-22. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.smrv.2018.12.001

Summary
Sleep talking is one of the most common altered nocturnal behaviours in the whole population. It does not represent a pathological condition and consists in the unaware production of vocalisations during sleep.

Although in the last few decades we have experienced a remarkable increase in knowledge about cognitive processes and behavioural manifestations during sleep, the literature regarding sleep talking remains dated and fragmentary. We first provide an overview of historical and recent findings regarding sleep talking, and we then discuss the phenomenon in the context of mental activity during sleep. It is shown that verbal utterances, reflecting the ongoing dream content, may represent the unique possibility to access the dreamlike mental experience directly. Furthermore, we discuss such phenomena within a cognitive theoretical framework, considering both the atypical activation of psycholinguistic circuits during sleep and the implications of verbal ‘replay’ of recent learning in memory consolidation.

Despite current knowledge on such a common experience being far from complete, an in-depth analysis of sleep talking episodes could offer interesting opportunities to address fundamental questions on dreaming or information processing during sleep. Further systematic polysomnographic and neuroimaging investigations are expected to shed new light on the manifestation of the phenomenon and related aspects.

Women’s subtle, safe, & often solitary, competitive tactics: Maintaining a few long-term alliances and gaining advantages when competitors are not present; when present, low-cost forms of competition

Contest versus Scramble Competition: Sex Differences in the Quest for Status. Joyce F Benenson, Helen Abadzi. Current Opinion in Psychology, July 15 2019. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2019.07.013

Abstract: Both sexes benefit from attaining higher status than same-sex peers, but each sex employs distinctive competitive tactics. Men engage in conspicuous public contests for status and directly interfere with others’ success. Despite frequent and intense contests which occasionally turn lethal, men typically employ ritualized tactics and accept status differentials within a group. More recently, research has examined women’s subtle, safe, and often solitary, competitive tactics. Women’s main competitive tactics consist of maintaining a few long-term alliances and gaining advantages when competitors are not present. When competitors are present, women utilize leveling, social exclusion, and low-cost forms of contest competition to best other women.

From 2017: Rhythmic variations of mood

From 2017: Rhythmic variations of mood. Augustin Mutak. Gyrus, Accepted November 29, 2017. http://gyrus.hiim.hr/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=37

Abstract: In this article, an overview of studies on circadian (daily), circaseptan (weekly) and circannual (yearly) variations of positive affect, negative affect and total mood is given. Studies on circadian mood rhythms, which were mostly focused on fluctuations of positive and negative affect, indicate that positive affect displays circadian variations, while negative affect does not. Such findings are linked to predictive and reactive homeostasis, respectively. The function of positive affect could be to energize the organism to be more active during the middle of the day, while the function of negative affect could be to respond to immediate threats which can appear during any time of the day. Research on circaseptan mood rhythms often also explored total mood in addition to positive and negative affect. Current findings show that mood is higher during the weekend than during the working week. It is possible that such variations are culturally determined, however, more research is needed to reach stable conclusions. Studies on circannual mood rhythms were mostly focused on seasonal affective disorder (SAD). SAD rates are highest in the winter, although a smaller number of patients report depressive symptoms during the summer months. Predictive homeostasis is also thought to be the underlying evolved mechanism responsible for SAD since SAD makes the organism less active, thus reducing the quantity of food the organism needs to consume in the winter months when the sources of food are scarce. An overview of differences between yearly fluctuations of SAD rates and suicide rates is given.

KEYWORDS: affect, circadian clocks, circaseptan, periodicity, seasonal mood disorder

Introduction

In psychological science, mood is a construct which is, along with emotions, encompassed within a broader term called affect. Although all intrapsychical processes are interlaced, affects are distinct from cognitive (e.g. thinking, perception) and conative (e.g. personality traits) constructs because they possess a subjective component. In other words, affects are composed of characteristic “feelings” that can be experienced only from the first-person perspective and are difficult to verbalize or explain to other persons. This subjective quality is mutually shared between emotions and mood.

Mood and emotions

Mood is, however, distinct from emotions in several important characteristics. Firstly, emotions are more intensive than mood. Both measures of subjective feelings and measures of physiological reactions clearly show that emotions elicit stronger psychological and physiological reactions than mood. Secondly, emotions are triggered by significant life events, while the determinants of mood are more dispersed and are less likely to be known by the person experiencing the affective state. For example, a person may become frightened because of the imminent danger which poses a threat to his/her well-being, sad because of a loss of a loved one, angry because another person usurped his rightful interests. On the other hand, a person may be in a bad mood throughout the day without clear reasons for such mood and the reasons may even be unknown to the person experiencing the described mood. Thirdly, emotions are of shorter duration than mood. While emotions are usually quick to appear and fade, the duration of mood is significantly longer. Modern research shows that, unlike emotions, mood actually never ceases to be present and can be felt in any moment from the first-person perspective.1

Research has shown that mood consists of two separate dimensions: positive and negative affect. Positive affect is characterized by pleasant, happy, joyful and energized mood, while negative affect is characterized by unpleasant feelings of subtle anger, fear, sadness and anxiety. The finding that these two dimensions are separate was unusual to many laypeople and scientists alike because the conventional viewpoint held that the positive and negative affect are two poles of the same continuum.2 At first, researchers insisted that the positive and negative affect are two completely separate, orthogonal dimensions. However, newer studies have shown that, while these two dimensions indeed are separate, they are not completely distinct, but are instead in a low-to-moderate negative correlation. Thus, these two dimensions are sometimes referred to as quasiorthogonal.3 Some self-report instruments for measurement of mood have separate measures for positive and negative affect and the measure of “total affect” is mathematically calculated as the difference between positive and negative affect.2 Apart from self-report inventories, behavioral indicators can also be used as a measure of a person’s current mood. For example, laughter and sobbing are reliable indicators of positive and negative affect, respectively. However, studies that have used behavioral indicators as a measure of mood are rare, because the data collection process is difficult and time-consuming. Recently, there have been developments in implicit measurements of mood (e.g. a person is asked to rate the emotional valence of non-existent words). While the results of the first validation studies were promising, more studies are needed to fully validate this type of measure, which is why implicit mood measures have not yet been used in other studies besides the validation studies.4

Types of rhythmic variations of mood

[Full text at the link above]

A preadvertised sequel makes the original movie seem more interesting and produces higher levels of satisfaction and word of mouth

Tomorrow never dies: preadvertised sequels boost movie satisfaction and WOM. Helge Thorbjørnsen, Micael Dahlén & Fredrik Lange. International Journal of Advertising, Jul 15 2019. https://doi.org/10.1080/02650487.2019.1641355

Abstract: The movie industry benefits financially from creating sequels with links to previous movies. Sequels build on the success of the original movie and generally attain high box office revenues and generate positive word-of-mouth. In the current study, however, the converse effect is investigated; namely how preadvertising a sequel may lead to bigger success for the current (original) movie. Three studies demonstrate that a preadvertised sequel makes the original movie seem more interesting and produces higher levels of satisfaction and word of mouth. Results suggest that entertainment brands likely benefit from preannouncing sequels and follow-up concepts already at the time of launch of the original movie.

Keywords: Movie sequels, preannouncements, word of mouth, satisfaction

Why deflecting direct questions? It causes significantly less reputational harm than detected deception & causes significantly less interpersonal harm than directly declining to answer a question

Bitterly, T. B., & Schweitzer, M. E. (2019). The economic and interpersonal consequences of deflecting direct questions. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000200

Abstract: Direct, difficult questions (e.g., Do you have other offers? When do you plan on having children?) pose a challenge. Respondents may incur economic costs for honestly revealing information, reputational costs for engaging in deception, and interpersonal costs, including harm to perceptions of trust and liking, for directly declining to answer the question (e.g., I would rather not answer that question.). Across 8 experiments, we explore the relative economic and interpersonal consequences of a fourth approach: deflection, answering a direct question with another question. We describe how individuals infer the respondent’s communication motive from their response (e.g., a motive to seek or hide information), and how these inferences influence perceptions of the respondent’s trust and likability. We contrast deflection with other types of responses and show that deflection causes significantly less reputational harm than detected deception and causes significantly less interpersonal harm than directly declining to answer a question. In some cases, deflection even yields better interpersonal and economic outcomes than honest disclosures (e.g., deflecting questions about prior acts of untrustworthy behavior).

Irrelevant non-mathematical knowledge interferes with the identification of basic solutions to arithmetic word problems, even among experts who have mastered abstract, context-independent reasoning

When masters of abstraction run into a concrete wall: Experts failing arithmetic word problems. Hippolyte Gros, Emmanuel Sander, Jean-Pierre Thibaut. June 28 2019. https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758%2Fs13423-019-01628-3

Abstract: Can our knowledge about apples, cars, or smurfs hinder our ability to solve mathematical problems involving these entities? We argue that such daily-life knowledge interferes with arithmetic word problem solving, to the extent that experts can be led to failure in problems involving trivial mathematical notions. We created problems evoking different aspects of our non-mathematical, general knowledge. They were solvable by one single subtraction involving small quantities, such as 14 – 2 = 12. A first experiment studied how university-educated adults dealt with seemingly simple arithmetic problems evoking knowledge that was either congruent or incongruent with the problems’ solving procedure. Results showed that in the latter case, the proportion of participants incorrectly deeming the problems “unsolvable” increased significantly, as did response times for correct answers. A second experiment showed that expert mathematicians were also subject to this bias. These results demonstrate that irrelevant non-mathematical knowledge interferes with the identification of basic, single-step solutions to arithmetic word problems, even among experts who have supposedly mastered abstract, context-independent reasoning.

Keywords: Encoding effects Mathematical cognition Mental models Semantics

The relationship between disgust levels and sexual behaviors as moderated by self-perceived pathogen exposure

The relationship between disgust levels and sexual behaviors as moderated by self-perceived pathogen exposure. Jessica K. Hlay, Graham Albert, Zeynep Senveli, Steven Arnocky, Carolyn R. HodgesSimeon. Human Behavior and Evolution Society 31st annual meeting. Boston 2019. http://tiny.cc/aa1w6y

Abstract: Many studies have tested if environmental pathogen load affects mating behavior. Here we investigate if: (1) self-perceived pathogen load predicts pathogen and sexual disgust; (2) disgust variables predict respondents’ sociosexual attitude and desire; and (3) sociosexual attitude and desire predict behavior. We analyzed responses from 322 participants (160 women and 162 men) recruited through Amazon’s online platform, MTurk. Respondents reported information on environmental pathogen load, sexual and pathogen disgust, general health, and sociosexual desire, behavior, and attitude. We conducted a structural equation model and interpreted the regressions and correlations between latent variables, as well as between latent and observed variables. Self-reported pathogen load, along with general health, significantly predicted levels of sexual disgust, but not pathogen disgust. Those with a significantly higher level of sexual disgust had more conservative sociosexual attitudes and lower levels of sociosexual desire. Individuals’ sociosexual attitude and their levels of sexual disgust, but not sociosexual desire, positively predicted sexual behavior. These results support a growing body of literature on the behavioral immune system, as individuals who perceive themselves to be more exposed to pathogens experience higher rates of sexual disgust and alter their sociosexual behavior, perhaps as a means to prevent infection.

Vocal signals linked to emotions (e.g., laughter, screams) are in part conserved among phylogenetically related species, which may yield cross-species recognition of affective information

Is there phylogenetic continuity in emotional vocalizations? Roza Kamiloğlu, Katie E. Slocombe, Frank Eisner, Daniel B. M. Haun, Disa A. Sauter. Human Behavior and Evolution Society 31st annual meeting. Boston 2019. http://tiny.cc/aa1w6y

Abstract: Vocal signals linked to emotions (e.g., laughter, screams) are in part conserved among phylogenetically related species. Such shared evolutionary roots of emotional vocalizations may yield cross-species recognition of affective information from vocalizations. We draw on two main approaches to phylogenetic continuity in emotional expressions, and test whether human listeners can identify 1) the context in which chimpanzee vocalizations were produced, and 2) core affect dimensions (arousal and valence) from chimpanzee vocalizations. In a laboratory experiment, participants (N = 310) listened to 155 chimpanzee vocalizations produced in 10 different behavioral contexts. Listeners judged the context in which they thought each vocalization was produced and indicated the extent to which they thought the individual who produced the vocalization was feeling negative/positive and aroused. The results show that listeners were able to accurately recognize the levels of arousal (high, medium, low) and valence (positive, negative) from the vocalizations, but not the production context. Judgments of arousal level and valence of vocalizations produced in negative contexts were more accurate compared to vocalizations of positive contexts. The greater crossspecies continuity in information transfer might be linked to evolutionary mechanisms that cross-species emotion recognition is more successful for negative contexts bearing high survival costs.

Links: https://osf.io/mkde8/?view_only=55c61b406eb44714bc723643ae7c94c0

Experimental evidence for sex differences in sexual novelty preferences

Experimental evidence for sex differences in sexual novelty preferences. Susan M. Hughes, Marissa A. Harrison, Toe Aung, Gordon G. Gallup, Jr. Human Behavior and Evolution Society 31st annual meeting. Boston 2019. http://tiny.cc/aa1w6y

Abstract: We examined sex differences in preferences for sexual novelty to explore whether the Coolidge Effect plays a role in human sexuality. In an experimental task, participants were asked to play a hypothetical dating game and select between novel and familiar faces as short-term dating partners. Participants were presented with two facial images on a screen and were asked to select the person they would prefer to date short term. The presentation software was response-adaptive, and depending upon participant choice, the next pairing included a presentation of their previously selected photo with a novel photo. We found that men were more likely than women to select a novel person to date. Further, when participants selected a repeated picture over a novel picture, men took longer to make this decision than women. It seems women exhibited greater cognitive ease than men when selecting a familiar individual to date, whereas men needed more time to deliberate between selecting a familiar mate over a novel mate. These findings lend support to the idea that sex differences in preferences for sexual novelty are a salient sex-specific evolved component of the repertoire of human mating strategies.

Men perceive sexual images quite differently than women; some of this difference may be due to sex differences in to disgust, in particular, disgust related to pathogen avoidance

Predictors of perceptions of sexual images. Jessica Hehman, Catherine Salmon. Human Behavior and Evolution Society 31st annual meeting. Boston 2019. http://tiny.cc/aa1w6y

Abstract: Much of the debate over pornography has focused on whether it is inherently degrading toward women. Previous work has examined this question through content analysis of heterosexual and homosexual pornography, demonstrating no significant differences between these two genres (other than the sex of the participants). However, the question remains that some individuals perceive pornographic images differently than others and some evidence suggests that men perceive such images quite differently than women. Some of this difference may be due to sex differences in to disgust, in particular, disgust related to pathogen avoidance. There is a large literature that focuses on how pathogen avoidance has shaped human behavior from political ideology to in-group/outgroup behavior to sexual risk taking/avoidance. This study examined sex differences in perceptions and how they are influenced by the emotional context of the image as well as participant variables including disgust sensitivity, mate value, and sexual behaviors and attitudes. Males tend to have more positive perceptions of female sexual images whereas females tend to have more positive perceptions of male sexual images. The exception being when there is a negative emotional context in the male sexual images. Further analyses predicting perceptions and their implications will be discussed.

These findings suggest that both nucleus accumbens activation and self-reported pleasure may be heritable and that their phenotypic correlation may be partially explained by shared genetic variation

Inheritance of Neural Substrates for Motivation and Pleasure. Zhi Li et al. Psychological Science, July 18, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797619859340

Abstract: Despite advances in the understanding of the reward system and the role of dopamine in recent decades, the heritability of the underlying neural mechanisms is not known. In the present study, we examined the hemodynamic activation of the nucleus accumbens (NAcc), a key hub of the reward system, in 86 healthy monozygotic twins and 88 healthy dizygotic twins during a monetary-incentive-delay task. The participants also completed self-report measures of pleasure. Using voxelwise heritability mapping, we found that activation of the bilateral NAcc during the anticipation of monetary gains had significant heritability (h2 = .20–.49). Moreover, significant shared genetic covariance was observed between pleasure and NAcc activation during the anticipation of monetary gain. These findings suggest that both NAcc activation and self-reported pleasure may be heritable and that their phenotypic correlation may be partially explained by shared genetic variation.

Keywords: reward system, nucleus accumbens, heritability, motivation, pleasure

Alcohol produces dramatically larger positive mood enhancing and negative mood relieving effects when consumed in social contexts compared to when it is consumed in isolation

Understanding social factors in alcohol reward and risk for problem drinking. Catharine E. Fairbairn, Brynne A. Velia. Psychology of Learning and Motivation, July 18 2019. https://doi.org/10.1016/bs.plm.2019.05.001

Abstract: Researchers have long sought to capture acute rewarding effects associated with drinking alcohol with the view that a better understanding of alcohol's rewards will ultimately inform our knowledge of factors motivating problematic drinking. Importantly, however, although most everyday alcohol consumption occurs in social contexts, and drinkers report that socially enhancing effects of alcohol motivate their drinking, researchers studying alcohol's effects have often examined participants drinking alone and have neglected social elements of alcohol's impact on experience. Here, we present a program of work aimed at examining the social rewards individuals gain from alcohol consumption with the aim of achieving a more complete picture of factors that might reinforce alcohol consumption and potentially lead some to drink excessively. Using methods and measures aimed at tapping social elements of experience, we revisit questions that have been of enduring interest in the alcohol literature, including the question of what mechanisms might explain alcohol's rewarding effects, whether there exist individual differences in sensitivity to alcohol's rewards, as well as the extent to which context-level factors might moderate rewards gained from alcohol. We also explore questions left unanswered within this body of work, together with ongoing and future research directions.

Analysis of 22,484 pornography websites indicated that 93% leak user data to a third party; tracking on these sites is highly concentrated by Google, Oracle and Facebook

Tracking sex: The implications of widespread sexual data leakage and tracking on porn websites. Elena Maris, Timothy Libert, Jennifer Henrichsen. arXiv, Jul 15 2019. https://arxiv.org/abs/1907.06520

Abstract: This paper explores tracking and privacy risks on pornography websites. Our analysis of 22,484 pornography websites indicated that 93% leak user data to a third party. Tracking on these sites is highly concentrated by a handful of major companies, which we identify. We successfully extracted privacy policies for 3,856 sites, 17% of the total. The policies were written such that one might need a two-year college education to understand them. Our content analysis of the sample's domains indicated 44.97% of them expose or suggest a specific gender/sexual identity or interest likely to be linked to the user. We identify three core implications of the quantitative results: 1) the unique/elevated risks of porn data leakage versus other types of data, 2) the particular risks/impact for vulnerable populations, and 3) the complications

Robust relation between higher testosterone & increased unfaithful behavior; in this sample of men aged between 40 & 75 years, 37.5% answered having been unfaithful in the current relationship

Higher testosterone levels are associated with unfaithful behavior in men. C. Klimas et al. Biological Psychology, July 18 2019, 107730. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biopsycho.2019.107730

Highlights
•    A robust relation between higher testosterone and increased unfaithful behavior was observed.
•    Infidelity was measured using direct and sensitive indirect (crosswise) questioning.
•    In this sample of men aged between 40 and 75 years, 37.5% men answered having been unfaithful in the current relationship
•    Subsample analysis indicates a positive association between testosterone and infidelity to be present primarily in men without sexual dysfunction.

Abstract
Background: Infidelity in romantic relationships is a common, but severe issue often causing breakup and severe psychological impairment. Higher levels of testosterone are related to mating-behavior, sexual desire, and infidelity in men with sexual dysfunctions. Previous studies, have insufficiently addressed the potential role of testosterone in infidelity in healthy men.

Methods: A sample of 224 middle-aged self-reporting healthy men being currently in a relationship completed questionnaires on relationship characteristics, infidelity, and provided overnight-fasting saliva samples for testosterone quantification.

Results: In the sample, 37.5% men answered having been unfaithful in the current relationship, while 29% were identified as fulfilling criteria for a sexual dysfunction. Adjusting for covariates, a significant positive association for the frequency of unfaithful behavior and testosterone levels emerged. Subsample analysis indicates a positive association between testosterone and infidelity only to be present in men without sexual dysfunction.

Conclusion: Unfaithful behavior in males is associated with higher testosterone levels.

Emotional Expressions Reconsidered: Challenges to Inferring Emotion From Human Facial Movements

Emotional Expressions Reconsidered: Challenges to Inferring Emotion From Human Facial Movements. Lisa Feldman Barrett et al. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, July 17, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100619832930

Abstract: It is commonly assumed that a person’s emotional state can be readily inferred from his or her facial movements, typically called emotional expressions or facial expressions. This assumption influences legal judgments, policy decisions, national security protocols, and educational practices; guides the diagnosis and treatment of psychiatric illness, as well as the development of commercial applications; and pervades everyday social interactions as well as research in other scientific fields such as artificial intelligence, neuroscience, and computer vision. In this article, we survey examples of this widespread assumption, which we refer to as the common view, and we then examine the scientific evidence that tests this view, focusing on the six most popular emotion categories used by consumers of emotion research: anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise. The available scientific evidence suggests that people do sometimes smile when happy, frown when sad, scowl when angry, and so on, as proposed by the common view, more than what would be expected by chance. Yet how people communicate anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise varies substantially across cultures, situations, and even across people within a single situation. Furthermore, similar configurations of facial movements variably express instances of more than one emotion category. In fact, a given configuration of facial movements, such as a scowl, often communicates something other than an emotional state. Scientists agree that facial movements convey a range of information and are important for social communication, emotional or otherwise. But our review suggests an urgent need for research that examines how people actually move their faces to express emotions and other social information in the variety of contexts that make up everyday life, as well as careful study of the mechanisms by which people perceive instances of emotion in one another. We make specific research recommendations that will yield a more valid picture of how people move their faces to express emotions and how they infer emotional meaning from facial movements in situations of everyday life. This research is crucial to provide consumers of emotion research with the translational information they require.

Keywords: emotion perception, emotional expression, emotion recognition

Faces are a ubiquitous part of everyday life for humans. People greet each other with smiles or nods. They have face-to-face conversations on a daily basis, whether in person or via computers. They capture faces with smartphones and tablets, exchanging photos of themselves and of each other on Instagram, Snapchat, and other social-media platforms. The ability to perceive faces is one of the first capacities to emerge after birth: An infant begins to perceive faces within the first few days of life, equipped with a preference for face-like arrangements that allows the brain to wire itself, with experience, to become expert at perceiving faces (Arcaro, Schade, Vincent, Ponce, & Livingstone, 2017; Cassia, Turati, & Simion, 2004; Gandhi, Singh, Swami, Ganesh, & Sinhaet, 2017; Grossmann, 2015; L. B. Smith, Jayaraman, Clerkin, & Yu, 2018; Turati, 2004; but see Young and Burton, 2018, for a more qualified claim). Faces offer a rich, salient source of information for navigating the social world: They play a role in deciding whom to love, whom to trust, whom to help, and who is found guilty of a crime (Todorov, 2017; Zebrowitz, 1997, 2017; Zhang, Chen, & Yang, 2018). Beginning with the ancient Greeks (Aristotle, in the 4th century BCE) and Romans (Cicero), various cultures have viewed the human face as a window on the mind. But to what extent can a raised eyebrow, a curled lip, or a narrowed eye reveal what someone is thinking or feeling, allowing a perceiver’s brain to guess what that someone will do next?1 The answers to these questions have major consequences for human outcomes as they unfold in the living room, the classroom, the courtroom, and even on the battlefield. They also powerfully shape the direction of research in a broad array of scientific fields, from basic neuroscience to psychiatry.

Understanding what facial movements might reveal about a person’s emotions is made more urgent by the fact that many people believe they already know. Specific configurations of facial-muscle movements2 appear as if they summarily broadcast or display a person’s emotions, which is why they are routinely referred to as emotional expressions and facial expressions. A simple Google search for the phrase “emotional facial expressions” (see Box 1 in the Supplemental Material available online) reveals the ubiquity with which, at least in certain parts of the world, people believe that certain emotion categories are reliably signaled or revealed by certain facial-muscle movement configurations—a set of beliefs we refer to as the common view (also called the classical view; L. F. Barrett, 2017b). Likewise, many cultural products testify to the common view. Here are several examples:

    Technology companies are investing tremendous resources to figure out how to objectively “read” emotions in people by detecting their presumed facial expressions, such as scowling faces, frowning faces, and smiling faces, in an automated fashion. Several companies claim to have already done it (e.g., Affectiva.com, 2018; Microsoft Azure, 2018). For example, Microsoft’s Emotion API promises to take video images of a person’s face to detect what that individual is feeling. Microsoft’s website states that its software “integrates emotion recognition, returning the confidence across a set of emotions . . . such as anger, contempt, disgust, fear, happiness, neutral, sadness, and surprise. These emotions are understood to be cross-culturally and universally communicated with particular facial expressions” (screen 3).

    Countless electronic messages are annotated with emojis or emoticons that are schematized versions of the proposed facial expressions for various emotion categories (Emojipedia.org, 2019).

    Putative emotional expressions are taught to preschool children by displaying scowling faces, frowning faces, smiling faces, and so on, in posters (e.g., use “feeling chart for children” in a Google image search), games (e.g., Miniland emotion games; Miniland Group, 2019), books (e.g., Cain, 2000; T. Parr, 2005), and episodes of Sesame Street (among many examples, see Morenoff, 2014; Pliskin, 2015; Valentine & Lehmann, 2015).3

    Television shows (e.g., Lie to Me; Baum & Grazer, 2009), movies (e.g., Inside Out; Docter, Del Carmen, LeFauve, Cooley, and Lassetter, 2015), and documentaries (e.g., The Human Face, produced by the British Broadcasting Company; Cleese, Erskine, & Stewart, 2001) customarily depict certain facial configurations as universal expressions of emotions.

    Magazine and newspaper articles routinely feature stories in kind: facial configurations depicting a scowl are referred to as “expressions of anger,” facial configurations depicting a smile are referred to as “expressions of happiness,” facial configurations depicting a frown are referred to as “expressions of sadness,” and so on.

    Agents of the U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) were trained to detect emotions and other intentions using these facial configurations, with the goal of identifying and thwarting terrorists (R. Heilig, special agent with the FBI, personal communication, December 15, 2014; L. F. Barrett, 2017c).4

    The facial configurations that supposedly diagnose emotional states also figure prominently in the diagnosis and treatment of psychiatric disorders. One of the most widely used tasks in autism research, the Reading the Mind in the Eyes Test, asks test takers to match photos of the upper (eye) region of a posed facial configuration with specific mental state words, including emotion words (Baron-Cohen, Wheelwright, Hill, Raste, & Plumb, 2001). Treatment plans for people living with autism and other brain disorders often include learning to recognize these facial configurations as emotional expressions (Baron-Cohen, Golan, Wheelwright, & Hill, 2004; Kouo & Egel, 2016). This training does not generalize well to real-world skills, however (Berggren et al., 2018; Kouo & Egel, 2016).

    “Reading” the emotions of a defendant—in the words of Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, to “know the heart and mind of the offender” (Riggins v. Nevada, 1992, p. 142)—is one pillar of a fair trial in the U.S. legal system and in many legal systems in the Western world. Legal actors such as jurors and judges routinely rely on facial movements to determine the guilt and remorse of a defendant (e.g., Bandes, 2014; Zebrowitz, 1997). For example, defendants who are perceived as untrustworthy receive harsher sentences than they otherwise would (J. P. Wilson & Rule, 2015, 2016), and such perceptions are more likely when a person appears to be angry (i.e., the person’s facial structure looks similar to the hypothesized facial expression of anger, which is a scowl; Todorov, 2017). An incorrect inference about defendants’ emotional state can cost them their children, their freedom, or even their lives (for recent examples, see L. F. Barrett, 2017b, beginning on page 183).

But can a person’s emotional state be reasonably inferred from that person’s facial movements? In this article, we offer a systematic review of the evidence, testing the common view that instances of an emotion category are signaled with a distinctive configuration of facial movements that has enough reliability and specificity to serve as a diagnostic marker of those instances. We focus our review on evidence pertaining to six emotion categories that have received the lion’s share of attention in scientific research—anger, disgust, fear, happiness, sadness, and surprise—and that, correspondingly, are the focus of the common view (as evidenced by our Google search, summarized in Box 1 in the Supplemental Material). Our conclusions apply, however, to all emotion categories that have thus far been scientifically studied. We open the article with a brief discussion of its scope, approach, and intended audience. We then summarize evidence on how people actually move their faces during episodes of emotion, referred to as studies of expression production, following which we examine evidence on which emotions are actually inferred from looking at facial movements, referred to as studies of emotion perception. We identify three key shortcomings in the scientific research that have contributed to a general misunderstanding about how emotions are expressed and perceived in facial movements and that limit the translation of this scientific evidence for other uses:

    Limited reliability (i.e., instances of the same emotion category are neither reliably expressed through nor perceived from a common set of facial movements).

    Lack of specificity (i.e., there is no unique mapping between a configuration of facial movements and instances of an emotion category).

    Limited generalizability (i.e., the effects of context and culture have not been sufficiently documented and accounted for).

We then discuss our conclusions, followed by proposals for consumers on how they might use the existing scientific literature. We also provide recommendations for future research on emotion production and perception with consumers of that research in mind. We have included additional detail on some topics of import or interest in the Supplemental Material.

Are Children a Joy or a Burden? The educated hold more negative views

Are Children a Joy or a Burden? Individual- and Macro-level Characteristics and the Perception of Children. Haya Stier, Amit Kaplan. European Journal of Population, July 16 2019. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10680-019-09535-y

Abstract: This study examines how individuals perceive children, focusing on two dimensions—the positive aspects of having children and the perception of children as a burden—and taking into account relations with both individual- and macro-level characteristics. Three dimensions are examined on the macro-level: policies that support families, the cultural environment, and economic conditions. The study is based on the 2012 ISSP module on “Family and Gender Roles” and covers 24 OECD countries. The findings show that countries vary widely in their negative perceptions of children, but evince relatively greater similarity in their positive perceptions. Institutional support for children and working parents and traditional family values as captured by religiosity are important factors in explaining cross-country variation in negative perceptions of children. Further, policies may help men and women adopt a more positive view of children and reduce differences among educational groups in relation to children.

Keywords: Children Attitudes ISSP Comparative study