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

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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).