Higher empathy for a suffering accident victim was associated with greater preference to let the person die rather than keep the person alive; participants had greater preference to end the lives of friends than strangers

Jenkins AC (2019) Empathy affects tradeoffs between life's quality and duration. PLoS ONE 14(10): e0221652. Aug 12 2019. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0221652

Abstract: Sharing others’ emotional experience through empathy has been widely linked to prosocial behavior, i.e., behavior that aims to improve others’ welfare. However, different aspects of a person’s welfare do not always move in concert. The present research investigated how empathy affects tradeoffs between two different aspects of others’ welfare: their experience (quality of life) and existence (duration of life). Three experiments offer evidence that empathy increases the priority people place on reducing others’ suffering relative to prolonging their lives. Participants assigned to high or low empathy conditions considered scenarios in which saving a person’s life was incompatible with extinguishing the person’s suffering. Higher empathy for a suffering accident victim was associated with greater preference to let the person die rather than keep the person alive. Participants expressed greater preference to end the lives of friends than strangers (Experiment 1), those whose perspectives they had taken than those whom they considered from afar (Experiment 2), and those who remained alert and actively suffering than those whose injuries had rendered them unconscious (Experiment 3). These results highlight a distinction between empathy’s effects on the motivation to reduce another person’s suffering and its effects on the prosocial behaviors that sometimes, but do not necessarily, follow from that motivation, including saving the person’s life. Results have implications for scientific understanding of the relationship between empathy and morality and for contexts in which people make decisions on behalf of others.

Discussion

People are often encouraged to cultivate empathy toward others because doing so is expected to be better for those individuals. The present research explored the question, “better” in what sense? Participants faced hypothetical tradeoffs between two aspects of another person’s welfare: the quality and the duration of the person’s life. In otherwise identical situations, social distance and lower empathy were associated with greater preference for a suffering person to be rescued from an accident and continue to live. Social closeness and higher empathy were associated with greater preference for the victim to die on the spot, reflecting a greater desire to extinguish the victim’s suffering. These results caution against an oversimplified view of empathy in which it leads to better outcomes for a target person in a general sense. Instead, these results support the view that empathy motivates behaviors that are better in the specific sense that they aim to improve the target’s psychological experience—something that often, but not necessarily, goes hand in-hand with other desired outcomes.

More broadly, the current findings highlight the importance of distinguishing proximate from ultimate levels of explanation [59] when considering the motivational consequences of empathy. From an ultimate or evolutionary perspective, elevated empathic responses to the suffering of close others could serve adaptive functions by prompting actions that, on average, keep close others alive [1,14,60]. Because psychological suffering can often serve as a useful proxy for damage to other aspects of a person’s welfare, a person’s motivation to reduce close others’ suffering might, on average, have the effect of prolonging the lives of individuals who could propagate that person’s genes (e.g., children, siblings) [1] and/or reciprocate by helping the person survive some future mishap (e.g., friends, neighbors) [60], thereby increasing fitness. Yet, if, at a proximate level, empathy operates on psychological experience, then empathy will not necessarily lead to typical helping behaviors on any given occasion. In particular, elevated empathic responses to close others could appear to be maladaptive in instances when behaviors that would promote the other person’s existence and experience are misaligned.

These findings demonstrate that empathizing with another person can have detrimental effects on aspects of that same person’s welfare, joining other findings that empathizing with one person can have detrimental effects on the welfare of other people [61,62]. Specifically, past research has shown that empathizing with one person can lead the empathizer to privilege that person’s welfare over the welfare of other individuals with whom one has empathized less [63]. Whereas those studies suggest that empathy can motivate decisions that violate group-based moral principles (e.g., fairness), the current studies suggest that empathy can also motivate decisions that violate individual-based moral principles, at least as they are typically understood, including avoiding harm [64,65]. At the extreme, the current results suggest that empathy sometimes increases preferences for ending a person’s life. On some views, this would mean that empathy can increase people’s preference that the ultimate form of harm (death) befall the target of empathy him- or herself.

The current findings accordingly inform the relationship between empathy and morality. In past research, a role for harm aversion in moral decisions has been discussed at length [66–68], but whether empathy selectively increases an aversion to certain types of harm has not characterized. The current results help to clarify the scope of empathy-related harm aversion by suggesting that empathy may increase people’s aversion, first and foremost, to others’ affective or psychological harm—i.e., their pain and suffering. To the extent that empathy sometimes does motivate life-saving, it could be the case that empathy primarily increases the aversion, not to death itself, but to the suffering that often precedes it.

If empathizing with another person can have detrimental effects on that person’s welfare, why have these effects been mostly absent in past research? One possible explanation is that past research has predominantly studied decisions in which one course of action is uniformly better for the target person and another course of action is uniformly worse [69]. In these situations, benefits to the quality and duration of a person’s life move in tandem, and a motivation to improve another’s experience could bring with it benefits to the person’s existence. In contrast, the current studies focus on decisions in which the quality and duration of a person’s life are in conflict, suggesting that the link between empathy and the motivation to engage in prototypical helping behaviors (like saving another’s life), may hinge on the extent to which those behaviors are compatible with improving the person’s experience.

The use of hypothetical scenarios in the present work brings with it several limitations on generalizability. First, these scenarios were not meant to reflect decisions that typical individuals are likely to face in everyday life but rather to isolate certain factors in a way that made it possible to illuminate the consequences of empathic motivation. Just as individuals in daily life rarely name the color of ink in which a word is written, as they do in the Stroop task, or flip train switches, as they do in trolley dilemmas, participants are unlikely to find themselves in a position of deciding whether someone in a burning building should be rescued or die on the spot. By their extreme nature, these scenarios enabled us to create conditions in which extinguishing a person’s suffering and prolonging his or her life were incompatible, making it possible to capture shifts in people’s preferences toward one outcome at the cost of the other. Second, the current studies deliberately did not ask participants what they would do if they were personally involved in the situation. Additional research is needed to understand how the observed effect of empathy on participants’ preferences to end a suffering person’s life interacts with other motivations that guide behavior, including the motivation to be a moral person, to follow through on responsibilities, to avoid guilt, to abide by the law, and others.

Future research is needed to explore implications of the current findings for domains in which people regularly do make decisions on behalf of others, including medical decision-making, where a need for empathy is often cited [70–74]. In particular, if empathy increases the priority placed on a person’s experience, empathy may be more beneficial in some kinds of medical situations than in others. For example, empathy might help a physician perform an injection carefully or convey bad news sensitively; in cases like these, there is little conflict between behaviors that promote the quality and duration of a patient’s life. However, empathizing with a patient in a tradeoff situation between his or her experience and long-term health may tug physicians toward maximizing the quality of the patient’s experience in the moment rather than the number of moments in the patient’s future. This possibility is broadly consistent with past research on end-of-life decisions demonstrating that family members and nurses are more inclined to end the life of a terminally ill patient when the person has intractable pain [75] or is unable to carry out valued life activities [76]. In turn, these results suggest the tentative prediction, open to future research, that physicians with lower trait empathy might be more inclined to take courses of action to prolong a suffering patient’s life.

In interpreting these findings, it is worth noting that our experiments measured empathic emotion, or “affective empathy” [21]. As such, we anticipate that these findings will apply to other situations in which individuals empathize with a suffering person, as characterized by experiencing an affective state congruent with that person’s situation [9,15,16]. A subset of those experiences may also be accompanied by feelings of empathic concern—feelings of caring, compassion, or pity for the other person [47]—which could combine with the phenomenon observed here to guide a perceiver’s ultimate decision about which course of action to pursue [50]. Relatedly, future research will be needed to characterize more precisely the respective contributions to decision-making of (i) the strength of the empathic response to another person’s suffering itself and (ii) the strength of the motivation to help a suffering person with whom one has empathized.

These findings do not necessarily challenge the overall observation that empathy motivates improving others’ welfare. However, they do help to specify the kind of welfare that empathy motivates improving and point to some of the potential consequences of that motivation. In the realm of individual decision-making, it is well known that people’s affective responses can lead them to pursue immediately desirable psychological states (e.g., the pleasure of chocolate chip cookies) at the expense of other goals (e.g., maintaining a svelte figure). Similarly, empathizing with the affective experiences of other people might boost one’s motivation to prioritize the quality of those people’s internal states at the expense of other aspects of their welfare—including, at the extreme, the durations of their lives.

Meal Memories Are Special: Superior Memory for Eating Versus Non-eating Behaviors

Seitz, Benjamin M., Aaron Blaisdell, and A. J. Tomiyama. 2019. “Meal Memories Are Special: Superior Memory for Eating Versus Non-eating Behaviors.” PsyArXiv. October 25. doi:10.31234/osf.io/d54cp

Abstract: Are all memories created equal, or are we biased to remember information most relevant to our evolutionary fitness? This question is underexplored in dominant models of memory that often treat all incoming information with equal potential to be remembered. We hypothesized that memory is systematically biased towards remembering fitness-relevant behaviors such as eating. While memory of eating has been shown to mediate hunger and food consumption, whether memory for a meal is itself special compared to non-meal related behaviors is unknown. We report memory of an eating behavior to be more accurate than memory of nearly identical, but non-eating related behaviors. We rule out a potential physiological explanation of this effect and suggest the behavioral aspect of eating is required for the mnemonic benefit. These results suggest the utility of exploring evolutionary influences on memory and demonstrate that the fitness relevance of a behavior potentiates its ability to be remembered.

We hypothesize that sexual behavior in pregnant women should reflect adaptive strategies and that pregnant women will be particularly strategic about their sexual behavior in order to maximize potential benefits & minimizing costs

Women’s sexual strategies in pregnancy. Jaclyn Ross, Elizabeth G. Pillsworth. Evolution and Human Behavior, October 24 2019. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2019.10.001

Abstract: Humans exhibit an unusual pattern of sexual behavior compared to other mammalian females. Women's extended sexuality has been hypothesized to be related to a variety of possible benefits, especially non-genetic reproductive benefits, such as securing male investment via reinforced pairbonds or paternity confusion. But sexual behavior also comes at a cost, particularly for pregnant women, in terms of energetic costs, potential disease, and possible harm to the fetus. We hypothesize, therefore, that sexual behavior in pregnant women should reflect adaptive strategies and that pregnant women will be particularly strategic about their sexual behavior in order to maximize potential benefits while minimizing potential costs. One hundred twelve pregnant women completed a survey of their partners' qualities and their sexual desires toward their primary partners and men other than their primary partners. Results showed that women's perceptions of relationship threat positively predicted sexual desire for primary partners, while their perceptions of their partner's investing qualities negatively predicted sexual desire for extra-pair mates. These qualities, as well as cues to partner's genetic quality and gestation age, also interacted in ways that suggest that pregnant women's sexual desires are sensitive to cues of future investment and relationship stability.

Men View Their Ex-Partners More Favorably Than Women Do: Ex-partner attitudes correlated positively with more permissive sexual attitudes and the amount of social support that individuals perceived from their ex-partners

Men View Their Ex-Partners More Favorably Than Women Do. Ursula Athenstaedt et al. Social Psychological and Personality Science, October 24, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550619876633

Abstract: Our research deals with the question how people look back at their ex-partners—those with whom they were once romantically involved? Such views are important because they may shape our views of current relationships or new (potential) partners. Across three studies (total N = 876), we find that men hold more positive attitudes towards their female ex-partners than women do towards their male ex-partners. Gender-related variables provide further insight into this phenomenon. Ex-partner attitudes correlated positively with more permissive sexual attitudes and the amount of social support that individuals perceived from their ex-partners (both higher in men), whereas the ex-partner attitudes correlated negatively with attributions of greater responsibility for the breakup to ex-partner or relationship itself (both higher in women). Both men and women reported more positive ex-partner attitudes if they were single or had lower breakup acceptance.

Keywords ex-partner, attitudes, gender difference, romantic relationships

General Discussion

Two studies revealed that men are more likely than women to evaluate their former romantic partners more favorably. A third, larger study replicated this finding. All three studies yielded medium effect sizes (Cohen, 1988). A fourth study indicated that these findings are not intuitively obvious to most laypersons since only one in four laypeople (24%) anticipated these findings (and with most people predicting no gender difference).
Ex-partner attitudes have not been studied extensively until now. To the best of our knowledge, the present research is the first to document that men and women differ in how they tend to view their ex-partners. What are the psychological implications of these differences? Interestingly, Imhoff and Banse (2011) have also reported correlations between ex-partner attitudes and both subjective well-being and life satisfaction. Moreover, Spielmann, Joel, MacDonald, and Kogan (2012) found that individuals who longed for their ex-partners were more likely to experience lower relationship quality in their subsequent relationships. Our results imply that men’s new relationships might suffer more than women’s new relationships. Because the present research is largely exploratory, however, our answers remain speculative and tentative. Nevertheless, some possibilities and issues for future research seem worth sharing.
Permissive sexual attitudes significantly predicted ex-partner attitudes, and this variable was also related to gender. These findings build on recent research by Mogliski and Welling (2017) who found that men rate sexual access (more than women do) as a reason for staying in touch with an ex-partner. Consistent with evolutionary theorizing, greater permissive sexual attitudes held by men (compared to women) might underlie their more favorable views of former partners. For example, it is possible that men, in their stronger pursuit of multiple partners and more playful orientation to love, do not want to close the door to sexual intimacy with their former partners completely. Clearly, favorable ex-partner views support this mind-set, even if their former (female) partners are unlikely to welcome it (Meltzer, McNulty, & Maner, 2017).
Moreover, all of the variables that correlated with ex-partner attitudes can be linked in theory to gender roles. For example, evidence exists that most men tend to profit more from romantic relationships than most women partly because they receive more social support from their female partners (Antonucci & Akiyama, 1987; Fydrich et al., 2009; Rueger et al., 2008). These insights might make it easier for men (rather than women) to look back on their ex-partners in a more friendly and favorable manner.
Our results also revealed that breakup attributions regarding the partner (or relationship) correlate with the ex-partner attitudes. Given that women tend to make these attributions more than men, we assume that it is “something about him” that may launch many romantic breakups. Although psychology often emphasizes differences in construal, we suspect both subjective and objective differences in men-as-partners and women-as-partners are responsible for instigating breakups. Men are, in fact, much more likely than women to engage in harmful behaviors following breakups, including various addictions and mental and/or physical partner abuse (Capezza, D’Intino, Flynn, & Arriaga, 2017; Reid et al., 2008). Thus, our findings may also reflect gender differences happening in romantic relationships, with women actually being more supportive than men vice versa.
Last but not least, we found support that ex-partner attitudes may serve as a sign that individuals have overcome a breakup. This is most likely true of participants who are in a new relationship and report greater breakup acceptance. This result is consistent with other recent research (e.g., Brumbaugh & Fraley, 2015) showing that individuals in new relationships have more resolution from their ex-partners and feel more confident in their own desirability. Our research also indicates that after entering new relationships, both men and women hold less favorable ex-partner views.
In closing, the present research documents a new phenomenon that seems far from obvious to most people. Women tend to have more negative attitudes toward their former romantic partners than men do. While our studies document this stable gender difference, we do not know its specific origins. Even though both evolutionary and gender role theories provide some valuable insights, additional research is needed to pin down the key origins. The use of longitudinal studies in which individuals are followed across time and relationships to determine how and why ex-partner views develop will be particularly helpful in this regard.

To maintain current beliefs, individuals may evaluate contrary evidence too critically; priming individuals’ scientific reasoning skills reduces this myside bias only when accompanied by direct instructions to apply them

Does “putting on your thinking cap” reduce myside bias in evaluation of scientific evidence? Caitlin Drummond & Baruch Fischhoff. Thinking & Reasoning, Volume 25, 2019 - Issue 4, Pages 477-505, Jan 31 2019. https://doi.org/10.1080/13546783.2018.1548379

Abstract: The desire to maintain current beliefs can lead individuals to evaluate contrary evidence more critically than consistent evidence. We test whether priming individuals’ scientific reasoning skills reduces this often-observed myside bias, when people evaluate scientific evidence about which they have prior positions. We conducted three experiments in which participants read a news-style article about a study that either supported or opposed their attitudes regarding the Affordable Care Act. We manipulated whether participants completed a test posing scientific reasoning problems before or after reading the article and evaluating the evidence that it reported. Consistent with previous research, we found that participants were biased in favor of evidence consistent with their prior attitudes regarding the Affordable Care Act. Priming individuals’ scientific reasoning skills reduced myside bias only when accompanied by direct instructions to apply those skills to the task at hand. We discuss the processes contributing to biased evaluation of scientific evidence.

Keywords: Judgment, reasoning, scientific communication, myside bias

Check also: Political partisans disagreed about the importance of conditional probabilities; highly numerate partisans were more polarized than less numerate partisans

It depends: Partisan evaluation of conditional probability importance. Leaf Van Boven et al. Cognition, Mar 2 2019, https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2019/03/political-partisans-disagreed-about.html

And: Biased Policy Professionals. Sheheryar Banuri, Stefan Dercon, and Varun Gauri. World Bank Policy Research Working Paper 8113. https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2017/08/biased-policy-professionals-world-bank.html

And: Dispelling the Myth: Training in Education or Neuroscience Decreases but Does Not Eliminate Beliefs in Neuromyths. Kelly Macdonald et al. Frontiers in Psychology, Aug 10 2017. https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2017/08/training-in-education-or-neuroscience.html

And: Wisdom and how to cultivate it: Review of emerging evidence for a constructivist model of wise thinking. Igor Grossmann. European Psychologist, in press. Pre-print: https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2017/08/wisdom-and-how-to-cultivate-it-review.html

And: Individuals with greater science literacy and education have more polarized beliefs on controversial science topics. Caitlin Drummond and Baruch Fischhoff. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, vol. 114 no. 36, pp 9587–9592, https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2017/09/individuals-with-greater-science.html

And: Expert ability can actually impair the accuracy of expert perception when judging others' performance: Adaptation and fallibility in experts' judgments of novice performers. By Larson, J. S., & Billeter, D. M. (2017). Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 43(2), 271–288. https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2017/06/expert-ability-can-actually-impair.html

And: Collective Intelligence for Clinical Diagnosis—Are 2 (or 3) Heads Better Than 1? Stephan D. Fihn. JAMA Network Open. 2019;2(3):e191071, https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2019/03/one-conclusion-that-can-be-drawn-from.html

And Poor Metacognitive Awareness of Belief Change. Michael Wolfe and Todd Williams. The Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, Oct 2017. https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2017/10/poor-metacognitive-awareness-of-belief.html

Cognitive, social, emotional, and subjective health benefits of computer use in adults: A 9-year longitudinal study from the midlife in the United States (MIDUS)

Cognitive, social, emotional, and subjective health benefits of computer use in adults: A 9-year longitudinal study from the midlife in the United States (MIDUS). Andree Hartantoa et al. Computers in Human Behavior, October 24 2019, 106179. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2019.106179

Highlights
• Computer use predicted positive changes in executive functioning.
• Computer use predicted positive changes in socioemotional well-being.
• Computer use was not associated with objective health and engagement in physical activities.
• Cognitive functioning and socioemotional well-being were associated with greater computer use over time.

Abstract: Computer use has been proposed to carry a host of benefits for cognitive function and socioemotional well-being in older adults. However, the literature on computer use remains equivocal as extant research suffers from mixed findings as well as methodological limitations, such as overreliance on cross-sectional designs, small sample sizes, and use of narrow criterions. The current studies (NStudy 1 = 3,294, NStudy 2 = 2683) sought to address these limitations through the use of a large-scale, nationally representative, and longitudinal dataset. We found that frequency of computer use—over a period of approximately 9 years—longitudinally predicted positive changes in executive functioning, hedonic well-being, eudaimonic well-being, sense of control, optimism, self-esteem, and social relationships with family and friends. We also found that these cognitive and socioemotional benefits are associated with greater computer use over time. In contrast to studies showing that computer use promoted sedentary lifestyles or adverse physical health outcomes, we instead found that computer use longitudinally predicted better self-reported physical and mental health and reduced functional disabilities. The current findings attest to the promising benefits of computer use in promoting healthy cognitive and socioemotional functioning across midlife and old age.

Keywords: Executive functionsHedonic well-beingEudaimonic well-beingPhysical healthComputer use

Extreme time-pressure reveals utilitarian intuitions in sacrificial dilemmas; the effect is small, but the trend is stable; models of moral cognition should be prepared to include both deontological and utilitarian intuitions

Extreme time-pressure reveals utilitarian intuitions in sacrificial dilemmas. Alejandro Rosas & David Aguilar-Pardo. Thinking & Reasoning, Oct 23 2019. https://doi.org/10.1080/13546783.2019.1679665

Abstract: The mainstream version of the dual-process model of moral cognition claims that utilitarian responses (URs) to sacrificial moral dilemmas are the outputs of controlled cognitive processes. This version predicts that interfering with cognitive resources should elicit more intuitive-deontological responses. Attempts in the literature to experimentally confirm this prediction have been inconclusive. Some experiments partially confirm the prediction, but others suggest that URs are slightly favoured in the time-pressure condition. We present a sequence of four studies with the same background design (total N = 2261) implementing extreme time-pressure. Our data consistently suggest that time-pressure increases URs. The effect is small, but the trend is stable. When confronted with sacrificial dilemmas, our samples slightly favour URs under time pressure. Models of moral cognition should be prepared to include both deontological and utilitarian intuitions as part of the basic structure of moral processing.

Keywords: Deontology, dual-process, moral cognition, intuition, reflection, utilitarianism

Older women tended to laugh less frequently than did younger women, but this age difference was not found in men

Daily occurrence of laughter: Relationships with age, gender, and Type A personality. Rod A. Martin, Nicholas A. Kuiper. Humor - International Journal of Humor Research 12(4):355-384, January 1999. DOI 10.1515/humr.1999.12.4.355

Abstract: This study examined the circumstances surrounding the natural occurrence of laughter in everyday life. Eighty community participants (50 women and 30 men), ranging in age from 17 to 79, each completed a daily laughter record for three days, along with self-report measures of laughter responsiveness, coping humor, and Type A personality characteristics. Laughter incidents were coded according to time of day, source and initiator of laughter, and whether the individual was alone or with others. On average, participants reported approximately 18 daily incidents of laughter, but with wide individual variation being evident (0 to 89 incidents per day). Frequency of laughter also generally increased throughout the day, being most pronounced in the evenings. The most prominent source of daily laughter was spontaneous situational laughter, with "canned" jokes accounting for the least amount of naturally generated laughter. In accord with the primarily social nature of laughter, most incidents of laughter occurred in the presence of others, and were also initiated by others. Overall, men and women did not differ in the frequency with which they laughed. However, gender differences did emerge when age was taken into account. Older women tended to laugh less frequently than did younger women, but this age difference was not found in men. In addition, for both men and women, older individuals did not show the general increase in frequency of laughter during the evening. Gender differences also emerged in the correlations between total laughter frequency and personality variables. For example, a higher frequency of daily laughter was associated with greater Type A characteristics in men, but with fewer Type A characteristics in women. These findings are discussed in terms of possible gender differences in the meaning and function of laughter.

Hi, My Name is Wealthy: Women’s Dating Behaviors in Relation to the Perceived Wealth of Perspective Mates

Hi, My Name is Wealthy: Women’s Dating Behaviors in Relation to the Perceived Wealth of Perspective Mates. Hunter, H., Benoit, T., Reid, G., Bourgeois, C., Tiller, A.,& Fisher, M. L. EvoS Journal, Vol. 10, Special Issue 1, Oct 2019. http://evostudies.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/10/Hunter_et-al_Vol10SpIss1.pdf

Abstract: It has been cross-culturally documented that women exhibit a preference for mates who  possess  resources  or  traits  that  signal  potential  wealth.  The  majority  of  this literature   relies   on   self   reported   mate   preferences. Here   we   report   on   two experiments to test whether women’s willingness to date men is actually influenced by   their   perceived   wealth.   Online   dating   profiles   were   created   to   present photographs of men and information about their current bank account status (Study 1), or to indirectly indicate their level of wealth (Study 2). In Study 1, the faces were presented  with  alternating  high  and  low  bank  account  balances.  We  hypothesized that women who viewed men with high bank account values would evaluate them as more desirable than women who viewed men with low bank account values. That is, they  would  be  more  likely  to  engage  with  him  in  an  online  conversation,  meet  with him for a casual coffee, accept an invitation of a date, consider him for a one-night stand,  consider  him  for  a  short-term  relationship,  or  consider  him  for  a  long-term relationship.  It  was  also  hypothesized  that  women  would  rate  the  men  with  high bank account balances as more physically attractive than the men with the low bank account balances. The results generally do not support the hypotheses. In Study 2, we  replaced  bank  account  balances  with  indirect  indicators  of  wealth.  Our  results indicate that women were significantly less interested in wealthier men as compared to  poorer  men,  possibly  because  the  wealthy  men  may  be  perceived  as  bragging. Together, these studies suggest men’s wealth may not be as important to women as has been previously considered, but further research is needed.

Keywords: Dating, Wealth, Physical Attractiveness, Mate Preferences,Men

Hunger for Knowledge: How the Irresistible Lure of Curiosity is Generated in the Brain

Hunger for Knowledge: How the Irresistible Lure of Curiosity is Generated in the Brain. Johnny King L Lau, Hiroki Ozono, Kei Kuratomi, Asuka Komiya, Kou Murayama. bioRxiv, Oct 23 2019. https://doi.org/10.1101/473975

Abstract: Curiosity is often portrayed as a desirable feature of human faculty. However, curiosity may come at a cost that sometimes puts people in a harmful situation. Here, with a set of behavioural and neuroimaging experiments using stimuli that strongly trigger curiosity (e.g., magic tricks), we examined the psychological and neural mechanisms underlying the irresistible lure of curiosity. We consistently demonstrated that across different samples, people were indeed willing to gamble, subjecting themselves to physical risks (i.e. electric shocks) in order to satisfy their curiosity for trivial knowledge that carries no apparent instrumental value. Also, this seductive power of curiosity shares common neural mechanisms with that of extrinsic incentives (i.e. hunger for food). In particular, we showed that acceptance (compared to rejection) of curiosity/incentive-driven gambles was accompanied by enhanced activity in the ventral striatum (when curiosity was elicited), which extended into the dorsal striatum (when participants made a decision).

Big Surprise!!! Recent research has found that therapists lie to patients

Ethics of psychotherapist deception. Drew A. Curtis & Leslie J. Kelley. Ethics & Behavior, Oct 3 2019. https://doi.org/10.1080/10508422.2019.1674654

ABSTRACT: Since Tolman’s efforts to establish a code for psychologists, the American Psychological Association’s (APA) ethics code has been maintained and revised for over six decades. One of APA’s five core principles is honesty and integrity. Recent research has found that therapists lie to patients. The current project explored therapists’ and non-therapists’ beliefs about the ethics of therapist deception. We recruited 245 students and 38 therapists who read and rated vignettes of therapists lying or being honest. Overall, participants judged therapist deception as unacceptable and unethical. The results of therapist honesty perceived as most ethical and acceptable align with APA’s value of honesty and integrity for the profession. Given findings from previous research suggesting the use of deception by psychotherapists, psychologists’ ethics code would benefit by addressing honesty and integrity in more detail within the context of psychotherapy.

KEYWORDS: deception, honesty, therapists, ethics, psychotherapy

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Discussion

The current study evaluated the ethics of psychotherapist deception from the perspectives ofpsychotherapists and non-therapists. Therapist honesty was perceived to be more ethical thantherapist deception when using an ethics scale to rate vignettes and when being asked to explicitlyrate therapist deception. Additionally, psychotherapists endorsed that they and other psychothera-pists would be most likely to act in accordance with the therapist’s actions in the honest vignettecompared to all the deceptive vignettes. Therefore, psychotherapists appear to follow the principle ofintegrity in their actions and believe that other practitioners act similarly.

Both psychotherapists and students indicated that lying to clients is unethical and unacceptable touse within therapy. Therapists’beliefs about the use of deception being unethical was not related totheir years of experience or the worldviews they held. This finding is not surprising given theprofessional values of integrity and honesty (APA,2017) and therapists’value of honesty (Curtis &Hart,2015). Honesty is often seen as virtuous in ethics (Aquinas,1947; Aristotle,1941; Kant,1997)and is viewed as part of a person’s moral identity (Strohminger & Nichols,2014). Lying on the otherhand, is generally costly (Bok,1978). Deception threatens the value of honesty within the profession.The use of deception may be viewed as unacceptable within psychotherapy because of attitudestoward people who use deception and its effects on relationships. Psychotherapists and otherprofessionals hold negative attitudes toward clients and patients who lie (Curtis,2015; Curtis &Hart,2015; Curtis, Huang, & Nicks,2018; Dickens & Curtis,2019). Additionally, the use ofdeception in relationships damages trust and is related to less satisfaction (Hart et al.,2014;Kaplar,2006; Möllering,2009).

Most psychotherapists indicated that the use of deception should never be used or used rarely(less than 10% of cases). This finding is interesting because research has revealed that mostpsychotherapists have lied to their clients or patients in therapy (Curtis & Hart,2015). However, while most therapists have been deceptive, it is unclear how often therapists use deception withintherapy. If psychotherapists employ deception as often as the general population (Serota et al.,2010)or clients (Curtis & Hart,2019), then most would not lie often. In the current study, over half ofpsychotherapists believed that the use of deception may be acceptable in less than 10 percent ofcases. Considering that previous research suggests that large percentage of psychotherapists admitthey have lied, while a large percentage of psychotherapists in the current study indicated thatdeception should rarely or never occur, perhaps there is a discrepancy between the values andactions of many psychotherapists. This discrepancy could be explained by moral disengagement(Bandura,2016) or moral hypocrisy (Batson & Thompson,2001; Batson, Thompson, Seuferling, &Strongman,1999; Hart et al.,2014). Therefore, psychotherapists may strive for and value honestyand the ethical standards of the profession while sometimes engaging in deceptions.

Over half of psychotherapists believed that deceptive instructions contradict the informed consentprocess and violates APA’s ethical principles and code of conduct. Additionally, just under half ofthe psychotherapists believed that lying to clients is not permissible even if it maximizes benefits andminimizes harm, while about 29% affirmed this position and 24% held a neutral position. Aspreviously mentioned, the APA (2017) ethical principles and code of conduct states“In situationsin which deception may be ethically justifiable to maximize benefits and minimize harm, psychol-ogists have a serious obligation to consider the need for, the possible consequences of, and theirresponsibility to correct any resulting mistrust or other harmful effects that arise from the use ofsuch techniques”(¶ 4). Given the code, many psychotherapists appear to exercise caution whenconsidering the use of deception psychotherapy, while some affirm the use of deception when itbenefits the client and many remain neutral. This wide variety of perspectives provides some initialevidence that further guidance regarding the use of deception within therapeutic interactions may behelpful to psychotherapists. Additional guidelines to Section 10 of the APA (2017) code can helpbring uniformity of practice and training, with the potential of positively influencing the reputationof psychotherapeutic practice by decreasing the frequency of trust violations. Based on the currentfindings, guidelines in Section 10 may need to provide more coverage of the use of deception basedon the principle of integrity and with regards to the informed consent process (10.01).

In order to provide additional specificity beyond deception being tacitly and explicitly rated asless ethical than honesty, we explored various types of deceptions. White lies were rated as the leastethical by the psychotherapists and blatant lies were rated as least ethical by students. Our hypothesiswas partially confirmed, in that students rated the blatant lie as the least ethical, however, therapistsrated the white lie as the least ethical. This finding is interesting because blatant lies are typicallyviewed as the least acceptable type of deception and white lies are often viewed as more acceptablethan other deceptions in similar vignette studies that have examined intimate relationships(Peterson,1996), parental relationships (Cargill & Curtis,2017), and in psychotherapy relationshipsfrom a client perspective (Curtis & Hart,2019). Curtis and Hart (2015) found that therapists weremost likely to lie to patients if they thought it protected patients. While white lies are generallyperceived to be more acceptable to tell, they are not as well received (Hart et al.,2014) and arenegatively correlated with relational satisfaction (Kaplar,2006). Further, when the norm of honestyis salient, white lies can lead to cognitive dissonance and produce negative affect (Argo & Shiv,2012). The reason for therapists rating the white lie as least ethical was not clearly identified in thecurrent study. One possibility is that the white lie vignette involved a deception to the patient abouthope of a treatment rather than a white lie based on a patient’s new haircut. Both lies carry an intentto maintain the therapeutic alliance but psychotherapists may have perceived the former as moreconsequential. Psychotherapists may have believed that a positive response to a patient asking abouttreatment, while it could foster a therapeutic alliance, may not protect the patient. Psychotherapistsalso indicated that they would be less likely than other therapists to use white lies. Interestingly, thestudents rated the white lie as more ethical than psychotherapists. Students may have focused moreon the hope that the therapist seems to instill in the patient compared to the concerns of treatment.

There was also a difference between students and psychotherapists with regard to the ethics ofthe failed deception, where students rated it higher than psychotherapists. A failed deceptioninvolves something actually occurring but the communicator still intentionally misleads another(Peterson,1996). Students may have rated this vignette as more ethical than psychotherapistsbecause of the result being congruent with what was initially stated, even with the intent tomislead. Psychotherapists may have viewed it as less ethical because it involves a psychologisttaking deceptive action against the patient. However, it is important to note that while differenceswere found between the samples, the failed deception vignette was significantly rated less ethicalthan the honest vignette. This finding, along with the white lie, suggests that psychotherapists andstudents or the general public may view the use of deceptions differently within psychotherapy.

While the current study is unique by its empirical approach to investigating ethical perceptions oftherapist deception, there are some limitations to note. The study used a response-driven samplingmethod for recruiting psychotherapists. This method can lead to a sampling bias, in that partici-pants are sharing the study with others who are like them or hold similar values. Another limitationof the study is the recruitment of undergraduate students to represent the general public. Whileundergraduate students represent the public by having attended psychotherapy or able to seektherapeutic services, they also may have different experiences and education that affect theirperceptions of psychotherapists. Another limitation is in the use of vignettes. Participants wereintentionally not given explicit instructions about whether the vignette was an honest exchange ordeceptive exchange so that they rated the deception without being primed. However, when usingvignettes, participants could be responding to a specific part or adding to the vignette. For example,the white lie vignette could have been viewed as holding more serious consequences for psy-chotherapists than students based on the white lie involving a response about treatment. Futurestudies could examine simplified vignettes or even ask therapists to indicate beliefs about theacceptability of using various types of deception with patients. The current study did not differ-entiate between everyday lies (DePaulo & Kashy,1998) and serious lies (DePaulo, Ansfield,Kirkendol, & Boden,2004). Future research may want to explore if therapist deception is vieweddifferently when the lies told are serious compared to everyday or social lies. Additionally, futurestudies could explore the nuances of telling white lies in therapy by measuring the ethics andacceptability of a white lie told for the sake of client, therapeutic relationship, or involving treatmentand outcome. Researchers may also explore the various situations and ethical decision-makingprocess of therapists when using deception within therapy. This is especially important to under-stand the attributions and biases that play into decisions to deceive (e.g., this will benefit the clientor the relationship). Bok (1978) claimed that“the most serious miscalculation people make whenweighing lies is to evaluate the costs and benefits of a particular lie in an isolated case, and then tofavor lies if the benefits seem to outweigh the costs”(p. xix). Bok (1978) suggested that these specificmiscalculations can impact a person’s integrity, self-respect, and endanger others. Lastly, it isunclear how often therapists use deception in psychotherapy. Given that therapists report deceptionshould rarely be used or never used, it would be important to discover the frequencies by whichtherapist use deception.

The use of deception in the practice of psychotherapy has been largely overlooked in literature.Medical ethics, specifically in the practice of medicine and nursing, has extensively addressed thevarious aspects of using deception in practice (Fallowfield, Jenkins, & Beveridge,2002; Fowler,2004;Hoppin,2011; Huddle,2012; Jackson,2001; Olsen,2012; Sade,2012; Tavaglione & Hurst,2012).Arguments for the use of deception have been that practitioners can game the system for the benefitof treating patients (Tavaglione & Hurst,2012) whereas it should be avoided because of the negativeeffects it has on the practitioners image and character (Sade,2012) and goes against the internalnorm of honesty (Huddle,2012). The current findings reveal that psychotherapists and the generalpublic believe that honesty in psychotherapy is the best practice. We hope that our findings stimulatecontinued  discussion  and  research  of  the  practice  and  ethics  of  using  deception  withinpsychotherapy.

Based on the current findings, there is a lack of clinical training in working with deception inpsychotherapy. The lack of training and exposure to deception in psychotherapy has been reportedin other studies (Curtis,2013; Curtis & Hart,2015; Dickens & Curtis,2019).The lack of clinicalexperience with deception is also found in other health care professions (Curtis,2015; Curtis et al.,2018). To remedy this, more clinical training in patient deception has been suggested, embedded inprogram curricula or through workshops (Curtis & Hart,2019; Dickens & Curtis,2019). Training inthe ethics of psychotherapist deception could also assume the format within continuing education(Curtis,2019). Along with consideration of additional training formats, we encourage therapists toconsider the use of deception through the application of ethical decision-making models (e.g.,Barnett & Johnson,2008; Knapp & VandeCreek,2012) within practice. Similar to developedguidelines regarding deception in research, we encourage practitioners, researchers, professors,supervisors, and ethics committee members to consider addressing the use of deception in psy-chotherapy within training, practice, continuing education, and the APA ethical principles and codeof conduct.

Dishonesty out of lab, in subjects’ self-chosen environment, is greater than in the lab, with a considerable fraction of subjects cheating to the maximum extent possible

Self-portrayed honesty and behavioral dishonesty. Gideon Yaniv, Yossef Tobol & Erez Siniver. Ethics & Behavior, Oct 22 2019. https://doi.org/10.1080/10508422.2019.1678162 

ABSTRACT: A common conclusion of lab dishonesty studies is that subjects cheat to a very modest extent even when they cannot get caught. The modest level of cheating is attributed to subjects’ moral feelings which restrict their cheating to a level that enables them to retain their self-image as honest individuals. The present paper questions this claim, reporting the results of two experiments which uncover a discrepancy between self-portrayed honesty and actual dishonest behavior. The experiments reveal, first, that self-portrayed honesty is stricter than practical honesty, suggesting that when facing an opportunity to benefit from dishonest behavior, subjects trade off some of their self-image as honest persons for dishonestly-generated payoffs. Secondly, dishonesty out of lab, in subjects’ self-chosen environment, is greater than in the lab, with a considerable fraction of subjects cheating to the maximum extent possible. We suggest that it is not a concern about their self-image that holds subjects back from cheating maximally, but rather a concern about their social image. The modest level of dishonesty observed in the lab presumably reflects caution subjects exercise in an unsafe setup. Given an environment where they feel safe to reap the fruits of dishonesty without compromising their image as honest persons in the eyes of others, the image they have of themselves hardly plays a role in curbing their unethical behavior.

KEYWORDS: self-portrayed honesty, self-image, behavioral dishonesty, social image

Check also Big Surprise!!! Recent research has found that therapists lie to patients:

Ethics of psychotherapist deception. Drew A. Curtis & Leslie J. Kelley. Ethics & Behavior, Oct 3 2019. https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2019/10/big-surprise-recent-research-has-found.html

Viral outrage: As more people expressed outrage, observers believed it was more normative to express condemnation but also felt the outrage more excessive, thus inspiring more sympathy too

Outraged but Sympathetic: Ambivalent Emotions Limit the Influence of Viral Outrage. Takuya Sawaoka, Benoît Monin. Social Psychological and Personality Science, October 23, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550619853595

Abstract: Viral outrage—the piling up of online condemnation in response to offensive remarks—is a common expression of moral judgment in the digital age. We examined whether viral outrage is effective in convincing observers that an offender is blameworthy. Across seven studies, participants (N = 3,406) saw racist, sexist, or disrespectful posts with accompanying expressions of outrage and evaluated the offender. As more people expressed outrage, observers believed it was more normative to express condemnation but also felt that the outrage was more excessive, thus inspiring both more outrage and more sympathy toward the offender. Greater outrage increased condemnation toward the offender; greater sympathy decreased it. These two processes operated in opposition and suppressed one another. These findings held even when the offense was relatively benign and even when the offender was a high-status public figure. Overall, people’s ambivalent reactions of outrage and sympathy limit the influence of viral outrage in inspiring condemnation.

Keywords morality, outrage, social judgment, punishment, social influence

Unexpectedly, consciously perceptible hedonic qualities appear to play a less relevant, and mostly transient, role in food reinforcement; gut-brain reward pathways instead reinforce food intake

Rethinking Food Reward. Ivan E. de Araujo, Mark Schatzker, and Dana M. Small. Annual Review of Psychology, Volume 71, January 4, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1146/annurev-psych-122216-011643

Abstract: The conscious perception of the hedonic sensory properties of caloric foods is commonly believed to guide our dietary choices. Current and traditional models implicate the consciously perceived hedonic qualities of food as driving overeating, whereas subliminal signals arising from the gut would curb our uncontrolled desire for calories. Here we review recent animal and human studies that support a markedly different model for food reward. These findings reveal in particular the existence of subcortical body-to-brain neural pathways linking gastrointestinal nutrient sensors to the brain's reward regions. Unexpectedly, consciously perceptible hedonic qualities appear to play a less relevant, and mostly transient, role in food reinforcement. In this model, gut-brain reward pathways bypass cranial taste and aroma sensory receptors and the cortical networks that give rise to flavor perception. They instead reinforce behaviors independently of the cognitive processes that support overt insights into the nature of our dietary decisions.

Men tip 12 pct more if their driver is a woman, but that’s entirely because they give more money to the youngest ones; the premium payed shrinks as the women get older

The Drivers of Social Preferences: Evidence from a Nationwide Tipping Field Experiment. Bharat Chandar, Uri Gneezy, John A. List, Ian Muir. NBER Working Paper No. 26380, October 2019. https://www.nber.org/papers/w26380.pdf

Abstract: Even though social preferences affect nearly every facet of life, there exist many open questions on the economics of social preferences in markets. We leverage a unique opportunity to generate a large data set to inform the who’s, what’s, where’s, and when’s of social preferences through the lens of a nationwide tipping field experiment on the Uber platform. Our field experiment generates data from more than 40 million trips, allowing an exploration of social preferences in the ride sharing market using big data. Combining experimental and natural variation in the data, we are able to establish tipping facts as well as provide insights into the underlying motives for tipping. Interestingly, even though tips are made privately, and without external social benefits or pressure, more than 15% of trips are tipped. Yet, nearly 60% of people never tip, and only 1% of people always tip. Overall, the demand-side explains much more of the observed tipping variation than the supply-side.

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Washington Post: Men tip 12 percent more if their driver is a woman, but that’s entirely because they give more money to the youngest female drivers. The premium men pay to women behind the wheel shrinks as the women get older. By the time the drivers are age 65, it has virtually vanished. Women also tip other women more, but they don’t significantly change their tips based on the driver’s age.

Longer relationships, dating relationships, & greater subjective overall health predicted high emotional satisfaction for men; for women it was older age, married or cohabiting relationships, & frequent sexual communication

High Emotional and Sexual Satisfaction Among Partnered Midlife Canadians: Associations with Relationship Characteristics, Sexual Activity and Communication, and Health. Shari M. Blumenstock, Christopher Quinn-Nilas, Robin R. Milhausen, Alexander McKay. Archives of Sexual Behavior, October 22 2019. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-019-01498-9

Abstract: Despite midlife adults accounting for a substantial and growing segment of the population, few large-scale studies have investigated factors which distinguish highly satisfying relationships from less satisfying ones in midlife. In a subsample of partnered 40–59-year-old Canadians (705 men, 743 women), relationship characteristics, sexual activity and communication, and health were investigated individually and simultaneously as predictors of high emotional and sexual satisfaction. Though the vast majority of participants reported being at least somewhat satisfied in their current relationship, less than half reported high satisfaction. For men and women, high emotional and sexual satisfactions were strongly linked. Logistic regressions indicated that longer relationships, dating relationships, and greater subjective overall health predicted high emotional satisfaction for men, whereas older age, married or cohabiting relationships, and frequent sexual communication predicted high emotional satisfaction for women. All types of sexual activities (minus penile–anal intercourse) were bivariately related to high emotional and sexual satisfaction. More frequent partnered sexual activity predicted high emotional and sexual satisfaction for men and women in regression analyses. More frequent sexual communication predicted high emotional satisfaction for women and high sexual satisfaction for both men and women. Newer relationships were more sexually satisfying for men. Postmenopausal women were less likely to be highly sexually satisfied. Findings suggest that physical health conditions are not generally related to high levels of satisfaction in midlife couples and that frequently discussing sex and engaging in (any) sexual activity with a partner are key components of highly satisfying relationships.

Keywords Emotional satisfaction Health Midlife relationships Sexual activity Sexual satisfaction

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Emotional Satisfaction

Models of emotional satisfaction indicated unique predictors for men and women. Men were slightly more likely to be highly emotionally satisfied as relationship length increased. This is similar to previous research associations found between relationship length and satisfaction in midlife men (Carpenter et al., 2009; Heiman et al., 2011). As relationships endure, partners may grow closer to each other, strengthening their bond. However, for women, those in shorter relationships were more likely to report high levels of emotional satisfaction. It is unclear why this association was found. It could be that women.s satisfaction levels were better accounted for by the relationship type variable, which indicated gender differences in likelihood of high emotional satisfaction. Women who were cohabiting or married were more than twice as likely to report being very emotionally satisfied compared to those in dating relationships.  In contrast, men in cohabiting relationships were about half as likely to report high emotional satisfaction than those in dating relationships. Previous research in midlife populations had found no differences in high emotional satisfaction between those who were cohabiting/married (combined) and those who had a sexual relationship in the past year but were not cohabiting/ married (i.e., single, separated, or divorced) (Carpenter et al., 2009). The current research suggests that differences in these relationship types likely warrant analyzing them as separate categories, as the differences may be important for how satisfaction is experienced, particularly for men. The different relationship types may broadly indicate levels of commitment between partners, and perceptions of partner commitment has been important for relationship happiness. There are several reasons people may choose to move in with a partner outside of marriage. Indeed, cohabitation is becoming more commonplace, and could serve as a stepping stone on the way to marriage, as a compatibility test for those unsure about a longer commitment, or as an alternative to marriage altogether. The inconsistent findings could also be due to differences in how these relationships were classified in the studies.the Carpenter et al. study of a U.S. sample compared partners who were living together, 94% of whom were married, to those who had any sexual partner in the past year but were not living with them. In the current Canadian sample, cohabitation meant specifically living together and not married, in comparison to those who were married or in a serious dating relationship. Thus, among those who are in a committed romantic relationship of some sort, the type of that relationship may matter for high levels of emotional satisfaction and could reflect levels of partner commitment.

Frequent partnered sexual activity was a significant predictor in both bivariate and regression analyses. In bivariate analyses, engaging in partnered sex once per week or more was associated with increased likelihood of high emotional satisfaction for women and men. In logistic regression models, increases in frequency of any partnered sexual activity were associated with higher likelihood of being highly emotionally satisfied for women and men. This is notable, as the models accounted for sexual satisfaction, indicating physical intimacy could foster feelings of emotional connection and contribute to satisfying relationships beyond feelings of sexual satisfaction. Sex can be a very personal, intimate experience, and therefore has the potential to increase feelings of connection and intimacy when partners are responsive to one another and feel accepted and cared for during sexual activity (Laurenceau et al., 2005). While the exact mechanisms for this association cannot be gleaned from the current study, the findings support other research indicating the importance of sexual intimacy for fostering bonds between partners (Muise, Kim, McNulty, & Impett, 2016a).  In the exploratory bivariate analyses of specific sexual behaviors, all of the sexual activities, when frequent, predicted higher likelihood of being very emotionally satisfied for women and men (except for penile.anal intercourse). These results indicate that frequently connecting with a partner physically may promote feelings of emotional satisfaction regardless of the actual activity. These exploratory findings indicate that more in-depth studies on various sexual activities could help elucidate the roles that physical intimacy may play in emotional satisfaction.

In bivariate analyses, more frequent sexual communication was associated with greater likelihood of women and men being emotionally satisfied, and this remained significant for women in the regression models, but not for men. More frequent sexual communication could be an indicator of overall closeness and comfort in the relationship. Disclosing vulnerabilities to a partner and perceiving the partner.s response to exhibit understanding, validation, and care, lay the foundation of emotional intimacy (Laurenceau et al., 2005; Reis & Shaver, 1988), and this extends into sexual aspects of the relationship.  Being able to disclose sexual likes and dislikes may not only increase the likelihood of a partner.s sexual needs being met, it may also increase feelings of closeness and intimacy (Byers & Demmons, 1999; Coffelt & Hess, 2013; Montesi et al., 2011). In a path analysis study, the association between sexual self-disclosure and sexual satisfaction was fully mediated by relationship satisfaction in women, but only partially in men (MacNeil & Byers, 2009), suggesting that sexual satisfaction may be accounting for the relationship between communication and emotional satisfaction for men. In cross-sex relationships, women are far less likely to experience orgasm during sex with men than men are with women (Armstrong, England, & Fogarty, 2012; Frederick, John, Garcia, & Lloyd, 2018). Perhaps among women, talking about what will bring them pleasure or to orgasm, and the required comfort to do so, may be more important for experiencing sex as a display of, or conduit for, emotional intimacy.

Perceptions of overall health were associated with increased likelihood of high emotional satisfaction for men and women in bivariate analyses. Greater subjective overall health remained a significant predictor in the regression models for men, but not for women. Further, medical conditions were generally not related to high emotional satisfaction for men or women in the bivariate analyses or in the regression models. This was unexpected, given previously found associations between medical conditions and decreased relationship satisfaction (Schwartz et al., 2013). Having a medical condition may strain the couple relationship and result in declines in the emotional satisfaction partners may find within their relationship; however, some research suggests that non-chronic stressors such as illnesses present opportunities for couples to enhance closeness and possibly increase their relationship satisfaction if they successfully cope (Bodenmann, Pihet, & Kayser, 2006; Karney & Bradbury, 1995). While few participants indicated the presence of a medical condition and this study cannot determine exact reasons for these results, it does suggest several avenues for future research, particularly for oversampling participants with specific medical conditions. For example, those who experience a debilitating condition may receive increased support from their partner (Lister et al., 2013), which could result in feeling closer and more cared for within the relationship. Further, the timing of the diagnosis could play a role in its association with satisfaction in a relationship.a newer diagnosis may be more detrimental, but as couples live with the condition longer, they may grow more knowledgeable about the condition and how to cope with it. Indeed, it is likely that midlife couples who report being very emotionally satisfied in their relationships generally employ effective coping strategies for dealing with many stressors, such as a medical condition. It is also possible that the declines in satisfaction may be more significant for the partner than the person experiencing the medical condition (Fisher et al., 2014). These are all important directions for future research. Overall, while health factors could be associated with satisfaction, subjective overall health and medical conditions may not be important determining factors in the difference between a relationship that is somewhat satisfying (or less) versus one that is highly satisfying.

Inter-subject representational similarity analysis reveals individual variations in affective experience when watching erotic movies

Inter-subject representational similarity analysis reveals individual variations in affective experience when watching erotic movies. Pin-Hao A. Chen, Eshin Jolly, Jin Hyun Cheong, Luke J. Chang. bioRxiv, Aug 6  2019. https://doi.org/10.1101/726570

Abstract: We spend much of our life pursuing or avoiding affective experiences. However, surprisingly little is known about how these experiences are represented in the brain and if they are shared across individuals. Here, we explore variations in the construction of an affective experience during a naturalistic viewing paradigm based on subjective preferences in sociosexual desire and self-control using intersubject representational similarity analysis (IS-RSA). We found that when watching erotic movies, intersubject variations in sociosexual desire preferences of 26 heterosexual males were associated with similarly structured fluctuations in the cortico-striatal reward, default mode, and mentalizing networks. In contrast, variations in the self-control preferences were associated with shared dynamics in the fronto-parietal executive control and cingulo-insula salience networks. Importantly, these results were specific to the affective experience, as we did not observe any relationship with variation in preferences when individuals watched neutral movies. Moreover, these results appear to require multivariate representations of preferences as we did not observe any significant results using single summary scores. Our findings demonstrate that multidimensional variations in individual preferences can be used to uncover unique dimensions of an affective experience, and that IS-RSA can provide new insights into the neural processes underlying psychological experiences elicited through naturalistic experimental designs.


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Discussion

In this study, we used brain imaging to explore the affective experience of heterosexual male participants. We used a naturalistic experimental design (Hasson et al., 2004; Haxby et al., 2011), in which participants watched short clips of erotic and neutral movies in the MRI scanner. These types of designs are ideal for eliciting powerful psychological experiences and creating strong variation in brain activity underlying the experience (Jolly and Chang, 2019). In contrast to the standard practices in emotion research, we did not examine affective experience using self-reported feelings or videos selected to elicit specific emotional states (Coan et al., 2007; Lench et al., 2011; Lindquist et al., 2012; Quigley et al., 2014). Instead, we explored how variation in two distinct preferences (i.e., sociosexual desires and self-control) mapped onto individual variation in brain dynamics while watching the videos using intersubject representational similarity analysis (IS-RSA).

Consistent with our predictions, we found that when individuals watched erotic movies, individuals with similar sociosexual desire preferences showed higher similarities in patterns of neural dynamics in brain regions within the cortico-striatal reward and default mode and mentalizing networks than those with different preferences. In contrast, as individuals became closer in their self-control preferences, we observed greater similarities in patterns of neural dynamics in brain regions within the fronto-parietal executive control and cingulo-insula salience networks. Importantly, when individuals watched neutral movies, inter-subject similarities in sociosexual desire and self-control preferences played no prominent role in accounting for the similarities in patterns of neural dynamics. We used meta-analytic decoding to provide a crude reverse inference of the possible psychological states contributing to the affective experience. Consistent with our expectations, variations in sociosexual desire preferences revealed stronger associations with social and social judgment topics, whereas variations in self-control preferences revealed stronger associations with the executive control, cognitive control, error monitoring and conflict. Together, our results support our hypothesis that variation in individual preferences can be used to explore affective experiences. Though we only specifically examined preferences for sociosexual desire and self-control, we do not believe this to be an exhaustive list of possible preferences and speculate that many other potential measures might also provide insight into this experience. This study provides important conceptual and methodological advances to the investigation of affective experiences. Because there currently exists no objective measure of affective experiences (Chang et al., 2015), the field of emotion has a long history of grappling with measurement issues and has largely relied on self-report (Larsen and Fredrickson, 1999). One issue with trying to have participants map an experience into a high dimensional space of self-reported feelings is that this process requires both introspection (Nisbett and Wilson, 1977) and verbally labeling feelings using shared concepts (Lindquist et al., 2015). It’s possible that this verbal labeling process necessarily reduces the dimensionality of the representational space of the experience by filtering out processes that cannot be measured using this approach, which is why many studies find that 2-5 dimensions can explain the majority of the emotion rating variance (Chikazoe et al., 2014; Kragel and LaBar, 2015; Skerry and Saxe, 2015). In addition, most studies select a few stimuli to elicit a finite set of emotional states. However, this approach assumes that all participants will have a similar experience (Chang et al. 2018) and limits the variation in the emotional experiences (Cowen and Keltner, 2017), which can provide a statistical bias towards a low dimensional representation (Jolly and Chang, 2019). Our study provides an alternative approach to exploring affective experiences. Rather than assuming that participants will have the same response, which provides the basic premise of intersubject correlation (Hasson et al., 2004) and also functional alignment techniques (Guntupalli et al., 2016; Haxby et al., 2011), we assume that participants will have strong variations in their experience, which should correspond to structured variations in measures related to the experience. Importantly, we do not attempt to reduce the dimensionality of these measures to a single summary score, instead, we represent each item from the measure as a separate axis in a multiple-dimensional space and calculated the pairwise distance of each participant in this high-dimensional space. We believe that preserving the richness and complexity of all features in a high-dimensional space is important as there are many ways to answer a questionnaire that will produce an identical single summary score. Consistent with this intuition, we find that our IS-RSA results only hold when using a high dimensional representation and are not present when mapping participants’ distances using summary scores.

Though we believe this IS-RSA approach to be promising, there are several important limitations that should be acknowledged. First, we are using all of the features of each preference measure as an axis to map each participant and weighting the contribution of each feature equally. This means that we currently are unable to determine which features are specifically contributing to the experience. In addition, some of these features could be reflecting pure noise, which would be weighted equally as features that contain pure signal. It’s possible that this might be addressed with future work using multivariate regression techniques (e.g., partial least squares). Second, we are mapping individual position in this multidimensional space to intersubject dynamics of brain activity. This means that we do not know when in time processes specific to the experience occurred. It is possible to use similarity in spatial representations (van Baar et al., 2019), which might provide a way to extend this to which time points show a similar intersubject structure (Chang et al. 2018). However, this will also require accounting for multiple comparisons as well as non-independence in the time-series signals resulting from autocorrelation.

In summary, we have provided a demonstration of how variations in participants’ preferences can be used to uncover unique dimensions of an affective experience based on similarity in the intersubject structure of brain dynamics measured during the experience. This technique has the potential to provide a new approach to studying the neural processes underlying psychological experiences elicited through naturalistic experimental designs. Though this study provides a simple proof of concept, we hope that this work will inspire future innovations in analyzing naturalistic experimental designs, affective science, and psychological experiences.

Intellectual Humility and Perceptions of Political Opponents

Seli, Paul, Ph.D. 2019. “Intellectual Humility and Perceptions of Political Opponents.” PsyArXiv. October 22. psyarxiv.com/h8fy9

Abstract: The epistemic virtue of intellectual humility (IH) refers to the recognition that personal beliefs might be wrong. In four initial studies, we examined the role of IH in predicting how people perceive their sociopolitical opponents, and the role of IH in people’s willingness to befriend their sociopolitical opponents. We found that people lower in IH are more likely to derogate and less likely to befriend their opponents. In two additional studies, we experimentally explored a possible method with which to make people less likely to derogate opponents and more willing to befriend them. After informing participants about the results of our existing studies showing that people who hold opposing positions do not differ in IH, participants were less likely to derogate opponents and somewhat more willing to befriend them. We discuss the implications of these results for sincere, open discussion, and for reducing social extremism and polarization.

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General Discussion
In Studies 1a and 1b, we investigated a possible way in which people who are low in IH might be overconfident in their beliefs and particularly unwilling to seriously engage with opponents’ views. For five of the six sociopolitical issues examined, we found that participants lower in IH tended to derogate the intellectual capabilities and moral character of sociopolitical opponents more than participants higher in IH. By believing that opponents are unintelligent and unethical, it may become easier to dismiss others’ views and to believe in the superiority of one’s own views. Studies 2a and 2b examined whether participants lower in IH are less willing to befriend people with opposing views. For both highly-contentious, polarized issues, and less-contentious, polarized issues, those lower in IH were indeed less willing than those higher in IH to befriend people who hold opposing positions. Then, in Studies 3a and 3b, we introduced an experimental manipulation to explore a possible way to render participants less likely to derogate opponents and more willing to befriend opponents. We informed participants that there are actually no differences in IH between people who hold opposing positions on the issues, and we tested whether this information influenced their perceptions of their opponents. For both issues examined, informing participants that opponents do not actually differ on IH made participants derogate opponents less. Moreover, for the standardized testing issue, but not for the concealed carry issue, informing participants that those who hold opposing positions do not differ on IH made them more willing to befriend those with opposing views. The results from these two final studies provide experimental evidence for a simple and effective means of reducing the tendency for people to derogate others who hold different sociopolitical views.
There has been a recent surge of research on IH, much of which has been devoted to IH scale development and validation (e.g., Haggard et al., 2018; Krumrei-Mancuso & Rouse, 2016; Leary et al., 2017). By most psychological accounts, IH is fundamentally a cognitive intrapersonal construct reflecting people’s private assessments of their beliefs and attitudes (Leary et al., 2017). There are, however, important interpersonal consequences of differences in IH. Other research has found that those higher in IH tend to be more forgiving (Lavelock et al., 2014), generous (Exline & Hill, 2012), and empathic (Krumrei-Mancuso & Rouse, 2016). Our research expands upon these findings by identifying an interpersonal consequence of differences in IH, namely that those low in IH tend to both derogate sociopolitical opponents and express an unwillingness to befriend people with opposing sociopolitical views.
Our finding that IH predicts the degree to which people derogate sociopolitical opponents and express an unwillingness to befriend them may have significant implications for social extremism and political polarization. Derogating opponents and being unwilling to befriend them might create cliques of people, with the same views, who collectively seek out and share information that reinforces their shared views (i.e., “echo chambers”). With contemporary social media, there is no shortage of opportunities for people to create and find their desired echo chambers. In fact, echo chambers comprised of people discussing sociopolitical issues and events have been identified on Twitter (Barberá, et al., 2015; Williams, McMurray, Kurz, & Lambert, 2015), Facebook (Del Vicario, et al., 2016), and various blogs (Suhay, Blackwell, Roche, & Bruggeman, 2015). Critically, the results of our final two studies suggest that informing people about actual psychological research on IH has the potential to make them less likely to derogate opponents and more willing to befriend them. This kind of simple intervention might help to minimize social extremism and political polarization—especially for low-IH individuals.
Disagreements over sociopolitical issues can be useful and fruitful. Such disagreements offer the potential for understanding the perspectives of others, generating creative solutions to significant problems, and growing intellectually. However, the extent to which disagreements are useful depends on the willingness of opposing sides to try to understand opposing positions (de Wied, Branje, & Meeus, 2007; Stone, Patton, & Heen, 2010). Promoting IH as an epistemic virtue worth cultivating and informing the public about research on IH has the potential to reduce social extremism, polarization, and the frequency of unresolvable disagreements over time.

On average, men have higher humor production ability than women; the effect is small to moderate; the difference may reflect both evolutionary and environmental influences

Sex differences in humor production ability: A meta-analysis. Gil Greengross, Paul J. Silvi, Emily C.Nusbaum. Journal of Research in Personality, October 22 2019, 103886. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2019.103886

Highlights
•    On average, men have higher humor production ability than women.
•    Effect is small to moderate.
•    Humor was rated by independent judges assessing the humor produced by both sexes.
•    Difference may reflect both evolutionary and environmental influences.

Abstract: We offer the first systematic quantitative meta-analysis on sex differences in humor production ability. We included studies where participants created humor output that was assessed for funniness by independent raters. Our meta-analysis includes 36 effect sizes from 28 studies published between 1976 and 2018 (N = 5057, 67% women). Twenty of the 36 effect sizes, accounting for 61% of the participants, were not previously published. Results based on random-effects model revealed that men's humor output was rated as funnier than women's, with a combined effect size d = 0.321. Results were robust across various moderators and study characteristics, and multiple tests indicated that publication bias is unlikely. Both evolutionary and cultural explanations were considered and discussed.

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4.3. Conclusion
The research presented here focused on one specific aspect of humor that is largely under-investigated in humor research, humor production ability. Despite finding men to have higher humor creation abilities than women on verbal humor, this difference should not be seen as representative of other types of humor, including non-verbal humor production ability. In fact, for most aspects of humor, men and women seem to exhibit many similarities, with relatively few differences (Martin, 2014). In regard to humor 41production abilities, the topic of sex differences is often reduced to blunt assertions such as that “Women are not funny” (e.g.,Hitchens, 2007). We hope that our meta-analysis will help advance a more nuanced discussion on the topic based on a systematic evaluation of the available scientific data. Examination of such data suggest that regardless of the underlying source of variability, men exhibit higher humor ability than women on the kinds of verbal tasks included in our sample of studies. It is important to remember that though robust, these differences are small to medium in size, and are based on averages. They do not reflect individual abilities, as both men and women vary largely in their abilities to produce humor. We tried to illuminate possible sources for the differences in HPA, what they might mean, theoretical implications, considerations for future research, and limitations. Humor is an important experience for most people, one that is largely unique to humans. We hope that our results will further foster the study of humor, advance theories pertaining to understanding and explaining sex differences in humor and other cognitive abilities, as well as foster research on humor ability.

Fruit flies: Sexual conflict is common and sometimes results in sexual aggression; found significant genetic variation in forced copulation success

Genetic variation in sexual aggression and the factors that determine forced copulation success. Carling M. Baxter, Janice L. Yan, Reuven Dukas. Animal Behaviour, October 22 2019. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.anbehav.2019.09.015

Highlights
• Sexual conflict is common in nature and sometimes results in sexual aggression.
• We found significant genetic variation in forced copulation success.
• We compared behaviour of males from low and high forced copulation success genotypes.
• High-success males were more persistent in pursuit and mounting of teneral females.
• Low- and high-success males differed in their response to female rejection.

Abstract: Sexual conflict is common in nature and sometimes results in sexual aggression. An extreme case is forced copulation, where one individual forcibly mates with another individual who resists the mating. To understand what makes some males sexually aggressive, we established an experimental system that allowed us to quantify the characteristics that contribute to males' forced copulation success. In fruit flies (Drosophila melanogaster), sexually mature females can choose to accept or reject courting males; however, males can forcibly copulate with newly eclosed, sexually immature, teneral females. We tested males from 59 genotypes and found significant genetic variation in forced copulation success, with a broad-sense heritability of 0.16. We then chose three genotypes with the lowest and three genotypes with the highest forced copulation success rates and compared the behaviour of males from these two groups. Males from genotypes with high forced copulation success were more persistent in their pursuit of teneral females and mounted them more frequently than did males from the low-success genotypes. Males of the two categories, however, were similar in their attractiveness to both teneral and sexually mature females. Our results suggest that males vary in their pursuit strategies. Some males respond to female rejection signals by giving up and searching for receptive females, while other males persist in pursuit and coercion in spite of female objection. Our work highlights the practicality of using forced copulation in fruit flies as a model for further research on the mechanisms affecting variation in sexual coercion and forced copulation success and their evolutionary consequences.

Keywords aggressioncoercionDrosophila melanogasterforced copulationfruit flygenetic variationheritabilitysexual conflict

Bishop Berkeley suggested that the distance of an object can be estimated if the object’s size is familiar to the observer; authors find that familiarity does not serve as a cue for depth

Mischenko, Elizaveta, Ippei Negishi, Elena Gorbunova, and Tadamasa Sawada. 2019. “Examining the Role of Familiarity in the Perception of Depth.” PsyArXiv. October 22. doi:10.31234/osf.io/wxn4s

Downloadable as a pre-print: https://psyarxiv.com/wxn4s/

Abstract: Bishop Berkeley suggested that the distance of an object can be estimated if the object’s size is familiar to the observer. The distance can be computed by comparing the size of the retinal image of the object to the memorized size of the object. It has been suggested that humans can perceive the distance of the object by using such “familiarity” information. However, prior experiments looking for an effect of familiarity had not been designed to minimize, or eliminate potential influences of: (i) higher cognitive factors on the observers' responses, or (ii) the influences of low-level image features in the visual stimuli. We tested the familiarity effect in two psychophysical experiments that were conducted both in Russia and in Japan. Forty Russian students and forty Japanese students participated in these experiments. The visual stimuli used were images of three coins in Russia and in Japan. The participants' depth perception was measured with a multiple-choice task testing the perceived depth-order of the coins. Our expectation was that any effect of “familiarity” on depth perception would only be observed with the coins of the participant's country. We expected a substantial effect of familiarity based on our meta-analysis of the "familiarity" effects observed in prior experiments. But, our results in both experiments showed that the familiarity effect on depth perception was virtually zero. Our experiments clearly show that familiarity, studied for the first time without any obvious confounds, does not serve as a cue for depth.

Our results also replicated Iyer et al. (2012) previous finding that libertarians think more analytically than both liberals and conservatives

Are neo-liberals more intuitive? Undetected libertarians confound the relation between analytic cognitive style and economic conservatism. Onurcan Yilmaz, S. Adil Saribay, Ravi Iyer. Current Psychology, February 14 2019. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12144-019-0130-x

Abstract: Previous studies consistently showed that analytic cognitive style (ACS) is negatively correlated with social conservatism, but there are mixed findings concerning its relation with economic conservatism. Most tests have relied on a unidimensional (liberal-conservative) operationalization of political orientation. Libertarians tend not only to identify themselves as conservative on this scale but also to score higher on ACS than liberals and conservatives. The presence of libertarians might be the reason for the above-mentioned mixed findings. We investigated the relation between social and economic conservatism and ACS (operationalized using the Cognitive Reflection Test; CRT) in a large, web-based sample. There was a negative correlation between CRT and social conservatism both when libertarians were included and excluded. However, the correlation between CRT and economic conservatism was significantly reduced in magnitude and became non-significant when libertarians were excluded. The results support the argument that the undetected presence of libertarians may confound the ACS-economic conservatism relation.

Keywords: Analytic cognitive style Libertarians Liberals Conservatives Cognitive reflection test

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Discussion
We argued that if a study includes a non-negligible proportion of libertarians and measures political orientation on the single-item self-placement scale, then it might produce misleading results regarding the relationship between cognitive style and economic conservatism. Specifically, such a procedure may produce misleading results because the libertarians tend to score relatively higher on both variables (i.e., ACS and economic conservatism) and they also tend to self-place toward the conservative end of the political spectrum (see Iyer et al. 2012; Talhelm et al. 2015). In other words, the existence of different proportions of libertarians might produce mixed findings across those samples. The current effort is a demonstration of the importance of considering political affiliation (e.g., libertarian) beyond self-placement on the liberal-conservative continuum and, specifically, of the utility of repeating analyses including and excluding libertarians.

The results suggested that the negative (but small) correlation between ACS and social conservatism holds whether libertarians (and other non-mainstream groups) are included or excluded. This is consistent with the previous literature showing that there is a negative correlation between social conservatism and ACS (Deppe et al. 2015; Saribay and Yilmaz 2017; Pennycook et al. 2012; Yilmaz and Saribay 2016, 2017b, 2018). This finding also supports the social orientation hypothesis suggesting that social political orientation is a better predictor of cognitive style differences than economic political orientation (Talhelm et al. 2015). However, our finding also suggests that this relation is weak.

On the other hand, the relation between ACS and economic conservatism differs depending on the inclusion versus exclusion of libertarians (and other non-mainstream groups). The positive correlation between CRT and economic conservatism in the whole dataset lost its significance and was reduced to virtually zero when the non-liberal and non-conservative participants were excluded. The results remained constant when we only excluded libertarian participants (instead of all nonliberals and non-conservatives including BDon’t know/not political,^ and BOther^). Thus, the current findings suggest that the presence of libertarians (and other non-mainstream groups) confounds the relation between ACS and economic conservatism. They clarify why previous findings regarding this relation were mixed. As noted earlier, some previous findings suggested a non-significant relation (Deppe et al. 2015; Pennycook et al. 2012; Yilmaz and Saribay 2016, 2017b), some others showed a negative relation (Sterling et al. 2016), and some others even showed a positive relation (e.g., one of four studies of Deppe et al. 2015). Jost et al. (2017) meta-analyzed these findings and showed a negative—albeit weak—correlation between ACS and economic conservatism (unweighted average r = −.08). Our contention that different proportions of libertarians might determine the direction and size of the correlation regarding ACS-economic conservatism relation is compatible with these findings since the Study 2 of Deppe et al. (2015), where the correlation between ACS and economic conservatism is positive, was arguably the most-representative sample of American population (see Baron 2015). Our results also replicated Iyer et al. (2012) previous finding that libertarians think more analytically than both liberals and conservatives, however, there were no such differences between self-reported liberals and conservatives.