Our society celebrates failure as a teachable moment. Yet in five studies (total N = 1,674), failure did the opposite: It undermined learning

Not Learning From Failure—the Greatest Failure of All. Lauren Eskreis-Winkler, Ayelet Fishbach. Psychological Science, November 8, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797619881133

Abstract: Our society celebrates failure as a teachable moment. Yet in five studies (total N = 1,674), failure did the opposite: It undermined learning. Across studies, participants answered binary-choice questions, following which they were told they answered correctly (success feedback) or incorrectly (failure feedback). Both types of feedback conveyed the correct answer, because there were only two answer choices. However, on a follow-up test, participants learned less from failure feedback than from success feedback. This effect was replicated across professional, linguistic, and social domains—even when learning from failure was less cognitively taxing than learning from success and even when learning was incentivized. Participants who received failure feedback also remembered fewer of their answer choices. Why does failure undermine learning? Failure is ego threatening, which causes people to tune out. Participants learned less from personal failure than from personal success, yet they learned just as much from other people’s failure as from others’ success. Thus, when ego concerns are muted, people tune in and learn from failure.

Keywords: learning, feedback, failure, ego threat, motivation, open data, open materials, preregistered

The true self is not easily expressed face-to-face: On the Internet, people can express what they intrinsically think and believe with fewer concerns about others’ disapproval & judgments

The expression of the true self in the online world: a literature review. Chuan Hu, Sameer Kumar, Jiao Huang & Kurunathan Ratnavelu. Behaviour & Information Technology, Nov 4 2019. ttps://doi.org/10.1080/0144929X.2019.1685596

ABSTRACT: The true self is one of the essential parts of people’s self-concept and identity, but it is not easily expressed in face-to-face communications. On the Internet, people can express what they intrinsically think and believe with fewer concerns about others’ disapproval and judgments. Increasingly more researchers have started to investigate people’s expression of the true self in the online context. However, the existing research is quite diverse and fragmented. A rigorous and comprehensive review of the emerging literature is called for. The present study conducted a systematic literature review to examine what is already known about the expression of the true self online. This paper analysed the selected studies on the basis of research contexts, research methods, and research themes. Our review offers readers an easy access to the current status of research in this field; it also provides some insightful suggestions for future studies.

KEYWORDS: Literature review, the true self, self-expression, online world

Cross-cultural consistency & relativity in the enjoyment of thinking vs doing: Participants much preferred solitary everyday activities, such as reading or watching TV, to thinking for pleasure

Cross-cultural consistency and relativity in the enjoyment of thinking versus doing. Buttrick, Nicholas et al. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Nov 2019. https://psycnet.apa.org/record/2018-35570-001

Abstract: Which is more enjoyable: trying to think enjoyable thoughts or doing everyday solitary activities? Wilson et al. (2014) found that American participants much preferred solitary everyday activities, such as reading or watching TV, to thinking for pleasure. To see whether this preference generalized outside of the United States, we replicated the study with 2,557 participants from 12 sites in 11 countries. The results were consistent in every country: Participants randomly assigned to do something reported significantly greater enjoyment than did participants randomly assigned to think for pleasure. Although we found systematic differences by country in how much participants enjoyed thinking for pleasure, we used a series of nested structural equation models to show that these differences were fully accounted for by country-level variation in 5 individual differences, 4 of which were positively correlated with thinking for pleasure (need for cognition, openness to experience, meditation experience, and initial positive affect) and 1 of which was negatively correlated (reported phone usage).

Discussion
As we predicted, Wilson et al.’s (2014) finding that participants enjoyed doing an external activity more than they enjoyed thinking for pleasure proved to be quite robust, replicating in all 11 of the countries studied. The average effect size was quite large, though smaller than in the original study (d ! .98 vs. 1.83). The uniformity of this finding among the participants and countries sampled here suggests that, across a wide variety of cultures, turning one’s attention inward to focus on enjoyable topics in the absence of any external cues is far less enjoyable than engaging in everyday activities such as reading or watching a video.

One reason for this is that thinking for pleasure is difficult. As noted by Westgate et al. (2017), to think for pleasure, one must choose topics to think about, maintain attention to those topics,and keep competing thoughts outside of awareness, all of which may tax mental resources (Wegner, 1994). Consistent with this view, participants in the thinking condition of the present study reported that it was somewhat difficult to concentrate on their thoughts (M ! 5.18 on a 9-point scale), and the more difficulty they reported, the less they enjoyed thinking, r(1271) = -.36, p < .001. Notably, this correlation did not differ between countries, Q(10) = 3.20, p = .98. One implication of these findings is that people might enjoy thinking for pleasure more if it were made easier, and indeed, as noted earlier, Westgate et al. found that giving people a simple thinking aid—are minder of topics they had said they would enjoy thinking about—significantly increased their enjoyment of thinking.

An additional purpose of the present study was to explore cultural differences in the extent to which people enjoy thinking for pleasure, and some country-level differences emerged. These differences, however, were fully explained by international variations in five individual differences, and once country-level differences in those variables were taken into account, the country-level differences themselves were no longer significant. Participants were more likely to enjoy their thoughts to the extent that they practiced meditation, were high in the need for cognition, high in openness to experience, reported a low level of phone usage, and were in a positive mood. What might explain these relationships?

The correlation of the enjoyment of thinking with meditation is consistent with the idea that cultural practices and norms influence the amount of experience people have spending time alone with their thoughts, and that those with greater experience enjoy thinking more (e.g., H. Smith, 1991; Tsai et al., 2006; Tsai, Knutson, et al., 2007; Tsai, Miao, et al., 2007; Yoshioka et al., 2002). The correlation of the enjoyment of thinking with need for cognition is consistent with the idea that thinking for pleasure is effortful and thus is more enjoyable for those who typically find thinking to be an attractive activity (e.g., Westgate et al., 2017; Wilson et al., 2018a). The correlation of the enjoyment of thinking with openness to experience suggests that those who value creativity and new experiences are more motivated to think for pleasure (or more skilled at it). Alahmadi et al. (2017) found that motivating people to think for pleasure increases their enjoyment considerably, and it is possible that such motivation is associated with openness to experience. The fact that people who were in positive moods enjoyed thinking more is consistent with research that those in a positive mood are likely to find it easier to recruit and think about positive topics (Matt, Vázquez, & Campbell, 1992).

We also found that the five key individual-difference variables varied by culture, which fully explained why residents of some countries enjoyed thinking more than others. For example, Japanese participants enjoyed thinking the least, perhaps because they were the lowest in openness to experience and need for cognition, among the lowest in initial positive affect and in experience with meditation (surprisingly), and among the highest in reported phone use. In contrast, American participants were in the middle of the pack in the enjoyment of thinking, probably because they were also in the middle of the pack on most of the important predictor variables (e.g., openness to experience, experience with meditation, initial positive affect). These findings suggest that to understand cultural variations in the enjoyment of thinking for pleasure, it is best to examine cultural differences in the individual practices and personality variables that are associated with it.

We additionally found evidence that three country-level variables—population density, GDP, and “masculinity”(aka cultural levels of interpersonal competitiveness)—weakly predicted individuals’ enjoyment of thinking. One possible (speculative) explanation for these findings is that people who grew up in a more rural area or in a poorer country may have had less opportunity to distractthemselves with external entertainments and more practice thinking for pleasure. Alternately, the experience of living in densely populated cities may lead to residents feeling that their lives are less meaningful and more overloaded (Buttrick, Heintzelman, Weser, & Oishi, 2018; Milgram, 1970), potentially demotivating them from making the effort to turn inward. In addition, cultures that stress masculinity and competitiveness may be more likely to view thinking for pleasure as a waste of time. It should be noted, though, that even in the countries with the lowest populationdensities (e.g., Brazil and the United States) an dthe lowest GDPs (e.g., Serbia, Costa Rica), participants enjoyed thinking less than doing.

The present study naturally has some limitations. First, as in Wilson et al. (2014) Study 8, all participants were college students, thus limiting the generalizability of the results. However, whereas college students may be an unusual population in some regards (e.g., Henrich et al., 2010), studies show that nonstudents also have difficulty thinking for pleasure (Westgate et al., 2017; Wilson et al., 2014, Study 9). Second, althoughoursample of countries represents a wide variety of cultures, we did not sampletheentirety of the world’s population, and it is possible that enjoyment of thinking for pleasure differs in some of the cultures that we did not sample.

Third, for practical reasons, we used shortened versions of most of the individual-difference measures, which resulted in reduced reliability. For example, we used Gosling et al.’s (2003) 10-item measure of the Big Five personality traits, which had low alphas, particularly for agreeableness. In this regard, it is interesting to compare the cultural differences in Big Five traits that we obtained with those obtained by Schmitt et al. (2007), who used Benet Martinez and John’s (1998) 44-item measure. The correlations between mean levels of openness to experience, conscientiousness, emotional stability, extraversion, and agreeableness, in the nine countries included in both our study and theirs, were, respectively, r(8) = .92, .90, .62, .49, and .30. This increases our confidence in the reliability of our results for some traits (particularly openness to experience and conscientiousness) but decreases it for others (e.g., agreeableness).

In sum, the preference for doing external activities such as reading, watching TV, or surfing the Internet rather than “just thinking” appears to be strong throughout the world. The magnitude of this preference is systematically related to several individual differences that characterize the residents of some countries more than others. These findings raise the question of whether there are conditions under which people throughout the world might enjoy thinking more and whether there would be value in doing so. Progress is being made on these fronts; as mentioned, Westgateetal.(2017) found that people enjoy thinking more when cognitive load is reduced by giving them a simple thinking aid, and studies have found other benefits to thinking for pleasure, namely a sense of personal meaningfulness (Alahmadi et al., 2017; Raza et al., 2018).

The fact that thinking for pleasure can be made easier is interesting in light of the present finding that reported cell phone usage was negatively associated enjoying one’s thoughts. Although much has been written about the increasing reliance on electronic devices and the possible negative consequences of “device obsession” (e.g., Carr, 2011; Kushlev & Dunn, 2015; Powers, 2010), our studyisthe firstto link device usage to a decrease in the ability to sit alone and enjoy one’s thoughts. The present findings are correlational, of course, so we do not knowwhetherusingcellphones makes it more difficult for people to enjoy thinking or whether people who do not enjoy thinking are especially likely to use cell phones, or whether some third variable causes both. It is a provocative possibility, though, that the allure of electronic devices is preventing people from making an effort to find pleasure in their thoughts.

If so, efforts to encourage people to put away their phones and “just think” may be of some benefit. For example, in a field study by Wilson, Westgate, Buttrick, and Gilbert (2018b), participants who were randomly assigned to spend spare moments during their day thinking for pleasure (with thinking aids) found this experience to be morepersonally meaningful, and as enjoyable, as did participantswho were randomly assigned to spend their spare moments as they normally did (which often involved using electronic devices). Much more work needs to be done to determine who values thinking for pleasure and when, but this initial evidence suggests that people may find it to be worth the effort if they gave it a try.

Older participants reported smaller social networks, largely because of reporting fewer peripheral others; yet older age was associated with better well-being

Age differences in reported social networks and well-being. Bruine de Bruin, Wändi, Parker, Andrew M., Strough, JoNell. Psychology and Aging, Nov 07, 2019. https://psycnet.apa.org/buy/2019-64493-001

Abstract: Social networks can consist of close friends, family members, and neighbors as well as peripheral others. Studies of social networks and associations with well-being have mostly focused on age-restricted samples of older adults or specific geographic areas, thus limiting their generalizability. We analyzed 2 online surveys conducted with RAND’s American Life Panel, a national adult life span sample recruited through multiple probability-based approaches. In Survey 1, 496 participants assessed the sizes of their social networks, including the number of close friends, family members, neighbors, and peripheral others. Of those, 287 rated their social satisfaction and well-being on Survey 2. Older participants reported smaller social networks, largely because of reporting fewer peripheral others. Yet older age was associated with better well-being. Although the reported number of close friends was unrelated to age, it was the main driver of well-being across the life span—even after accounting for the number of family members, neighbors, and peripheral others. However, well-being was more strongly related to social satisfaction than to the reported number of close friends—suggesting that it is the perception of relationship quality rather than the perception of relationship quantity that is relevant to reporting better well-being. We discuss implications for social network interventions that aim to promote well-being.

Check also Older age was correlated to better scores on each of the four financial decision‐making measures, and has more experience‐based knowledge, & less negative emotions about financial decisions (both of which are particularly helpful for better financial decision-making):

Age differences in financial decision making: The benefits of more experience and less negative emotions. Wiebke Eberhardt, Wändi Bruine de Bruin, JoNell Strough. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2018/08/older-age-was-correlated-to-better.html

And Age differences in moral judgment: Older adults are more deontological than younger adults. Simon McNair, Yasmina Okan, Constantinos Hadjichristidis, Wändi Bruine de Bruin. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2018/06/age-differences-in-moral-judgment-older.html

DISCUSSION

In a national adult life-span sample, we found support for four predictions from the
conceptual framework provided by the Convoy Model (Antonucci et al., 2013) and Socio
emotional Selectivity Theory (Carstensen, 2006), pertaining to age differences in social
networks, as well as associations with social satisfaction and well-being across the life span.
First, we found that older adults had smaller social networks than younger adults, but that the
number of close friends was unrelated to adult age. Younger adults had especially large
social networks consisting of mostly peripheral others, perhaps because online social
networking sites have facilitated the maintenance of increasingly large and mostly impersonal
social networks (Chang et al., 2015; Ellison, Steinfeld, & Lampe, 2007; Manago, Taylor, &
Greenfield, 2012; Valenzuela, Park, & Kee, 2009; Yu et al., 2018). Yet, our findings from
this national adult life span sample are consistent with previous observations in the offline
social networks of San Francisco Bay area residents (English & Carstensen, 2014; Fung et
al., 2001) and US residents before the widespread use of the internet (Morgan, 1988), as well
as more recent observations in the online social networks of Facebook users (Chang et al.,
2015; Yu et al., 2018). Additionally, older age in our national adult life-span sample was
associated with reporting social networks that included fewer family members and more
neighbors. A review of studies with older adults suggested that friends and neighbors may be
more important than family members kp"qnfgt"cfwnvuÓ"uqekcn"pgvyqtmu for promoting well
being (Pinquart & Sörensen, 2000). In older West Berlin residents, close friends and
neighbors were found to take over social and instrumental support functions to replace
unavailable family members (Lang & Carstensen, 1994).
Second, qnfgt"cfwnvuÓ"smaller networks did not appear to undermine their social
satisfaction or well-being. Although the two measures were highly correlated, reports of
social satisfaction were unrelated to age while reports of well-being increased with age.
Age differences in social networks 16

Other studies that have also suggested that life satisfaction and well-being tend to be
preserved or improve with older age (Carstensen et al., 2000, 2011; Charles et al., 2001;
Kessler & Staudinger, 2009).
Third, the reported number of close friends was associated with reported social
satisfaction and reported well-being across the adult life span. The relationship between the
number of close friends and well-being held even after accounting for the number of family
members, neighbors, and peripheral others Î which were not additionally associated with
well-being. The relationship of the reported number of close friends with greater social
satisfaction and well-being did not vary with age, suggesting the importance of close
friendships across the life span. This finding is consistent with observed patterns among
Facebook users, who reported greater well-being if they perceived more Òactual friendsÓ in
their online social networks (Chang et al., 2015). However, in the off-line social networks of
San Francisco Bay area residents (Fung et al., 2001), there was some evidence that reporting
more close friendships was related to lower happiness among younger adults, in line with the
idea that close relationships can also be emotionally taxing (Birditt et al., in press; Hartup &
Stevens, 1999). Indeed, younger adults report more problems and negative interactions in
their close social relationships as compared to older adults (Akiyama, Antonucci, Takahashi,
& Langfahl, 2003; Birditt et al., in press; Schlosnagle & Strough, 2017), which may partially
explain why we found that younger adults reported lower well-being despite having similar
numbers of close friends as older adults.
Our fourth main finding is that the reported number of close friends no longer
predicted well-being after taking into account the significant relationship between social
satisfaction and well-being. Thus, the quality of close friendships seems more important than
their quantity, for promoting well-being. Our analyses of a national adult life-span sample
confirmed patterns that had been observed in studies with age-restricted samples of older dults (Cornwell & Waite, 2009; Pinquart & Sörensen, 2000), and with a geographically
restricted adult life span sample recruited from the San Francisco Bay area (Fung et al.,
2001).
Our combined findings suggest support for a conceptual framework consisting of the
Convoy Model (Antonucci et al., 2013) and Socio-emotional Selectivity Theory, which
predicts smaller social networks of emotionally close relationships in older age, with benefits
to well-being. The Convoy Model posits that these age differences in social network size and
composition reflect age differences in personal and situational factors (Antonucci et al.,
2013). However, all findings held despite taking into account potential age differences in
self-reported health, income, and demographics. Possibly, age differences in other
unmeasured factors may have played a role. Socio-emotional Selectivity Theory suggests
that older adults may make intentional choices about their social networks, so as to optimize
emotional experiences (English & Carstensen, 2014). Although our secondary analyses can
not provide direct insight into the deliberate nature of age-related changes in centering social
networks more on emotionally gratifying close relationships, findings from the Berlin Aging
Study have shown that the main reason for discontinuing relationships in older adulthood
may be a lack of interest rather than lack of opportunity (Lang, 2000). Moreover, a survey of
a national adult life span sample revealed that younger, not older, people reported wishing
they had more friends (Lansford, Sherman, & Antonucci, 1998). Yet, our findings also
suggest that, as compared to younger adults, older adults count more neighbors among their
social contacts, which was unrelated to their social satisfaction and well-being. Thus, not all
of older adults' social contacts may be deliberately selected (or avoided) to promote better
well-being.
 One limitation of our research is its cross-sectional correlational nature, which
precludes conclusions about causality or developmental changes with age. Additionally, did not have access to participants' actual social networks. It is possible that younger adults
exaggerated their reported social networks, or that older adults underestimated theirs.
However, our findings suggest that these perceptions of social networks are relevant to later
reports of social satisfaction and well-being as provided on a separate survey. Another
potential limitation is that, despite relatively good response rates, our national life span
sample may have had limited representativeness due to selection effects. Although our
demographic control variables were in line with those in the literature on age differences in
social networks (e.g., Chang et al., 2015; Lang & Carstensen, 1994; Morgan, 1988), it is
possible that unmeasured variables such as personality characteristics may have contributed
to our findings.
Furthermore, the surveys we analyzed did not ask participants to distinguish between
social contacts who were maintained online or face to face. There may have been age
differences in the number of contacts maintained online or face-to-face with younger adults
maintaining especially large online social networks with many peripheral others (Chang et
al., 2015; Ellison, Steinfeld, & Lampe, 2007; Manago et al., 2012; Valenzuela, Park, & Kee,
2009; Yu et al., 2018). However, distinguishing between online and face-to-face contacts
may not actually be possible, because online communications are typically used to
supplement face-to-face and telephone communications with existing social contacts (Bargh
& McKenna, 2004; Wellman, Haase, Witte, & Hampton, 2001). Moreover, the importance
of friendships for well-being has been reported in studies of off-line social networks and
online social networks (e.g., Fung et al., 2001; Chang et al., 2015). While the nature of
friendships and time spent face to face may change over the life span, their social meaning
and importance to well-being does not (Hartup & Stevens, 1999).
Our findings suggest that interventions that aim to improve well-being may benefit
from helping recipients to foster close social relationships. Such interventions may require different approaches among older adults, as compared to younger adults. Indeed, developing
effective interventions requires a deeper understanding of those issues that audience members
need and want to have addressed (Bruine de Bruin & Bostrom, 2013). For example, older
adults may be most interested in interventions that help them to maintain their existing close
friendships. As noted by Fung et al. (2001), older people may actively resist encouragements
to increase their social networks through senior centers or visitation programs, because
meeting new people may no longer be as important to them (see also Carstensen & Erickson,
1986; Korte & Gupta, 1991). Rather, older adults may be better able to reduce feelings of
loneliness when being provided with internet and computer training (Choi, Kong, & Jung,
2012), perhaps because it helps them to stay in touch with those social contacts they care
most about (McAndrew & Jeong, 2012; Thayer & Ray, 2006).
Younger adults, on the other hand, may be most interested in growing their social
networks, but may benefit from learning how to do so while avoiding problems with their
friendships and draining their emotional resources (Birditt et al., in press; Hartup & Stevens,
1999; Schlosnagle & Strough, 2017). Pro-social interventions may be able to help younger
adults to grow their social networks in a positive manner: Pre-adolescents who were asked to
engage in three acts of kindness (vs. to visit three places) increased their popularity among
peers as well as their well-being (Layous, Nelson, Oberle, Schonert-Reichl, Lyubomirsky,
2012).
Moreover, a review of interventions that targeted lonely adults of all ages suggested
that providing cognitive behavioral therapy that aimed to improve maladaptive social
cognitions (or heightened negative attention to social threats, which exacerbate feelings of
sadness and loneliness) may be more effective than social activity interventions (Masi, Chen,
Hawkley, & Cacioppo, 2011). A review of interventions that promote the self-expression of
gratitude has suggested a beneficial effect on feelings of social connectedness and well-being (Armenta, Fritz, & Lyubomirsky, 2016). Indeed, our findings suggest that, across the life
span, satisfaction with social relationships may be more important than the quantity of close
friends, for promoting well-being.

Why Boredom Is Interesting

Why Boredom Is Interesting. Erin C. Westgate. Current Directions in Psychological Science, November 8, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1177/0963721419884309

Abstract: Is boredom bad? It is certainly common: Most everybody gets bored. There is a sense that boredom sometimes causes bad things to happen (e.g., substance use, self-harm) and sometimes causes good things to happen (e.g., daydreaming, creativity), but it is hard to understand what boredom does without first understanding what it is. According to the meaning-and-attentional-components (MAC) model of boredom and cognitive engagement, the emotion of boredom signals deficits in attention and meaning. Much like pain, it may not be pleasant, but boredom critically alerts us that we are unable or unwilling to successfully engage attention in meaningful activities. Whether that is good or bad rests ultimately on how we respond.

Keywords: boredom, meaning, attention, motivation, emotion

When a Russian man stole an army tank and drove it into a local supermarket (Kiryukhinia & Coleman, 2018), you would have been forgiven for thinking he had good reason. Nope, reported journalists: He was just bored.
Tales of bored troublemakers abound. From the odd— bored shopworkers cremating a mouse (“‘Bored’ Workers ‘Cremated Mouse,’” 2019)—to the disturbing—an Irishman caught aiming his pellet gun at drivers (Ferguson & McLean, 2019)—these news stories appear regularly, and the explanation “I was bored” resonates and perplexes. What is it about boredom that drives people to steal military equipment, watch movies on the job, and lay mice to rest? Is boredom really that nefarious?
It is certainly common: Most everybody gets bored (e.g., Chin, Markey, Bhargava, Kassam, & Loewenstein, 2017). Boredom is especially common at work, where it is linked to productivity loss and burnout (Fisher, 1993). It is also common in schools: Students get bored, and bored students do not do very well (Pekrun, Goetz, Daniels, Stupnisky, & Perry, 2010). Indeed, there is growing suspicion that boredom lies behind many socially destructive behaviors, including self-harm, compulsive gambling, and substance use (Mercer & Eastwood, 2010; Weybright, Caldwell, Ram, Smith, & Wegner, 2015). Yet, at the same time, there are calls from public intellectuals for people to experience more boredom in the belief that it leads to greater well-being (Paul, 2019). Who is right? To understand when boredom is good (and when it is bad), we first need to understand what boredom is.
Attention and Meaning: Boredom’s Key Ingredients
If you are reading this, you have almost certainly had the lamentable experience of reading a boring article. We all know the feeling: Dread and irritation build, your mind wanders, you check the clock and remaining page count, or even surrender and sneak a glimpse at your phone. In short, you are bored. But why? There could be something amiss with the environment—too much constraint or too little stimulation or arousal (Berlyne, 1960). According to attentional theories, such environmental features foster understimulation that makes it difficult to focus (Csikszentmihalyi, 2000; Eastwood, Frischen, Fenske, & Smilek, 2012). There is excellent evidence that difficulty paying attention translates into feelings of boredom and that understimulation can cause inattention. But such theories do not account for times when inattention is the result of overstimulation—too much going on rather than too little—and overlook a greater problem: Sometimes attention is not the issue.
Many functional approaches to boredom set attention aside to consider its underlying purpose; their proponents argue that boredom is a signal meant to alert people to underlying problems, most often concerning goals, meaning, or opportunity costs (e.g., van Tilburg & Igou, 2012). If inattention results in boredom, such individuals argue, it is because inattention is an indirect signal that what you are doing lacks value or meaning. But that does not explain instances when people are bored during otherwise meaningful activities.
Which is it then? Is boredom caused by inattention resulting from understimulation? Or is boredom caused by a lack of meaning? Both are (partially) right.1 The meaning-and-attentional-components (MAC) model of boredom and cognitive engagement unifies past work that has examined attention, meaning, and their environmental correlates in isolation and brings these ideas together to explain what boredom is and why we experience it.

From 2014...The Price of Envy—An Experimental Investigation of Spiteful Behavior

From 2014...The Price of Envy—An Experimental Investigation of Spiteful Behavior. Inga Wobker. Managerial and Decision Economics, April 21 2014. https://doi.org/10.1002/mde.2672

Abstract: When receiving less resources than a competitor, envy may be evoked that may result in spiteful behavior. This paper applies evolutionary theory to understand envy and its outcomes. A theoretical framework is developed that is based on the cause–effect relationships of unequal outcomes, envy, defection of cooperation, and welfare loss. To test this framework, an experiment with 136 participants is run. The results confirm that receiving less than another can indeed lead to experiences of envy and defection of future cooperation, producing a welfare loss of one‐sixth.

4.1. Discussion

The overall objective of this research was to study envyand its influence on spiteful behavior in an experimentalsetting with economic relevance. Evolutionary theoryprovided a supportive framework for studying the issue.

An unequal distribution of resources led to feelingsof envy in those who were worse off, which is in linewith prior literature (Hill and Buss, 2008b; Leach,2008). One-third of the losers chose to act spitefullyand reduce the other players’ balances. In a similar experiment by Celse (2009), participants with different levels of endowment could reduce the other players’ payoff at own cost. Of the participants with a lowerendowment than their opponents (equal to the losers inthis experiment), 31.9% reduced the other player’s balance at a personal cost. This may indicate that the rateof approximately one-third of the agents who are willing to behave spitefully is stably distributed in the population. However, one has to bear in mind that different expectations about the outcomes of the resource division probably will moderate the satisfaction with the outcome. For example, if an actor only expects a fraction of the outcome of what the others obtain, this outcome of the resource division is, however, still profitable for her or him, when actually receiving less than others, in this case, this does not trigger envy.

Although spiteful behavior as a reaction to resourcedeficiencies may be the best individual strategy (Hilland Buss, 2008b), it is certainly not the best strategy for a group or organization as a whole, as it produces welfare losses (Garay and Móri, 2011). Recognizing the impact of envy for agents may lead to new understandings of inefficient organizations and welfare losses and may help to develop approaches that better manage the destructive influence of emotions (more precisely,social emotions—those triggered by social comparisons), on behavior (Manner and Gowdy, 2008).

Agents who acted spitefully stated several motivations for their actions. Their attitude—that if they could not have the money, then no one should have it—is a common feature of envy (Feather and Nairn, 2005) and supports the evolutionary perspective that when itis not possible for a person to obtain the resource, nocompetitor should have it either, in order to preserve relative fitness (Hill and Buss, 2008a, 2008b). Some agents expressed the opinion that the distribution wasunjust as insofar that the opposing agents won and that they themselves did not. This attitude corresponds tothe traditional scholarly view that subjective assump-tions of undeserved advantage trigger envy (Featherand Sherman, 2002; Feather and Nairn, 2005; Smithand Kim, 2007), which, in turn, triggers ill will. If an agent is observed to have something that he or sheshould not have—even though this state of not deserving may be very subjective—it is understandable that the envious agent would feel hostile toward that enviedagent (Smithet al., 1994). Motivation that arises fromreasons of distributive justice is a very subjective response. Both agents had exactly the same chance of winning, so no objective criteria of fairness have been corrupted. Retaliation of the winner could be interpretedas a punishment for a defection of equity (Xiao andHouser, 2005; Axelrod and Hamilton, 2006). When an agent reduces the other agent’s prize and explains the decision on the simple basis that it is an option of the game, the stated motivation can be interpreted as apossible expression of disguised envy. A logical hypothesis for this behavior is that the agents neededto justify the reduction to themselves and to the experimenter and wanted to blame their desire to reduce on features of the game rather than on their envy.

5. CONCLUSION
The overall objective of this research was to studythe influence of envy on spiteful behavior and to understand the negative effects of envy on inter-firm and intra-firm relations. The evolutionary theory provided a supportive framework for studying the issue. In the study designed, agents played a lottery that provided them with unequal distribution and could subsequently create financial harm for each other at their own cost. One-third of thelosers in the lottery acted spitefully and reducedthe winners’balances by half. The observed welfare losses accumulated to one-seventh of thetotal income value.Addressing the broader aspects of envy, in orderto fully understand the nature of envy and its implications for relationships, more research is needed (Smith and Kim, 2007). Systematically integrating envy and other other-regarding preferences into economic modeling can provide a refreshing viewpoint in the investigation of human behavior (Horstet al., 2006; Kirman and Teschl, 2010). It will be interesting to see whether, and in what ways, this study will help to motivate researcher sto focus research on this fascinating emotion in this field—where, despite the relevance of inter-firm and intra-firm relations, the concept of envy is still neglected. It may be hoped for that adopting an evolutionary perspective on these questions will lead to more effective management strategies fo rdealing with envy

Are Aspects of Twitter Use Associated with Reduced Depressive Symptoms? It seems positive for lonely guys.

Are Aspects of Twitter Use Associated with Reduced Depressive Symptoms? The Moderating Role of In-Person Social Support. David A. Cole et al. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking, Vol. 22, No. 11, , Nov 7 2019. https://doi.org/10.1089/cyber.2019.0035

Abstract: In a two-wave, 4-month longitudinal study of 308 adults, two hypotheses were tested regarding the relation of Twitter-based measures of online social media use and in-person social support with depressive thoughts and symptoms. For four of five measures, Twitter use by in-person social support interactions predicted residualized change in depression-related outcomes over time; these results supported a corollary of the social compensation hypothesis that social media use is associated with greater benefits for people with lower in-person social support. In particular, having a larger Twitter social network (i.e., following and being followed by more people) and being more active in that network (i.e., sending and receiving more tweets) are especially helpful to people who have lower levels of in-person social support. For the fifth measure (the sentiment of Tweets), no interaction emerged; however, a beneficial main effect offset the adverse main effect of low in-person social support.


Discussion

This study examined the longitudinal effects of TU as a
means for offsetting the adverse effects of low social support
on depressive thoughts and symptoms. Two key results
emerged: first, support emerged for our corollary to the social
compensation (or poor-get-richer) hypothesis but not for the
rich-get-richer hypothesis. Four aspects of TU were related
to reductions in depressive thoughts and symptoms, but only
for people with low initial levels of in-person social support.
Second, conveying positive sentiment through Twitter predicted
a reduction in depressive thoughts and feelings, irrespective
of people’s level of in-person social support. Below,
we elaborate on these findings and their implications.
Our first set of findings was consistent with our corollary
to the social compensation hypothesis. People with low social
support showed improvements in depressive thoughts
and feelings over time if they reported four markers of TU:
following more people on Twitter, having more people follow
them on Twitter, posting more Tweets, and having more
of their posts retweeted by others. These markers were unrelated
to depressive thoughts and feelings of people who
already had high levels of in-person social support. These
results support Baker and Algorta’s observation that the effect
of social media on depression-related outcomes is
complicated by social, psychological, and behavioral moderators.
8 The current research provides longitudinal evidence
that in-person social support may be one such moderator.
These results also suggest that social media might be a way
to combat the adverse effects of low social support on mental
health. This possibility is commensurate with the conventional
wisdom that having one or two good friends in one
social niche can offset social adversity in other social niches.
48,49 Perhaps social media platforms represent a modern
version of such niches. We urge caution along these lines as
previous research has also shown that the relation of Twitter
with depression-related outcomes varies as a function of how
(and when) Twitter is used6,7,50–54 (also refer literature reviews
by Guntuku et al.55 and Hur and Gupta56).
Three reasons for this finding are possible.9,57 One is that
meeting people with similar interests or characteristics may
be easier online than in person, especially when such people
are not available within one’s in-person social networks.57–61
For people who lack these affiliations, connecting with others
online may have an especially strong impact. A second
explanation is that the online channels of communication are
simpler, such that people who find it challenging to develop
supportive in-person social networks may be more effective
in the more restricted online world of social media. One’s
ability to interpret nonverbal cues, one’s physical characteristics,
one’s proper use of vocal tone, and one’s timing of
social responses may be less important online than in person.
Nesi et al. referred to this as cue absence in their transformation
theory.62–65 In a related vein, online interactions tend
to be asynchronous. Delays between online communications
might allow people the time to compose more effective responses.
62 Understanding the mechanisms that underlie these
results represents an important avenue for future research.
A third explanation for these results is that the value added
by having online followers may not be as beneficial to people
who already have strong in-person social support, at least
insofar as reducing depressive thoughts and symptoms are
concerned. Some evidence even suggests that having a very
large number of online friends may actually be associated
with negative outcomes.66,67 The current interaction plots
in Figure 1 somewhat reflect this possibility, in that some of
our TU variables appeared to have adverse effects for people
who had strong in-person social supports. We caution
against overinterpreting this result, however, as the slopes for
participants with low social support were not statistically
significant.
Our second set of findings was the significant main effect of
Twitter sentiment, which offset the adverse effect of low inperson
social support. Two aspects of this result deserve
emphasis. First, this finding cannot be explained as consequences
of depression, as it derives from longitudinal analyses
in which prior levels of depression were statistically controlled.
Second, these results were not moderated by level of
social support. The effects of positive sentiment applied to
people at all levels of social support. Indeed, positive Twitter
sentiment offset much of the depressive effects of low inperson
social support. People with problematic social networks
but highly positive Twitter sentiment had similar levels
of depressive symptoms as did people with strong social
networks but more negative Twitter sentiment, reminiscent of
Granovetter’s early work on the strength of weak ties.68
Shapiro and Margolin’s extensive literature review describes
at least four reasons why effective use of online social
media platforms could offset the adverse effects of problematic
face-to-face relationships, especially with respect to
cognitive and emotional outcomes.57 First, people can engage
in selective self-presentation more easily online than in person.
By crafting carefully their online communications and
constructing their online persona, some people can accrue
more positive feedback online than they can in person, which
may in turn result in improvement on psychological outcomes.
64,65 Second, connecting with similar people or with
people who share similar interests may be easier for some
people online than in person, especially when such affiliations
are not available within in-person social networks.58–61 Third,
through the Internet, communicating with others from more
diverse intellectual, political, and social backgrounds can
expand one’s self-identity while enhancing feelings of belongingness
and affiliation.69 Trepte et al. hypothesized that
large, diverse groups may feel more connected with each
other online and are thus more likely to support each other.70
Fourth, self-disclosure may be easier online than in person,
potentially facilitating online social relationships or enabling
people to practice for in-person relationships.71,72
Taken together, these results begin to suggest interesting
supplemental strategies in the prevention of depression in
people who are at risk because of low social support. The
current findings, derived from one of very few longitudinal
studies in this area, increase our understanding about prospective
(not just correlational) relations and could have
implications for the use of social media in prevention research.
12 A powerful next step will be true experimental
research designs in which positive use of social media is
actively manipulated, so that its causal effect on mental
health outcomes can be assessed. If successful, online social
skills training could become a valuable component of comprehensive
depression prevention efforts.
Several shortcomings of this study suggest important avenues
for future research. The first focuses on our sentiment
analysis. Although examining the actual sentiment conveyed
by Twitter communications is a powerful step, in-depth
content analysis of people’s Tweets could reveal more about
more specific aspects of people’s communications that might
be responsible for the relation of sentiment with depressionrelated
outcomes. Furthermore, in short textual passages
(such as Tweets), it is extremely difficult to reliably measure
issues such as sarcasm and irony. Also, some kinds of negatively
toned messages (e.g., expressing distress) could serve
as triggers for positive responses (e.g., emotional support).
Second, depressive thoughts and symptoms are extremely
important mental health outcomes, emblematic of one of the
most common and debilitating classes of mental illnesses;
however, many other important clinical outcomes should
be explored, including Internet addiction, social anxiety,
and obsessive-compulsive disorder.73–75 Third, our study
focused only on Twitter. Other social media platforms exist
generate very different kinds of risks and benefits, which
should be explored. Fourth, we used an observational/
correlation research design, which leaves various ‘‘third
variables’’ uncontrolled. Random assignment to high versus
low Twitter conditions could control for self-selection factors
such as extraversion or level of depression. Fifth, although
use of MTurk for participant recruitment has certain
strengths, weaknesses have also been documented. These
include crosstalk among participants, misrepresentation of
personal characteristics to qualify for studies, and provision
of unreliable results.76–78 Although these issues do seem to
be characteristic of some MTurk participants, research shows
that these problems actually occur at similar rates in samples
obtained from more conventional methods.79 Future studies
should examine the generalizability of the current results
across a wider variety of populations.

About the Implicit Association Tests (IATs)... Predicting Behavior With Implicit Measures: Disillusioning Findings

Predicting Behavior With Implicit Measures: Disillusioning Findings, Reasonable Explanations, and Sophisticated Solutions. Franziska Meissner, Laura Anne Grigutsch, Nicolas Koranyi, Florian Müller and Klaus Rothermund. Front. Psychol., November 8 2019. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2019.02483

Two decades ago, the introduction of the Implicit Association Test (IAT) sparked enthusiastic reactions. With implicit measures like the IAT, researchers hoped to finally be able to bridge the gap between self-reported attitudes on one hand and behavior on the other. Twenty years of research and several meta-analyses later, however, we have to conclude that neither the IAT nor its derivatives have fulfilled these expectations. Their predictive value for behavioral criteria is weak and their incremental validity over and above self-report measures is negligible. In our review, we present an overview of explanations for these unsatisfactory findings and delineate promising ways forward. Over the years, several reasons for the IAT’s weak predictive validity have been proposed. They point to four potentially problematic features: First, the IAT is by no means a pure measure of individual differences in associations but suffers from extraneous influences like recoding. Hence, the predictive validity of IAT-scores should not be confused with the predictive validity of associations. Second, with the IAT, we usually aim to measure evaluation (“liking”) instead of motivation (“wanting”). Yet, behavior might be determined much more often by the latter than the former. Third, the IAT focuses on measuring associations instead of propositional beliefs and thus taps into a construct that might be too unspecific to account for behavior. Finally, studies on predictive validity are often characterized by a mismatch between predictor and criterion (e.g., while behavior is highly context-specific, the IAT usually takes into account neither the situation nor the domain). Recent research, however, also revealed advances addressing each of these problems, namely (1) procedural and analytical advances to control for recoding in the IAT, (2) measurement procedures to assess implicit wanting, (3) measurement procedures to assess implicit beliefs, and (4) approaches to increase the fit between implicit measures and behavioral criteria (e.g., by incorporating contextual information). Implicit measures like the IAT hold an enormous potential. In order to allow them to fulfill this potential, however, we have to refine our understanding of these measures, and we should incorporate recent conceptual and methodological advancements. This review provides specific recommendations on how to do so.

Why does he act like this? Why does she not do what she intended to do? In our everyday life, we often try to find explanations for the behavior of others, and of ourselves, respectively. Explaining and predicting behavior is also of key interest across all fields of scientific psychology, especially when it comes to deviations between individuals’ actual behavior and the attitudes, goals, or values held by these very individuals. Why do people discriminate although they report to hold egalitarian values? Why do they not quit smoking although they know that smoking is bad? Why is there a gap between people’s self-reported attitudes and actual behavior?

Dual-process or dual-system models attribute seemingly inconsistent behavior to the triumph of an impulsive system over a reflective system of behavior control (e.g., Strack and Deutsch, 2004; Hofmann et al., 2009; Kahneman, 2011). The notion that the prediction of behavior could be improved considerably if one succeeds in measuring the processes of the impulsive system (Hofmann et al., 2007; Friese et al., 2008; Hofmann and Friese, 2008) fueled research applying so-called implicit measures of attitudes. The most popular of these measures, the Implicit Association Test (IAT, Greenwald et al., 1998) evoked enthusiastic hopes regarding its predictive value. Unfortunately, however, the IAT and its derivatives have not met these expectations.

In this article, we review findings illustrating reasons for the IAT’s unsatisfying predictive value, as well as promising ways forward. We will outline that in order to improve the predictive power of implicit measures, differentiation is key. We will argue that future research should put more emphasis on the underlying processes and concepts behind these measures. We begin with sketching the discrepancy between individuals’ behaviors and their self-expressed attitudes. We then summarize the (mostly unsatisfying) attempts to close this attitude-behavior gap with the help of implicit measures. In the main part of this article, we identify features of implicit measures that are responsible for their weak predictive validity. We review findings illustrating each of these problematic aspects along with specific, sophisticated solutions providing promising directions for future research.

Closing Thoughts

In this article, we presented an overview of possible reasons for the weak relationship between implicit measures like the IAT and behavioral criteria. We outlined that the unsatisfying predictive value of the IAT is due to (1) extraneous influences like recoding, (2) the measurement of liking instead of wanting, (3) the measurement of associations instead of complex beliefs, and/or (4) a conceptual mismatch of predictor and criterion. We presented precise solutions for each of these problems. More precisely, we suggested to switch to procedural variations that minimize extraneous influences (i.e., the SB-IAT, Teige-Mocigemba et al., 2008; and the IAT-RF; Rothermund et al., 2009), and to apply sophisticated analysis tools (i.e., the ReAL model, Meissner and Rothermund, 2013) that separate relevant processes from those extraneous influences. Second, we presented an overview of different implicit measures that go beyond the measurement of evaluative associations, and instead quantify actual implicit wanting (e.g., the W-IAT, Koranyi et al., 2017). Third, we pointed to implicit measures of beliefs (e.g., the PEP, Müller and Rothermund, 2019) that allow a more nuanced view on individual attitudes and values than measures that tap into associations. Finally, we emphasized the importance of measuring behavior proper and outlined that implicit measures incorporating contextual information might be more adequate in assessing the structure of implicit attitudes or beliefs and their implications for behavior (Casper et al., 2011; Kornadt et al., 2016). Each of the recent developments presented in the current paper has the potential to increase the predictive power of implicit measures. Future research will also have to clarify whether a combination of these approaches may lead to further improvement. Inspired by the fruitful research on dual-process or dual-systems models, we further suggest to invest in theoretical considerations: Which forms or aspects of behavior should be related to which processes involved in which implicit measures? Differentiation is key, with regard to both the predictor and the criterion.

We strongly argue not to take the validity of implicit measures like the IAT for granted. Instead, we should take into account the complexity of these measures, especially when it comes to the predictive value for real-life behavior. As outlined in the current review, the past 20 years of research have provided us with a number of good reasons for why the IAT and its derivatives did not succeed in closing the attitude-behavior gap, and enriched our toolbox with promising, sophisticated improvements. Future research will benefit from harnessing the power of such a more differentiated view on implicit measures.

Mortality salience hypothesis of terror management theory: Reminders of our future death increase the necessity to validate our cultural worldview and to enhance our self-esteem; we did not observe evidence for a mortality salience effect

Rodríguez-Ferreiro, Javier, Itxaso Barberia, Jordi González-Guerra, and Miguel A. Vadillo. 2019. “Are We Truly Special and Unique? A Replication of Goldenberg Et Al. (2001).” PsyArXiv. November 7. doi:10.31234/osf.io/rcjz9

Abstract: According to the mortality salience hypothesis of terror management theory, reminders of our future death increase the necessity to validate our cultural worldview and to enhance our self-esteem. In Experiment 2 of the study “I am not an animal: Mortality salience, disgust, and the denial of human creatureliness”, Goldenberg et al. (2001) observed that participants primed with questions about their death provided more positive evaluations to an essay describing humans as distinct from animals than control participants presented with questions regarding another aversive situation. In a replication of this experiment conducted with 128 volunteers, we did not observe evidence for a mortality salience effect.

Discussion

Overall, the pattern of results reported in the previous section are inconsistent with
the original results of Goldenberg et al. (2001). This does not necessarily mean that the
original effect was a false positive, but it does suggest that (a) the effect may be
substantially smaller than originally reported or (b) that the effect is extremely sensitive to
contextual factors and perhaps absent in some populations. Consistent with the former
interpretation, our own reanalysis of Burke et al. (2010; see also Yen & Cheng, 2013)
provides compelling evidence that the effect sizes of previous research on mortality
salience may have been overestimated.
But, of course, it is possible that our experiment simply failed to recreate the ideal
conditions for the emergence of the mortality salience effect reported by Goldenberg et al.
(2001). Failed replications of prominent social psychology studies have often been
attributed to the contextual sensitivity of the processes involved in these effects (e.g.,
Cesario, 2014; Sundie, Beal, Neuberg, & Kenrick, 2019; Van Bavel, Mende-Siedlecki,
Brady, & Reinero, 2016). For instance, reviewers of an earlier version of this article
suggested that perhaps Spanish participants (1) do not care so much about uniqueness and
free will, (2) do not care about distancing themselves as much from animals as Americans,
(3) do not fear death as much as Americans. Although none of these possibilities can be
discarded conclusively on the basis of the present data, we deem them unlikely. Visual
inspection of Figure 2 shows that the distribution of the ratings provided by our
participants are in almost perfect agreement with the ratings provided by the control group
in the original study by Goldenberg et al. (M = 5.80, SD = 1.36). This provides little
support to the idea that our essays did not resonate with these participants in the same
manner as they did with participants in the original study.
Of course, our study is not without limitations. Neither our empirical study nor our
reanalysis of the data reported by Burke et al. (2010) were pre-registered, failing to meet
the highest standards of confirmatory research. In contrast, we do offer public access to our
complete data set and invite skeptical readers to test alternative hypotheses that we may
have overlooked and that perhaps may provide stronger support for the mortality salience
hypothesis. Similarly, although the sample size recruited for the present study (N = 128)
was substantially larger than the sample size of the original study (N = 20, in the same two
conditions), given the evidence of bias that we detected in the literature, it might have been
wise to power our study for a substantially smaller effect size, perhaps around r = .22, for
consistency with the bias-corrected average effect returned by the selection model.
In any case, we think that given the theoretical relevance of this effect, it is worth
investing more time and resources in establishing its reliability and boundary conditions.
We hope that the present work will provide some initial momentum for further replication
studies on terror management theory and the mortality salience hypothesis.

Evidence points to a possible association between optimism and the placebo response

The influence of personality traits on the placebo/nocebo response: A systematic review. Alexandra Kern et al. Journal of Psychosomatic Research, November 7 2019, 109866. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychores.2019.109866

Highlights
• Results on the influence of personality traits on placebo responses are heterogeneous.
• More studies are available on the influence of personality traits on the placebo response than on the nocebo response.
• Optimism seems to be positively associated with placebo responses.
• Anxiety might lead to increased nocebo responses.

Abstract
Objective: Some people might be more prone to placebo and nocebo responses than others depending on their personality traits. We aimed to provide a systematic review on the influence of personality traits on placebo and nocebo responses in controlled and uncontrolled studies.

Methods: We conducted a systematic literature search in the databases CINAHL, AMED, PsycINFO and EMBASE for relevant publications published between January 1997 and March 2018. For all included papers, we conducted an additional forward search.

Results: After screening 407 references, we identified 24 studies. The Big Five (i.e., neuroticism, extraversion, openness to experience, agreeableness and conscientiousness) and optimism were the most frequently investigated personality traits. Several studies found a positive association between optimism and the placebo response. Furthermore, we found that higher anxiety was associated with increased nocebo responses.

Conclusion: Evidence points to a possible association between optimism and the placebo response. Therefore, further emphasising the investigation of the influence of optimism on the placebo/nocebo response seems warranted. For clinical practice, the impact of anxiety on the nocebo response might be important to identify patients who might be more prone to experiencing side effects of medical treatments.

Keywords: Nocebo responsePersonalityPlacebo responseSystematic review

State & private schoolers have no differences in wellbeing across adolescence; private schoolers have fewer behavior problems, more peer victimization, less risk aversion & drink sooner

von Stumm, Sophie, and Robert Plomin. 2019. “Does Private Education Make Nicer People? the Influence of School Type on Socioemotional Development.” PsyArXiv. November 7. doi:10.31234/osf.io/73gzd

Abstract
In a longitudinal sample from Britain, we tested if attending private, fee-charging schools rather than non-selective state schools benefitted children’s socioemotional development.
State (N = 2,413) and private school children (N = 269) showed no differences in wellbeing across adolescence, but private school children reported fewer behavior problems and greater peer victimization over time than state schoolers. These results were independent of schools’ selection criteria, including family background, and prior academic and cognitive performance.
At age 21, private and state school students differed marginally in socioemotional competencies, such as self-control, volunteering, sexual behaviors, and substance use. After considering schools’ selection criteria, only risk taking and age at the first alcoholic drink differed between private and state school children, with the privately educated being less risk averse and drinking at younger ages than those attending state school.
Our results suggest that private education adds little positive value to children’s socioemotional development.

PhD thesis: A comparative study of the lived experiences of female sex workers in Scotland and New Zealand

Ryan, Anastacia Elle (2019) The sanctions of justice: a comparative study of the lived experiences of female sex workers in Scotland and New Zealand. PhD thesis. https://theses.gla.ac.uk/41136

Abstract
Female sex workers have become marked as women in transgression, viewed as bad or fallen, depending on thediscourse applied to the wider institution of prostitution. Bad women, if motivated to sell sexual services by self-interest, and fallen women, if prey to malicious male violence and abuse. Be they agents or victims, the construction of female sex workersin the public imagination is enmeshed with historical, political and social anxiety related to women’s transgression from appropriate norms of femininity, sexuality and good citizenship. Female sex workers are distinguished from “virtuous women” by the associated stigma of being a “whore”. Furthermore, political functions of the whore stigma serve to render female sex workers as “othered” and thus, they face oppression globally, yet disavow governance responsibilities for the injustices they face. In the advanced capitalist society, a whole range of liberties can be seen to be rendered as incompatible with female legitimacy.

This thesis examines how the historical, social and political meanings attached to prostitution/sex work affect the practices of governance in this area, inquiring into their implications for sex work policy, and their effects on sex working women’s lives in the comparative legal settings of Scotland and New Zealand. The overarching research aim driving this thesis is: to compare ways in which sex work laws, policies and frameworks in Scotland and New Zealand enable or constrain sex workers’ access to justice. This thesis adopts a participatory feminist methodological approach that centers women’s voices and experiences in addressing theresearch aims, in the endeavor to engage with social justice as both a task and a process.

Tasked with the desire to facilitate subjective accounts of women’s experiences, an overall qualitative approach to collating and analysing data was taken, with in-depth narrative style interviews and ethnographic-informed fieldwork observations being utilised to seek women’s own understandings of their lived experiences. To gain additional context to these experiences, semi-structured interviews were also conducted with key informants, identified as being people whose everyday work involved a translation of policy to practice and an operalisation in some sense of the laws and policies on sex work in each context. Fieldwork took place over a twelve-month period between the comparative contexts of New Zealand (mainly Wellington and Auckland) and Scotland (mainly Edinburgh and Glasgow). No fixed geographical boundaries were put in place in the research in acknowledgement of the transient and often mobile nature of women’s work in the sex industry. Sampling strategies were tailored to each research context, with the intention to reach women who were involved or in contact with local services and collectives and also women who were not in contact with such possible gatekeeping organisations. Thus, a sampling through gatekeepers alongside a snowball sampling technique arose in both contexts, with the later proving more effective in Scotland where a quasi-criminalised legal framework was found to make female sex workers work in more hidden and clandestine ways.

Over the five months spent in New Zealand, thirteen interviews with sex workers were conducted (with four repeated during follow up interviews), two interviews with managers and three interviews with those involved in the provision of service to sex workers. Additionally, over 150 hours of observation was collected in field notes, which ranged from time spent in the base of the New Zealand Prostitutes Collective (NZPC), time spent accompanying NZPC workers to outreach, collecting litter, such as used prevention commodities and their packaging, from the street, meeting with other agencies and organisations, and spending time in a sex working premise with sex workers and management. In Scotland, twelve sex workers were interviewed, of which three were interviewed for a second time. Six sex workers were approached through the national Charity, SCOT-PEP, and three were approached through the social media advertisement of other sex workers who were involved in the formation of Umbrella Lane. Three sex working women were recruited through charity outreach to a sex working premise, and around 150 hours of ethnographic-informed observational field notes were recorded from online forums, during face-to-face sex worker meetings, in organizing spaces, and in a sex workpremise.

The material effects of the comparative laws and policies on sex work on women’s lived experiences in Scotland and New Zealand were explored through thematic analysis of the data collated. Emergent themes of agency, risk, engagement, stigma and violence allowed for these experiences to form the basis of a critical analysis of structural forces at play. This impacted on women’s entry into sex work, occupational health and safety, sex workers engagement with health and other support services, experiences of stigma, and recourse to justice in cases of violence. Whilst the legal frameworks were not the only structural factor at play, decriminalization was experienced to enhance women’s agency and autonomy in their choosing of how to do sex work, with a prioritisation of their safety being supported by occupational health and safety (OHS) frameworks in place. These OHS frameworks also enabled the New Zealand based participants to minimize perceived risks to their safety, and further provisions in the Prostitution Reform Act allowed sex workers to access justice in cases where their rights were violated concretely through exploitation, abuse or violence, and more subtely in their development of resilience and resistanceto stigma. Furthermore, women in New Zealand felt empowered to access essential support services extending beyond basic harm reduction services. In Scotland, under a somewhat paradoxical setting whereby the legal framework criminalises the way sex workerswork, alongside a policy context that pivots on an understanding of prostitution as commercial sexual exploitation, women experienced less agency than their New Zealand counterparts in choosing how and where to work, increasing their risk to exploitative working conditions and violence, as their priotisation of avoiding state attention and criminalisation was experienced to override their safety concerns and yet felt comparatively more stigmatised and marginalised from services, including health, social and justice based service provision.

By reading empirical research with comparative policy, law and theory, this thesis contributes to the development of an ‘agenda for change’ for sex workers (McGarry and Fitzgerald, 2018). Such an agenda promotes a paradigm shift in rethinking the relationship between knowledge, discourse, and legal and policy governance, to explore women’s lived experiences in relation to social justice. By making visible the injustices enacted and perpetuated towards women, in this study, and assessing the role of the legal and policy frameworks in supporting, subverting or interrupting injustice and oppression of female sex workers, a politics of justice is envisaged in conclusions that make pertinent three points.Firstly, the urgent need for engagement with the New Zealand Model of decriminalisation of sex work as a task of promoting a politics of recognition to enable female sex workers the institutional rights necessary to minimise their occupational health and safety risks and enhance their access to formal justice in cases of exploitation, abuse and violence. Secondly, the required task for the development of a politics of redistribution in both comparative contexts that renders visible the structural injustices faced by femalesex workers by prioritising the facilitation of sex working women’s’ voices and experiences, in such justice claims, to avoid misrepresentation and misframing of these economic injustice concerns, which appear to dominate current redistribution justice understandings in the Scottish context. And finally, a renewed commitment of status equality to sex working women in policy frameworks that allows for social justice concerns. The exploration of women’s economic, political and social vulnerability to influence discourse, and subsequent policy objectives that are not causing further harm, marginalisation and exclusion of sex workers from vital support services and legal recourse to justice as further evidenced in the Scottish context.

Processing speed for deservingness-relevant info is greater than deservingness-irrelevant info; the construct of deservingness is central in human social relations, as if we evolved to have embedded gauges that measure justice

Evidence of a Processing Advantage for Deservingness-Relevant Information. Carolyn L. Hafer et al. Social Psychology, October 7, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1027/1864-9335/a000396

Abstract. We investigated processing speed for deservingness-relevant versus deservingness-irrelevant information. Female students read stories involving deserved, undeserved, or neutral outcomes. We recorded participants’ reaction time (RT) in processing the outcomes. We also measured individual differences in “belief in a just world” as a proxy for deservingness schematicity. RTs for deserved and undeserved outcomes were faster than for neutral outcomes, B = −8.45, p = .011, an effect that increased the stronger the belief in a just world (e.g., B = −3.18, p = .006). These findings provide novel evidence that the construct of deservingness is central in human social relations, and suggest both universal and particularistic schemas for deservingness.

Keywords: deservingness, processing speed, reaction time, schema, belief in a just world

RT = reaction time
BJW= belief in a just world

Hypothesis 1 (H1): Deservingness-relevant information will be processed faster than deservingness-irrelevant information.
Hypothesis 2 (H2): As BJW increases, the greater the processing advantage for deservingness-relevant information.

Discussion

We examined processing speed for deservingness-relevant information. Supporting H1, participants processed deservingness-relevant information faster than deservingness-irrelevant information. This novel finding converges with previous research (e.g., Feather, 1999; Lerner, 1977; Price & Brosnan, 2012) to suggest that people have a concern with deservingness that is deeply ingrained. Supporting H2, the stronger participants’ BJW, the greater the processing advantage for deservingness-relevant information. Thus, deservingness appears to be more central for some individuals.

Affective priming (Fazio, Sanbonmatsu, Powell,& Kardes, 1986) cannot account for our findings. The deserved and neutral outcomes followed a stimulus (i.e., the protagonist’s behavior) of the same valence, whereas the undeserved outcomes involved stimuli (behavior and outcome) with mismatching valences. Yet, RTs to deserved versus undeserved outcomes did not differ (contrary to affective priming predictions). Furthermore, if affective priming were the mechanism, RTs for deserved/undeserved outcomes would not be faster than for neutral outcomes. Our findings have several implications. First, if people rapidly process deservingness-relevant information, they can quickly make judgments and act based on that information. Rapid responses to quickly processed deservingnessrelevant information are not always beneficial. For example, peoplemight automatically dismiss a potential human rights abuse based on quick processing of information implying the individual deserves severe treatment (see Drolet et al., 2016), while failing to consider more appropriate information that takes longer to process.

Second, support for H1 suggests that there is a universal schema, as well as a particularistic schema that is characteristic of people with a strong BJW (see Markus, Hamill, & Sentis, 1987). A universal deservingness schema is consistent with the justice motive theory and evolutionary perspectives noted earlier.

We presume our findings would generalize beyond female university students, given evidence that deservingness is central to people in general (see Hafer, 2011). However, researchers should test our hypotheses with other groups of people.

Unfortunately, our memory items were not designed to test schema-driven recall. Researchers should test whether a strong BJW acts as a schema by biasing memory (see Callan, Kay, Davidenko, & Ellard, 2009), as well as the mechanism underlying deservingness schematicity (e.g., construct accessibility or importance, richness of cognitive structures, etc.; see Ruble & Stangor, 1986). Furthermore, aside from people with a strong BJW, researchers should test whether people with a strong belief that people get what is undeserved are also particularly schematic for deservingness.

In conclusion, we found evidence that people, especially those with a strong BJW, show a processing advantage for deservingness-relevant versus deservingness–irrelevant information. These findings add novel support to the idea that the construct of deservingness is central in human social relations.

Electronic Supplementary Material: https://doi.org/10.1027/1864-9335/a000396
ESM 1. Details on Mixed Models Analyses

Our main finding is that height does have a strong positive effect on life satisfaction

Height and life satisfaction: Evidence from 27 nations. Nazim Habibov, Rong Luo, Alena Auchynnikava, Lida Fan. American Journal of Human Biology, November 6 2019. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajhb.23351

Abstract
Objectives: To evaluate the effect of height on life satisfaction.

Methods: We use data from a recent multi‐country survey that was conducted in 27 nations.

Results: Our main finding is that height does have a strong positive effect on life satisfaction. These findings remain positive and significant when we use a comprehensive set of well‐known covariates of life‐satisfaction at both the individual and country levels. These findings also remain robust to alternative statistical specifications.

Conclusions: From a theoretical standpoint, our findings suggest that height is important in explaining life‐satisfaction independent of other well‐known determinants. From a methodological standpoint, the findings of this study highlight the need to explicitly control for the effect of heights in studies on subjective well‐being, happiness, and life‐satisfaction.

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5 | CONCLUSION
Recent developments in the literature have highlighted the important role that height plays in explaining life satisfac-tion. However, despite the strong theoretical underpinnings of a positive height effect on life satisfaction, surprisingly few studies have attempted to confirm the positive influence of height on life satisfaction, especially outside of developed countries. In the light of this evidence, the present study evaluates the effect of height on life satisfaction in 27 post-communist nations.

Our main finding is that height indeed does have a positive effect on life satisfaction. This finding remains significant when we use a comprehensive set of well-known covariates of life-satisfaction at both the individual and country levels. These findings also remain robust to alternative statistical specifications. We also found that greater height is associated with higher levels of satisfaction with one's financial situation, although the effect of height on job satisfaction is not significant. However, we found that the magnitude of the height effect is lower when compared with well-known covariates of life-satisfaction at the individual level such as health, age, income, education, and marital status. Likewise, the magnitude of the height effect is lower than well-known covariates of life-satisfaction at the country level as well as GDP growth, poverty level, economic freedom, social transfers to population, and democracy level.

The empirical findings discussed above have theoretical and methodological implications. From the theoretical stand-point, our findings suggest that lack of investments into high quality nutrition, hygiene, health, education, and positive environmental conditions prevent some children from attaining their full potential height. Not reaching full height will then be translated into poorer health, emotional, reproductive, educational, and labor market outcomes. In turn, these factors are responsible for the lower levels of life evaluation provided by shorter people. From the methodological stand-point, the findings of this study highlight the need to explicitly control for the effect of heights in studies on subjective well-being, happiness, and life-satisfaction. However, a number of limitations should be mentioned. Small country samples prevent us from conducting country-by-country analysis to uncover variations in the height effect across countries. In addition, even though we used a comprehensive set of control variables, we were not able to control for abilities due to limitations in our data set. Hence, we were not able to fully overcome the omitted variable problem inasmuch as cognitive and non-cognitive abilities could be correlated with both height and life-satisfaction. Future studies should focus on country differences in the height to life satisfaction effect by controlling for abilities. In addition, comparing the height to life satisfaction effect across developed, post-communist, and developing countries could provide another promising line of enquiry.

Associations of "positive" temperament and personality traits with frequency of physical activity in adulthood: The nicer they were, the more they exercised

Associations of temperament and personality traits with frequency of physical activity in adulthood. Jenni Karvonen et al. Journal of Research in Personality, November 7 2019, 103887. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jrp.2019.103887

Highlights
•    Both temperament and personality traits are associated with adult physical activity.
•    Different traits are related to physical activity engagement among women and men.
•    Temperament and personality traits relate to rambling in nature and watching sports.
•    Combinations of temperament and personality characteristics need further research.

Abstract: Temperament and physical activity (PA) have been examined in children and adolescents, but little is known about these associations in adulthood. Personality traits, however, are known to contribute to PA in adults. This study, which examined both temperament and personality characteristics at age 42 in relation to frequency of PA at age 50 (JYLS, n = 214-261), also found associations with temperament traits. Positive associations were found between Orienting sensitivity and overall PA and between Extraversion and vigorous PA among women and between low Negative affectivity and overall and vigorous PA among men. Furthermore, Orienting sensitivity and Agreeableness were associated with vigorous PA among men. Temperament and personality characteristics also showed gender-specific associations with rambling in nature and watching sports.


3.4 Discussion
The present study investigated the associations of temperament and personality characteristics,
assessed at age 42, with frequency of engagement in physical activity, assessed at age 50,
among Finnish women and men. Our main findings for the temperament traits were as follows:
(1) Orienting sensitivity showed a positive association with overall physical activity
engagement among women, and with vigorous physical activity engagement and an increased
likelihood of frequent rambling in nature among men. As expected, (2) Negative affectivity
was found to be negatively associated with both overall as well as vigorous physical activity
engagement, but only among men, meaning that men who scored lower in Negative affectivity
were more likely to engage in both overall and vigorous physical activity. In support of this,
men who scored high in Negative affectivity were more likely to watch sports frequently,
which, in this study, was seen to reflect physical inactivity. However, alternative
interpretations, such as the view that watching sports reflects an interest in other people’s
physical activity, are possible, and thus our results suggest that Negative affectivity is
associated with higher physical inactivity but also with interest in sports. Lastly, (3) Surgency
was negatively associated with rambling in nature among women.

Due to the novelty of the present observations for adult temperament, we can only speculate as
to their reasons. It is possible that awareness of extraneous low intensity stimulation, which
characterizes individuals who score high in Orienting sensitivity (Evans & Rothbart, 2007),
leads these individuals to experience physical activity-related physical responses as particularly
pleasant or satisfying, which in turn encourages them to exercise more frequently. Similarly,
the positive association observed here between Orienting sensitivity and rambling in nature
among men may stem from their conscious awareness of their surroundings and its visual
features. Evans and Rothbart (2007) characterize individuals with high levels of Surgency as
needing high levels of strength, complexity or novelty of arousal. This may help to explain
why, among the present women, those with high Surgency scores showed reduced willingness
to ramble in nature, as this type of physical activity does not provide them with adequate
stimuli. Our observation of the negative association between Negative affectivity and overall
and vigorous engagement in physical activity is in line with our study hypothesis. However, as
sports can be watched either individually or in the company of a larger group of people, we are
unable to provide confirmation for our hypothesis that Negative affectivity is positively
associated with, in particular, individually performed exercise types. Some explanation for the
negative association between Negative affectivity and physical activity engagement may be
gained from the general characterization of individuals who score high in Negative affectivity:
these individuals are prone to negative emotional states, such as anxiousness and selfconsciousness
(Watson & Clark, 1984), which, understandably, may decrease, restrict or
altogether erode their willingness to participate in situations involving physical activity, as
could have been the case among the present sample of men. As our results on adult
temperament and physical activity are first of their kind, additional research to confirm them
is clearly needed.

Our results on regards personality traits support earlier findings (Allen & Vella, 2015;
Courneya & Hellsten, 1998; Hagan & Hausenblas, 2005) in that high scores in Extraversion
were positively associated with engagement in vigorous physical activity, and that individuals
with higher levels of Openness were more likely to engage in outdoor exercise. Our results did
not provide confirmation for the previously found positive association between Agreeableness
and recreational exercise (Courneya & Hellsten, 1998). Interestingly, we also found
Extraversion to have a positive association with watching sports. Individuals scoring high in
Extraversion have been characterized by gregariousness and a need for intense sensory stimuli
(Costa & McCrae, 1992b; McCrae & John, 1992), needs which, as argued by Wilson and
Dishman (2015), may be met by physical activity. This is not to say that the same needs could
not also be satisfied by more sedentary activities, like watching a football game with friends.
It is probable, therefore, that the present observation between Extraversion and watching sports
relates to the social rather than the sedentary aspect of watching sports. It may also be that
different lower-order facets within the Extraversion trait relate differently to different types of
exercise. According to Artese, Ehley, Sutin and Terracciano (2017), the Activity facet
especially is associated with more frequent engagement in physical activity and less sedentary
time when measured via an accelerometer. The same phenomenon has been noted by Vo and
Bogg (2015) for self-reported physical activity. However, more extensive research on the
lower-order facets of personality traits in relation to physical activity is called for.

Our finding on the positive association between Agreeableness and vigorous physical activity,
despite its being surprising and in contradiction to previous findings (Aşçı et al., 2015; Sutin
et al., 2016; Wilson & Dishman, 2015), is supported by Artese et al. (2017), who reported
Agreeableness to be positively associated with moderate-vigorous physical activity and step
counts. Our results suggest that Agreeableness might be a significant factor in physical activity,
particularly among men. In the same JYLS data, Hietalahti, Rantanen and Kokko (2016) found
Agreeableness to be positively correlated with leisure and physical fitness goals among men.
Our results may, therefore, also be coincidental and reflective only of the present study
population. However, considering that most of the previous studies on personality traits and
physical activity have not taken gender differences into account, our results are hypothesisgenerating
and merit replication in a larger sample.

Our analyses on trait combinations shed light on both the relationship between adult
temperament and personality traits and their simultaneous association with physical activity.
Our results suggest that the women in the present study sample may be seeking something other
than high intensity or strong stimulus from their physical activity. The present results also
imply that these women may be looking for novel experiences when engaging in physical
activity and that men with high levels of negative emotionality are at especial risk for being
physically inactive. On the other hand, our results indicate that self-regulative processes are
related to the ability of men to follow up on high intensity training and perhaps to inhibit the
urge to cease exercise despite the unpleasant sensations possibly induced by intense physical
stimulation. Although generally described by attributes such as altruism, ingenuousness and
kindness (McCrae & John, 1992b), our observation on the association of the trait combination
of Effortful control and Agreeableness with vigorous physical activity engagement may in fact
support the findings of Jensen-Campbell et al. (2002), who suggested that Agreeableness has a
developmental basis in inhibition and self-control rather than social conformity. As our
analyses on individual traits and trait combinations also produced slightly different results,
more emphasis on examining the inter-relationships between temperament and personality
characteristics is needed. Similarly, while the trait combinations presented here gained
theoretical support from existing correlational evidence between temperament and personality
characteristics (Evans & Rothbart, 2007; Pulkkinen et al., 2012; Wiltink et al., 2006), the novel
analytic approach used merits further research.

The present findings add to the extensive line of personality research already conducted on the
JYLS study population, unique in its representativeness and length of follow-up. Previous
studies on the same data have linked personality traits to various meaningful aspects of adult
life, including parenting (Metsäpelto & Pulkkinen, 2003; Rantanen, Tillemann, Metsäpelto,
Kokko, & Pulkkinen, 2015), working life (Viinikainen, Kokko, Pulkkinen, & Pehkonen, 2010;
Viinikainen & Kokko, 2012) and well-being (e.g. Kokko et al., 2013; Mäkikangas et al., 2015).
Our findings extend this knowledge by indicating yet another domain of these individuals’
daily lives, habitual physical activity, to which individual differences in both temperament and
personality traits contribute. Following Kinnunen et al. (2012), our findings also point to the
utility of assessing larger groups of (temperament and) personality characteristics instead of
focusing on individual traits alone.

Humans can have normal olfaction without apparent olfactory bulbs (seen in 0.6% of women, but not in men); this is associated with left-handedness

Human Olfaction without Apparent Olfactory Bulbs. Tali Weiss et al. Neuron, November 6 2019. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuron.2019.10.006

Highlights
•    Humans can have normal olfaction without apparent olfactory bulbs
•    Olfaction without apparent bulbs is seen in 0.6% of women, but not in men
•    Olfaction without apparent bulbs is associated with left-handedness

Summary: The olfactory bulbs (OBs) are the first site of odor representation in the mammalian brain, and their unique ultrastructure is considered a necessary substrate for spatiotemporal coding of smell. Given this, we were struck by the serendipitous observation at MRI of two otherwise healthy young left-handed women, yet with no apparent OBs. Standardized tests revealed normal odor awareness, detection, discrimination, identification, and representation. Functional MRI of these women’s brains revealed that odorant-induced activity in piriform cortex, the primary OB target, was similar in its extent to that of intact controls. Finally, review of a public brain-MRI database with 1,113 participants (606 women) also tested for olfactory performance, uncovered olfaction without anatomically defined OBs in ∼0.6% of women and ∼4.25% of left-handed women. Thus, humans can perform the basic facets of olfaction without canonical OBs, implying extreme plasticity in the functional neuroanatomy of this sensory system.