If your device could smile: People trust happy-sounding artificial agents more. Ilaria Torre, Jeremy Goslin, Laurence White. Computers in Human Behavior, December 9 2019. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2019.106215
Highlights
• Smiling can be heard in the voice without any visual cue.
• This ‘smiling voice’ elicits higher trusting behaviors than a neutral one.
• The higher trust persists even when the speaker is untrustworthy.
• This has implications for the design of voice-based artificial agents.
Abstract: While it is clear that artificial agents that are able to express emotions increase trust in Human-Machine Interaction, most studies looking at this effect concentrated on the expression of emotions through the visual channel, e.g. facial expressions. However, emotions can be expressed in the vocal channel too, yet the relationship between trust and vocally expressive agents has not yet been investigated. We use a game theory paradigm to examine the influence of smiling in the voice on trusting behavior towards a virtual agent, who responds either trustworthily or untrustworthily in an investment game. We found that a smiling voice increases trust, and that this effect persists over time, despite the accumulation of clear evidence regarding the agent’s level of trustworthiness in a negotiated interaction. Smiling voices maintain this benefit even in the face of behavioral evidence of untrustworthiness.
Keywords: TrustSmiling voiceVirtual agents
5. Discussion
Using an investment game paradigm, we found that positive vocal emotional expression – smiling voice – increases
participants’ implicit trust attributions to virtual agents, compared with when agents speak with an emotionally neutral
voice. As previously observed, the monetary returns of the
agent also affected implicit trust, so that participants invested
more money in the agent that was behaving generously. Critically, however, there was no interaction between behavior
and vocal emotional expression: smiling voice enhanced trust
regardless of the explicit behavioral cues that the virtual agent
provided to its trustworthiness.
The effect of smiling voice in the game, supported by
our questionnaire findings, adds to previous studies on emotional expression, showing that the display of a positive emotion increases trust and likeability, even in the vocal channel
(Scharlemann et al., 2001; Krumhuber et al., 2007; PentonVoak et al., 2006).
Smiling was a consistent predictor of investments overall.
That is to say, while participants’ investments were primarily
driven by the virtual player’s generosity or meanness, they
also overall invested more money in the smiling agents. This
contrasts with the predictions of the EASI model (Van Kleef
et al., 2010), according to which the display of a positive
emotion in an incongruent context (such as the mean behavior condition) should elicit uncooperative behaviors. While
Van Kleef et al. (2010) listed social dilemma tasks based
on Prisoner’s Dilemma among possible competitive situations, it is possible that participants in an iterated investment
game view it as an essentially cooperative task. Specifically,
while typical Prisoner’s Dilemma tasks involve a dichotomous choice (cooperate/defect), in our experiment, even in
the mean condition, the agent was still returning a (small)
amount of money, which might have been seen as a partially
cooperative signal by participants.
If participants are reluctant to give up on cooperation —
as shown by the fact that investments increase in the second
half of the game in the mean condition (Fig. 3) — they might
be even more reluctant to give up on partners who seem to
encourage them to cooperate, with their positive emotional
expression. In Krumhuber et al. (2007), people explicitly
and implicitly trusted smiling faces more than neutral faces,
regardless of the sincerity of their smile, and genuine smiles
were trusted more than fake smiles (Krumhuber et al., 2007).
Similarly, Reed et al. (2012) found that people displaying
either Duchenne or non-Duchenne smiles were more likely to
cooperate in a one-shot investment game (Reed et al., 2012).
Thus, displaying an emotion, even a feigned one, might be
preferred to not displaying any emotion at all, hence the
increased investments to the mean smiling agents.
Additionally, participants might have felt more positive
emotions themselves upon hearing a smiling agent. In fact,
emotional expressions can evoke affective reactions in observers (Geday et al., 2003), which may subsequently influence their behavior (Hatfield et al., 1994), and this ‘emotional
contagion’ might be transmitted through the auditory channel
as well. If this is the case, participants might have trusted
the smiling agents more because feeling a positive emotion
themselves might have prompted them to behave in a cooperative manner (Schug et al., 2010; Mieth et al., 2016). These
results show similarities with Tsankova et al. (2015), who
found that people rated trustworthy faces and voices as happier (Tsankova et al., 2015). Although they addressed the
issue from the opposite direction – "Are trustworthy stimuli
perceived as happier?" rather than "Are happy stimuli perceived as trustworthy?" – taken together, the studies suggest
a bidirectionality in the perception of trustworthiness and
cues to positive emotion, congruent with a ’halo effect’ of
positive traits (Lau, 1982).
The smiling-voice effect suggests that, in the absence of
visual information, the audio equivalent of a Duchenne smile
might act as a relative ‘honest signal’ of cooperation. As
mentioned before, Duchenne smiles are smiles describing
genuine happiness or amusement (Ekman & Friesen, 1982).
Traditionally, in the visual domain they can be distinguished
from other types of smiles because they involve the contraction of the ‘Orbicularis Oculi’ muscle, which is a movement
that is notoriously more difficult to fake (Ekman & Friesen,
1982; Schug et al., 2010). Obviously, in the auditory channel
it is not possible to detect a genuine smiling voice from this
muscular movement. However, it is possible that a smiling
voice which sounds happy might be the auditory equivalent of
a Duchenne smile. As participants indicated that the smiling
voices used in this study did sound happy, it is possible that
the expression of happiness and amusement in the speech
signal led listeners to believe that the agent could be trusted.
A limitation of this study is that no video recordings were
taken during the audio recordings of the speakers used in
this experiment. This means that, while every effort was
was made to ensure consistency in the smile production, it
is possible that our speakers might have produced different
kinds of smiles. As is well known in emotion theory, smiles
can convey many different meanings, and several different
facial expressions of smiles are known (e.g. Rychlowska et
al., 2017; Keltner, 1995). However, much of the research on
the effect of different types of smiles on person perception
and decision making has concentrated on the difference between polite (non-Duchenne) and genuine (Duchenne) smiles
(e.g. Chu et al., 2019; Krumhuber et al., 2007; Reed et al.,
2012). Traditionally, these two are characterised by different
muscle activation, with non-Duchenne smiles only activating the Zygomaticus Major muscle, and Duchenne smiles
also activating the Orbicularis Oculi muscle (Frank et al.,
1993). However, recent studies have suggested that Orbicularis Oculi activation in Duchenne smiles might actually be a
by-product of the Zygomaticus Major activation (Girard et al.,
2019; Krumhuber & Manstead, 2009). Also, the acoustics of
smiling are only affected by activation of the Zygomaticus
Major muscle, which contributes to vocal tract shape, but
not of Orbicularis Oculi. Following past research that Orbicularis Oculi activation is the only thing that distinguishes
Duchenne from non-Duchenne smiles, we would still expect
both smiles to sound the same, as the Zygomaticus Major
activation would be the same.
Still, research on the acoustic characteristics of different
types of smiles is lacking. Drahota et al. (2008-04) obtained
three different smiling expressions – Duchenne smiles, nonDuchenne smiles, and suppressed smiles – as well as a neutral
baseline, from English speakers, and asked participants to correctly identify these four expressions. Participants were only
able to reliably distinguish Duchenne smiles from non-smiles,
but the majority of the other smile types were classified as
non-smiles. Furthermore, they only performed pairwise comparisons between a smile type and a non-smile, but they
did not compare differences in identification between two
different smile types. Even though they only had 11 participants, which warrants for a much-needed replication of this
study, this finding suggests that people might only be able to
acoustically discriminate between two categories, smile and
non-smile.
Similar results were obtained in studies using different
types of visual smiles in decision-making tasks. Previous
work using cooperative games with Duchenne and non-Duchenne (facial) smiles have shown that people made the same
decisions regardless of the type of smile (Reed et al., 2012;
Krumhuber et al., 2007). This suggests that people might react according to a broad, dichotomous smile category (smile
vs. non-smile), even though the smiles in the experiment stimuli were of different qualities. This corroborates previous findings in nonconscious mimicry, whereby facial EMG recordings were different when viewing a face with a Duchenne
smile and a neutral expression, but not when viewing a face
with a non-Duchenne smile and a neutral expression (Surakka
& Hietanen, 1998). This contrasts with Chu et al. (2019), who
found that participants cooperated more with a confederate
expressing a non-Duchenne smile, than with a confederate
expressing a Duchenne smile, following a breach of trust.
However, in this study the confederate only showed the smiling expression after the cooperate/defect decision was made,
whereas in Reed et al. (2012); Krumhuber et al. (2007), as
well as in the current study, the smiling expression was displayed before the decision was made. As Chu et al. (2019)
point out, this factor might have influenced the decisions and
could explain the different behaviors. For example, participants might interpret an emotional expression – such as a
smile – after a decision as being an appraisal of that decision.
People might put more cognitive effort into understanding
this appraisal, as this is essential for shaping future interactions, hence the more accurate discrimination of different
smile types. As de Melo et al. (2015, 2013) suggest, a happy
expression following the decision to cooperate conveys a
different meaning than a happy expression following the decision to defect. This is also consistent with the EASI model
(Van Kleef et al., 2010). On the other hand, a happy expression shown before the decision to cooperate / defect might
rather convey some information about the emotional state of
the person in question, and might be kept independent from
that person’s actual behavior in the game. Also, counterparts’
smiles may lead people to anticipate positive social outcomes
(Kringelbach & Rolls, 2003). Thus, it seems that the timing
of emotional expression in relation to the behavior of interest drastically changes the interpretation of that, and future,
behaviors.
It would be very interesting to replicate the current experiment with different smiling voices, shown before and after
the action is taken in the game. Also, if a similar study were
to be replicated, the actual facial expression of the speakers
could be recorded in order to determine whether different
facial expressions correspond to different auditory smiles,
both in terms of objective measures (acoustics) and in terms
of perception and behavior correlates in the game.
So far, we have compared our results with previous studies
that used facial smiles. These comparisons are necessary,
as at the time of writing there are virtually no studies that
have employed trust games with expressive voices. However,
emotional expressions are naturally multimodal, and it is
possible that a certain emotion expressed only in the voice
might elicit different behaviors than if it were expressed only
in the face, or in a voice + face combination. In fact, previous
research suggested that an ’Emotional McGurk Effect’ might
be at play (Fagel, 2006; Mower et al., 2009; Pourtois et al.,
2005). Thus, our current results can only inform the design
of voice-based artificial agents, but should not be extended
to the design of embodied agents.
The results from questionnaires validate the behavioral
measures obtained from the investment game. We found
that people consistently gave higher ratings of trustworthiness and liking to the smiling agents, and to the agents that
behaved generously in the game. Again, the lack of interactions between smiling and behavior suggests that the smiling
voice mitigates negative reactions following an untrustworthy
behavior.
We also found some evidence that individual differences
among participants might play a role in trusting behavior, as
shown by the 3-way interaction between behavior, game turn,
and gender (Section 4.1). The effect of gender on trusting and
trustworthiness has been widely studied using game theoretic
paradigms, but so far there has been no definite conclusion on
whether women trust more / are more trustworthy than men,
or vice versa (e.g. Chaudhuri et al., 2013; Bonein & Serra,
2009; Slonim & Guillen, 2010). Our results support previous
findings showing that we tend to trust people of the opposite gender more (Slonim & Guillen, 2010), as men in our
experiment invested more money than women to the virtual
agents, which had a female voice. They also support findings
that men trust more than women in general (Chaudhuri &
Gangadharan, 2007). However, these conclusions only hold
insofar as the generous behavior condition is concerned, as in
the mean condition men actually trusted the virtual agent less
than women did. A similar behavior was previously observed
in Haselhuhn et al. (2015), who found that men showed less
trust following a trust breach on the trustee’s part (Haselhuhn
et al., 2015). Also, Torre et al. (2018) showed that people
who formed a first impression of trustworthiness of a virtual
agent punished it when the agent behaved in an untrustworthy
manner, by investing less money than to an agent whose first
impression was lower. Thus, a ’congruency effect’ might be
at play here: our male participants might have formed a first
impression of trustworthiness of the female agents (Slonim
& Guillen, 2010); when this first impression was congruent
with the observed behavior (in the generous condition), the
agent received more monetary investments from the male
participants. On the other hand, when the first impression
was incongruent with the observed behavior (mean condition), it received less (cf. Torre et al., 2018). Participants’
age did not have an effect on the behavioral results from the
investment game, but it did influence participants’ explicit
ratings of the artificial agents’ trustworthiness, with older
people indicating lower trust. This is consistent with the idea
that younger people trust technology more, perhaps due to
a higher degree of familiarity (e.g. Scopelliti et al., 2005;
Giuliani et al., 2005; Czaja & Sharit, 1998). However, we did
not match participants’ age – or gender– systematically, so
more research is needed on the role of individual differences
on trust towards voice-based artificial agents.
Finally, speaker identity was varied randomly rather than
wholly systematically in our experimental design, and so
we included speaker identity as a random rather than fixed
effect in our analyses. It is possible, indeed likely, that participants’ trust attributions were influenced by the virtual
agents’ unique vocal profiles as well as their behavior and
smiling status. In fact, Fig. 7 shows that people invested
more money with speaker B2, followed by speakers R1, R2,
and B1 (mean overall investments = £5.46, £4.76, £4.11,
£3.56, respectively). This is not unexpected: voices carry a
wide variety of information about the speaker, such as gender, accent, age, emotional state, socioeconomic background,
etc., and all this information is implicitly used by listeners to
form an initial impression of the speaker; a short exposure
to someone’s voice is enough to determine if that someone
can be trusted (McAleer et al., 2014). For example, in the
free-text comments explaining the liking rating to each voice,
one participant remarked that smiling speaker B2 “varied in
tone and was much more interesting to listen to” and neutral
speaker B2 was “calm and convincing”; on the other hand,
smiling speaker R2 was “mellow and monotone"and neutral
speaker R2 “sounded bored and insincere”. Smiling speaker
B1 was “quite annoying” and the neutral version “didn’t seem
trustworthy or reassuring”, “sounded too neutral” and even
“too fake”. Thus, when designing a voice for an artificial
agent, it is important to also keep in mind what effect its
specific vocal imprint will have on the user (see als McGinn
& Torre, 2019). Nevertheless, any potential between-speaker
differences in the current experiment were nested within the
effect of smiling voice, as all speakers were recorded in both
smiling and neutral conditions
Monday, December 9, 2019
Investigating the generation and spread of numerical misinformation in a manner consistent with our schemata
Jason C Coronel, Shannon Poulsen, Matthew D Sweitzer, Investigating the generation and spread of numerical misinformation: A combined eye movement monitoring and social transmission approach, Human Communication Research, Dec 2019, hqz012, https://doi.org/10.1093/hcr/hqz012
Abstract: Numerical facts play a prominent role in public discourse, but individuals often provide incorrect estimates of policy-relevant numerical quantities (e.g., the number of immigrants in the country). Across two studies, we examined the role of schemas in the creation of numerical misinformation, and how misinformation can spread via person-to-person communication. In our first study, we combined eye movement monitoring and behavioral methods to examine how schemas distorted what people remembered about policy-relevant numerical information. Then, in a second study, we examined the consequences of these memory distortions via the social transmission of numerical information, using the serial reproduction paradigm. We found that individuals misremembered numerical information in a manner consistent with their schemas, and that person-to-person transmission can exacerbate these memory errors. Our studies highlight the mechanisms supporting the generation and spread of numerical misinformation and demonstrate the utility of a multi-method approach in the study of misinformation.
Popular version: You create your own false information, study finds - People misremember numerical facts to fit their biases. Ohio State Univ, Dec 9 2019. https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-12/osu-ycy120619.php (h/t Reddit u/Lightfiend)
General discussion
Across Studies 1 and 2, we examined instances in which individuals were exposed to accurate numerical information from an external source, but schemas led them to misremember information. Participants in Study 1 directed a greater amount of attention to numerical information when their referent order was schema inconsistent than when that order was schema consistent, likely because it violated their expectations (Loftus & Mackworth, 1978; Underwood & Foulsham, 2006). However, greater attention to the schema-inconsistent paragraphs did not translate into better memory accuracy, as participants’ pairwise gist memories were less accurate for schema-inconsistent than -consistent information. According to misremembering models, this is because inconsistent information was misremembered in a way that aligned with people’s schemas. In Studies 2a and 2b, we showed that these memory distortions can have consequences beyond the individual that generated them, once person-to-person transmission processes are introduced. We examined instances in which factually accurate information was inconsistent with people’s schematic expectations. Over the course of re-transmission in the serial reproduction paradigm, numerical information was transformed into factually inaccurate but schema-consistent information. These results were obtained across two different samples with two distinct memory tasks. Given our findings, our study has several substantive and methodological contributions. First, our results support misremembering models. Notably, these models predict (and we found evidence here) that greater attention to information will not necessarily lead to better memory for that information. This prediction is in stark contrast to some views in the message-processing literature, which subscribe to the prediction of attention-memory models and specify a positive relationship between attention and memory (Jeong & Hwang, 2016; Kim & Southwell, 2017; Segijn et al., 2017; Young et al., 2018). Second, our results point to the important conceptual distinction between internal and external sources of misinformation (Davis & Loftus, 2007). Importantly, this framework suggests that even if all external sources in the environment are disseminating factually accurate numerical information, individuals can still selfgenerate misinformation and, potentially, spread it from person to person. In addition, although we classified schema-based memory distortions as internal sources of information, the individual possessing inaccurate memories can turn into an external source when he or she passes the information to another person. Third, our results highlight how person-to-person transmission processes can lead to cumulative distortions in numerical information that go beyond the biases of individuals who are positioned earlier in communication chains. This suggests that studies which do not take person-to-person communication processes into account may underestimate the strength of schemas in distorting numerical information. Furthermore, although our focus here was the manner in which person-to-person transmission can distort information, future work should examine the extent to which schemas can preserve the transmission of factually accurate, numerical relationships. Indeed, we observed such a pattern in Studies 2a and 2b for our schemaconsistent issues.
Finally, our studies illustrate the value of a multi-method approach. We used eyemovement monitoring to gain unique leverage on the cognitive mechanisms supporting the creation of schema-based numerical misinformation (for other applications of eye-tracking technology in communication research, see King, Bol, Cummins, & John, 2019). Then, we used the serial reproduction paradigm to investigate the consequences of these cognitive biases by examining the creation and transmission of schema-based, numerical misinformation. As with all studies, our studies have certain limitations and caution is warranted in terms of generalizing some of the study’s findings. Study 1 used a chin-rest eye tracker that restricted participants’ ability to move their heads. Although chin-rest eye trackers generally provide excellent spatial resolution, given that the eyes maintain a constant distance from the screen, individuals in their everyday lives often consume news information without restrictions on their head movements. In our studies, we used short paragraphs. Longer texts that discuss why certain numerical relationships exist (e.g., explanations as to why the number of Mexican immigrants has decreased) may increase the likelihood that people remember schema-inconsistent, numerical information, if individuals also encode explanations for the numerical relationships. We also did not manipulate issue importance. Given related work on the influence of motivated reasoning and issue importance on attitudes in other domains of politics (Slothuus & de Vreese, 2010), individuals may be more likely to misremember schema-inconsistent information for issues that are high in personal importance. Importantly, we also did not measure each of our participant’s specific schemas for what would be considered consistent or inconsistent information for each issue. We assumed, based on the findings from the pre-tests, that most individuals in our studies would possess our expected schemas. However, it is likely that there were individual differences in people’s schematic representations or levels of motivation for maintaining desired, schema-consistent information (Tappin, van der Leer, & McKay, 2017). Future work should investigate the individual differences that can moderate the effects of schema consistency on memory for policy-relevant, numerical facts.14 In addition, our version of the serial reproduction paradigm does not reflect all the complexities involved in actual social transmission. Actual social transmission is influenced by many interpersonal and situational factors. We used the serial reproduction paradigm to look specifically at the critical role of memory for numerical information. Memory is arguably an important component of social transmission, given that individuals cannot transmit information to others if they do not possess memory of that information. However, the serial reproduction paradigm can be adapted to reflect elements of actual social transmission (e.g., two-way discussion, receiving information from multiple partners, evaluating information from a friend versus a stranger, etc.; for a review and examples, see Mesoudi &Whiten, 2008), which future work can explore. For example, source characteristics, such as knowledgeable individuals or in-group membership, have been shown to influence people’s memory for, and attitudes towards, the socially transmitted information (Carlson, 2019; Lee, Gelfand, & Kashima, 2014).
In summary, our studies show the importance of memory biases and the role of re-transmission in the reinforcement and spread of numerical misinformation. Our results demonstrate how schemas, in conjunction with re-transmission, can generate inaccurate information, facilitate the spread of inaccurate information from person to person, and exacerbate these errors through cumulative distortion, resulting from serial reproduction. Our findings are relevant to important questions about whether individuals possess an accurate understanding of the political world. Policy-relevant numerical facts play a prominent role in public discourse, as politicians, journalists, and interest groups use them as evidence to advocate for, or fight against, certain political causes. The ability of individuals to possess accurate representations of numerical facts may help protect them from the various forms of deceptive persuasion they encounter in their everyday lives.
Abstract: Numerical facts play a prominent role in public discourse, but individuals often provide incorrect estimates of policy-relevant numerical quantities (e.g., the number of immigrants in the country). Across two studies, we examined the role of schemas in the creation of numerical misinformation, and how misinformation can spread via person-to-person communication. In our first study, we combined eye movement monitoring and behavioral methods to examine how schemas distorted what people remembered about policy-relevant numerical information. Then, in a second study, we examined the consequences of these memory distortions via the social transmission of numerical information, using the serial reproduction paradigm. We found that individuals misremembered numerical information in a manner consistent with their schemas, and that person-to-person transmission can exacerbate these memory errors. Our studies highlight the mechanisms supporting the generation and spread of numerical misinformation and demonstrate the utility of a multi-method approach in the study of misinformation.
Popular version: You create your own false information, study finds - People misremember numerical facts to fit their biases. Ohio State Univ, Dec 9 2019. https://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2019-12/osu-ycy120619.php (h/t Reddit u/Lightfiend)
General discussion
Across Studies 1 and 2, we examined instances in which individuals were exposed to accurate numerical information from an external source, but schemas led them to misremember information. Participants in Study 1 directed a greater amount of attention to numerical information when their referent order was schema inconsistent than when that order was schema consistent, likely because it violated their expectations (Loftus & Mackworth, 1978; Underwood & Foulsham, 2006). However, greater attention to the schema-inconsistent paragraphs did not translate into better memory accuracy, as participants’ pairwise gist memories were less accurate for schema-inconsistent than -consistent information. According to misremembering models, this is because inconsistent information was misremembered in a way that aligned with people’s schemas. In Studies 2a and 2b, we showed that these memory distortions can have consequences beyond the individual that generated them, once person-to-person transmission processes are introduced. We examined instances in which factually accurate information was inconsistent with people’s schematic expectations. Over the course of re-transmission in the serial reproduction paradigm, numerical information was transformed into factually inaccurate but schema-consistent information. These results were obtained across two different samples with two distinct memory tasks. Given our findings, our study has several substantive and methodological contributions. First, our results support misremembering models. Notably, these models predict (and we found evidence here) that greater attention to information will not necessarily lead to better memory for that information. This prediction is in stark contrast to some views in the message-processing literature, which subscribe to the prediction of attention-memory models and specify a positive relationship between attention and memory (Jeong & Hwang, 2016; Kim & Southwell, 2017; Segijn et al., 2017; Young et al., 2018). Second, our results point to the important conceptual distinction between internal and external sources of misinformation (Davis & Loftus, 2007). Importantly, this framework suggests that even if all external sources in the environment are disseminating factually accurate numerical information, individuals can still selfgenerate misinformation and, potentially, spread it from person to person. In addition, although we classified schema-based memory distortions as internal sources of information, the individual possessing inaccurate memories can turn into an external source when he or she passes the information to another person. Third, our results highlight how person-to-person transmission processes can lead to cumulative distortions in numerical information that go beyond the biases of individuals who are positioned earlier in communication chains. This suggests that studies which do not take person-to-person communication processes into account may underestimate the strength of schemas in distorting numerical information. Furthermore, although our focus here was the manner in which person-to-person transmission can distort information, future work should examine the extent to which schemas can preserve the transmission of factually accurate, numerical relationships. Indeed, we observed such a pattern in Studies 2a and 2b for our schemaconsistent issues.
Finally, our studies illustrate the value of a multi-method approach. We used eyemovement monitoring to gain unique leverage on the cognitive mechanisms supporting the creation of schema-based numerical misinformation (for other applications of eye-tracking technology in communication research, see King, Bol, Cummins, & John, 2019). Then, we used the serial reproduction paradigm to investigate the consequences of these cognitive biases by examining the creation and transmission of schema-based, numerical misinformation. As with all studies, our studies have certain limitations and caution is warranted in terms of generalizing some of the study’s findings. Study 1 used a chin-rest eye tracker that restricted participants’ ability to move their heads. Although chin-rest eye trackers generally provide excellent spatial resolution, given that the eyes maintain a constant distance from the screen, individuals in their everyday lives often consume news information without restrictions on their head movements. In our studies, we used short paragraphs. Longer texts that discuss why certain numerical relationships exist (e.g., explanations as to why the number of Mexican immigrants has decreased) may increase the likelihood that people remember schema-inconsistent, numerical information, if individuals also encode explanations for the numerical relationships. We also did not manipulate issue importance. Given related work on the influence of motivated reasoning and issue importance on attitudes in other domains of politics (Slothuus & de Vreese, 2010), individuals may be more likely to misremember schema-inconsistent information for issues that are high in personal importance. Importantly, we also did not measure each of our participant’s specific schemas for what would be considered consistent or inconsistent information for each issue. We assumed, based on the findings from the pre-tests, that most individuals in our studies would possess our expected schemas. However, it is likely that there were individual differences in people’s schematic representations or levels of motivation for maintaining desired, schema-consistent information (Tappin, van der Leer, & McKay, 2017). Future work should investigate the individual differences that can moderate the effects of schema consistency on memory for policy-relevant, numerical facts.14 In addition, our version of the serial reproduction paradigm does not reflect all the complexities involved in actual social transmission. Actual social transmission is influenced by many interpersonal and situational factors. We used the serial reproduction paradigm to look specifically at the critical role of memory for numerical information. Memory is arguably an important component of social transmission, given that individuals cannot transmit information to others if they do not possess memory of that information. However, the serial reproduction paradigm can be adapted to reflect elements of actual social transmission (e.g., two-way discussion, receiving information from multiple partners, evaluating information from a friend versus a stranger, etc.; for a review and examples, see Mesoudi &Whiten, 2008), which future work can explore. For example, source characteristics, such as knowledgeable individuals or in-group membership, have been shown to influence people’s memory for, and attitudes towards, the socially transmitted information (Carlson, 2019; Lee, Gelfand, & Kashima, 2014).
In summary, our studies show the importance of memory biases and the role of re-transmission in the reinforcement and spread of numerical misinformation. Our results demonstrate how schemas, in conjunction with re-transmission, can generate inaccurate information, facilitate the spread of inaccurate information from person to person, and exacerbate these errors through cumulative distortion, resulting from serial reproduction. Our findings are relevant to important questions about whether individuals possess an accurate understanding of the political world. Policy-relevant numerical facts play a prominent role in public discourse, as politicians, journalists, and interest groups use them as evidence to advocate for, or fight against, certain political causes. The ability of individuals to possess accurate representations of numerical facts may help protect them from the various forms of deceptive persuasion they encounter in their everyday lives.
Due to influence of competition outcome on testosterone, men preferred female facial femininity more after winning their competitive match; however, there were no corresponding effects in women
Welling, L.L.M et al. (2019). The infuence of competition outcome on testosterone and face preferences in men and women. Human Ethology, 34 (Suppl.). Aug 2019, HES77. htps://doi.org/10.22330/he/34/suppl
Conference proceedings not yet published... only abstract available:
Abstract: Previous research suggests that testosterone level is positively related to preferences for sexually dimorphic faces in both men and women. One method of manipulating testosterone is through competitive tasks, whereby testosterone increases in winners relative to losers. Welling et al. (2013) examined the effects of winning and losing in male–male competition on men’s face preferences. They randomly assigned male participants to either win or lose the first-person shooter video game CounterStrike: Source against an unseen male confederate. Unbeknownst to the participant, the confederate could control the outcome through game cheats. They found that, compared to men assigned to the losing condition, men assigned to the winning condition had significantly higher preferences for women’s facial femininity, which is a putative indicator of female mate quality. This study had two major limitations: it used a between-subjects design and it tested men only. Here we replicate Welling et al. (2013) using a within-subjects design and testing both men and women. Participants were randomly allocated to win the first of two sessions and lose the second, or vice versa. As predicted, men preferred female facial femininity more after winning their competitive match compared to after losing. However, there were no corresponding effects in women. These results replicate Welling et al.’s (2013) findings using a within-participant design and further suggest that the influence of same-sex competition on face preferences is exclusive to men. Salivary assays are currently being processed. It is predicted that testosterone will be higher after men won versus lost, but that there will be no significant difference in women’s testosterone as a function of competitive outcome.
Conference proceedings not yet published... only abstract available:
Abstract: Previous research suggests that testosterone level is positively related to preferences for sexually dimorphic faces in both men and women. One method of manipulating testosterone is through competitive tasks, whereby testosterone increases in winners relative to losers. Welling et al. (2013) examined the effects of winning and losing in male–male competition on men’s face preferences. They randomly assigned male participants to either win or lose the first-person shooter video game CounterStrike: Source against an unseen male confederate. Unbeknownst to the participant, the confederate could control the outcome through game cheats. They found that, compared to men assigned to the losing condition, men assigned to the winning condition had significantly higher preferences for women’s facial femininity, which is a putative indicator of female mate quality. This study had two major limitations: it used a between-subjects design and it tested men only. Here we replicate Welling et al. (2013) using a within-subjects design and testing both men and women. Participants were randomly allocated to win the first of two sessions and lose the second, or vice versa. As predicted, men preferred female facial femininity more after winning their competitive match compared to after losing. However, there were no corresponding effects in women. These results replicate Welling et al.’s (2013) findings using a within-participant design and further suggest that the influence of same-sex competition on face preferences is exclusive to men. Salivary assays are currently being processed. It is predicted that testosterone will be higher after men won versus lost, but that there will be no significant difference in women’s testosterone as a function of competitive outcome.
A multi-semester classroom demonstration yields "robust" evidence in support of the facial feedback effect
Marsh, A. A., Rhoads, S. A., & Ryan, R. M. A multi-semester classroom demonstration yields evidence in support of the facial feedback effect. Emotion, 19(8), 1500–1504, Dec 2019. https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000532
Abstract: The facial feedback effect refers to the influence of unobtrusive manipulations of facial behavior on emotional outcomes. That manipulations inducing or inhibiting smiling can shape positive affect and evaluations is a staple of undergraduate psychology curricula and supports theories of embodied emotion. Thus, the results of a Registered Replication Report indicating minimal evidence to support the facial feedback effect were widely viewed as cause for concern regarding the reliability of this effect. However, it has been suggested that features of the design of the replication studies may have influenced the study results. Relevant to these concerns are experimental facial feedback data collected from over 400 undergraduates over the course of 9 semesters. Circumstances of data collection met several criteria broadly recommended for testing the effect, including limited prior exposure to the facial feedback hypothesis, conditions minimally likely to induce self-focused attention, and the use of moderately funny contemporary cartoons as stimuli. Results yielded robust evidence in favor of the facial feedback hypothesis. Cartoons that participants evaluated while holding a pen or pencil in their teeth (smiling induction) were rated as funnier than cartoons they evaluated while holding a pen or pencil in their lips (smiling inhibition). The magnitude of the effect overlapped with original reports. Findings demonstrate that the facial feedback effect can be successfully replicated in a classroom setting and are in line with theories of emotional embodiment, according to which internal emotional states and relevant external emotional behaviors exert mutual influence on one another.
---
Discussion
The results of this study replicate the facial feedback effect in the type of classroom setting in
which this effect is often taught. In a large sample of undergraduate students beginning an
introductory psychology course, cartoons evaluated during a manipulation that simulates smiling
(holding a pen in the teeth) were rated as more humorous than when the cartoons were evaluated
during a manipulation that inhibits smiling (holding a pen in the lips). These results were
obtained following an analysis plan selected based on clustering of ratings among classes. The
analyses indicated that the manipulation resulted in a small-to-medium effect size, the magnitude
of which overlapped with the effect observed in the original report of the facial feedback effect.
The experimental conditions featured several strengths that may have contributed to the
observed effect. The nature of the testing setting precluded experimenter effects related to
differential treatment by condition, as both conditions were run simultaneously. It also
minimized the likelihood of previous formal exposure to the facial feedback effect, as the
experiment was conducted in introductory psychology students several weeks before the
textbook chapter describing the effect was assigned (it seems safe to assume no students read
several chapters ahead). It is, however, important to note we do not have formal confirmation of
participants’ prior lack of exposure to the feedback effect. Participants were not video recorded,
minimizing self-focused attention, which can alter response styles, affective experiences, and
self-report motivations. And contemporary cartoons rated as moderately funny were used as
stimuli.
The paradigm diverged from the original facial feedback experiment in several respects.
They include the classroom setting in which testing was conducted; the fact that each participant
rated two cartoons rather than four; the fact that it featured a within-subjects rather than betweensubjects design; the absence of a cover story about piloting a study for future research regarding
populations with disabilities to explain the manipulation; the use of a 7-point scale rather than a
10-point scale; the fact that the experiment was part of a classroom lecture about learning
(specifically, about the acquisition of conditioned associations) rather than following a linedrawing task; the fact that correct positioning of pens could be monitored only within the limits
of a group setting; the fact that participants selected but did not write down their ratings with
their pens in their mouths; and the lack of individualized follow-up with participants regarding
their beliefs about the experiment, precluding exclusion of participants for suspicions regarding
the study goals. (It is notable, however, that when the instructor presented students with their
results in the ensuing class, the most commonly verbalized reaction was surprise or disbelief that
the manipulation could have possibly affected their ratings.)
Results of two recent papers (Coles, Larsen, & Lench, 2017; Noah, Schul, & Mayo, 2018)
found that the facial feedback effect can be moderated by various factors. Noah and colleagues
found that the effect can be reduced by video-recording participants. The meta-analysis by Coles
and colleagues determined that another moderator is the choice of question, with evaluations of
the stimulus quality (i.e., how funny the cartoon is) showing larger effect sizes, but also more
evidence of publication bias, than ratings of amusement—although fewer estimates of the effect
on stimulus quality were available for analysis. The most important moderator that could be
accounted for statistically in the meta-analysis was the specific stimuli that were used during
testing. The choice of moderately funny contemporary cartoons in the present study may have
contributed to the effects we observed, as may other variables that have not been identified. The
consistency of the observed effect with original reports despite methodological differences,
however, could be interpreted in support of the effect’s robustness.
Overall, the results of the study are consistent with the notion that unobtrusive manipulations
of facial behavior can reliably shape emotional experiences and outcomes, in line with theories
of emotional embodiment.
Abstract: The facial feedback effect refers to the influence of unobtrusive manipulations of facial behavior on emotional outcomes. That manipulations inducing or inhibiting smiling can shape positive affect and evaluations is a staple of undergraduate psychology curricula and supports theories of embodied emotion. Thus, the results of a Registered Replication Report indicating minimal evidence to support the facial feedback effect were widely viewed as cause for concern regarding the reliability of this effect. However, it has been suggested that features of the design of the replication studies may have influenced the study results. Relevant to these concerns are experimental facial feedback data collected from over 400 undergraduates over the course of 9 semesters. Circumstances of data collection met several criteria broadly recommended for testing the effect, including limited prior exposure to the facial feedback hypothesis, conditions minimally likely to induce self-focused attention, and the use of moderately funny contemporary cartoons as stimuli. Results yielded robust evidence in favor of the facial feedback hypothesis. Cartoons that participants evaluated while holding a pen or pencil in their teeth (smiling induction) were rated as funnier than cartoons they evaluated while holding a pen or pencil in their lips (smiling inhibition). The magnitude of the effect overlapped with original reports. Findings demonstrate that the facial feedback effect can be successfully replicated in a classroom setting and are in line with theories of emotional embodiment, according to which internal emotional states and relevant external emotional behaviors exert mutual influence on one another.
---
Discussion
The results of this study replicate the facial feedback effect in the type of classroom setting in
which this effect is often taught. In a large sample of undergraduate students beginning an
introductory psychology course, cartoons evaluated during a manipulation that simulates smiling
(holding a pen in the teeth) were rated as more humorous than when the cartoons were evaluated
during a manipulation that inhibits smiling (holding a pen in the lips). These results were
obtained following an analysis plan selected based on clustering of ratings among classes. The
analyses indicated that the manipulation resulted in a small-to-medium effect size, the magnitude
of which overlapped with the effect observed in the original report of the facial feedback effect.
The experimental conditions featured several strengths that may have contributed to the
observed effect. The nature of the testing setting precluded experimenter effects related to
differential treatment by condition, as both conditions were run simultaneously. It also
minimized the likelihood of previous formal exposure to the facial feedback effect, as the
experiment was conducted in introductory psychology students several weeks before the
textbook chapter describing the effect was assigned (it seems safe to assume no students read
several chapters ahead). It is, however, important to note we do not have formal confirmation of
participants’ prior lack of exposure to the feedback effect. Participants were not video recorded,
minimizing self-focused attention, which can alter response styles, affective experiences, and
self-report motivations. And contemporary cartoons rated as moderately funny were used as
stimuli.
The paradigm diverged from the original facial feedback experiment in several respects.
They include the classroom setting in which testing was conducted; the fact that each participant
rated two cartoons rather than four; the fact that it featured a within-subjects rather than betweensubjects design; the absence of a cover story about piloting a study for future research regarding
populations with disabilities to explain the manipulation; the use of a 7-point scale rather than a
10-point scale; the fact that the experiment was part of a classroom lecture about learning
(specifically, about the acquisition of conditioned associations) rather than following a linedrawing task; the fact that correct positioning of pens could be monitored only within the limits
of a group setting; the fact that participants selected but did not write down their ratings with
their pens in their mouths; and the lack of individualized follow-up with participants regarding
their beliefs about the experiment, precluding exclusion of participants for suspicions regarding
the study goals. (It is notable, however, that when the instructor presented students with their
results in the ensuing class, the most commonly verbalized reaction was surprise or disbelief that
the manipulation could have possibly affected their ratings.)
Results of two recent papers (Coles, Larsen, & Lench, 2017; Noah, Schul, & Mayo, 2018)
found that the facial feedback effect can be moderated by various factors. Noah and colleagues
found that the effect can be reduced by video-recording participants. The meta-analysis by Coles
and colleagues determined that another moderator is the choice of question, with evaluations of
the stimulus quality (i.e., how funny the cartoon is) showing larger effect sizes, but also more
evidence of publication bias, than ratings of amusement—although fewer estimates of the effect
on stimulus quality were available for analysis. The most important moderator that could be
accounted for statistically in the meta-analysis was the specific stimuli that were used during
testing. The choice of moderately funny contemporary cartoons in the present study may have
contributed to the effects we observed, as may other variables that have not been identified. The
consistency of the observed effect with original reports despite methodological differences,
however, could be interpreted in support of the effect’s robustness.
Overall, the results of the study are consistent with the notion that unobtrusive manipulations
of facial behavior can reliably shape emotional experiences and outcomes, in line with theories
of emotional embodiment.
While Democrats are early adopters of progressive views, Republicans adopt the same views at a slower pace, which can be easily (mis)interpreted as a sign of polarization
D. Baldassarri, B. Park “Was there a Culture War? Partisan Polarization and Secular Trends in US Public Opinion”, Journal of Politics, forthcoming. Dec 2019. http://deliabaldassarri.org/research/2018/12/1/h29cyp99ttt2wuru2arp4n2u53vale
ABSTRACT: According to many scholars of public opinion, most of the fast-growing divide between Democrats and Republicans over the last few decades has taken place on moral issues. We find that the process of issue partisanship -- the sorting of political preferences along partisan lines -- properly accounts for public opinion dynamics in the economic and civil rights domains: on these issues Democrats as a whole have become more liberal and Republicans more conservative. However, when it comes to moral issues, the prominent change is a partisan secular trend, in which both Democrats and Republicans are adopting more progressive views on moral issues, although at a different rate. While Democrats are early adopters of progressive views, Republicans adopt the same views at a slower pace. This secular change can be easily (mis)interpreted as a sign of polarization because, at the onset of the process, the gap between party supporters broadens due to faster pace at which Democrats adopt progressive views, and only toward the end, the gap between partisan supporters decreases.
---
Furthermore, opinion change, especially on topics concerning gender roles, sexuality, marijuana legalization, and gay rights, has occurred too quickly to be accounted for by generational replacement or demographic shifts (Loftus 2001; Andersen and Fetner 2008; Fischer and Hout 2006). Instead, the secular trend observed for these issues is consistent with a social diffusion dynamic, which operates within generations. In addition, the lag in the adoption curves between Democrats and Republicans (and its persistence even when controlling for the demographic sorting of the electorate) points to the importance of partisan groups in the diffusion process.
Although we cannot provide empirical evidence of the micro-level dynamic of social influence, here we offer some considerations concerning some of the potential underlying mechanisms. In particular, as already anticipated in our general discussion of partisan secular trends,
media partisanship, the homophily of political discussion networks, and the mechanism of
selective disclosure may contribute to the social diffusion process documented in this paper.
Namely, progressive ‘innovators’, who are likely to be Democrats, will spread their views, first,
among like-minded Democrats, both because their political discussion networks are disproportionally composed by fellow Democrats, and because they selectively disclose their opinions
on salient issues to others who they anticipate will agree with them. However, since discussion networks are far from being perfectly homogeneous (Huckfeldt et al. 1995), progressive
opinions would eventually spread among Republicans as well.
In addition, some specific considerations concerning the structural position of gays and lesbians in social networks may partially explain why Republicans have so speedily embraced
secular views on LGBT issues when their elites chose to do otherwise. As with other minority
groups, knowing gays or lesbians has been shown to increase the support for gay rights among
almost all subgroups defined by socio-demographics, ideology, and partisanship (Lewis 2011).
However, compared to racial and socioeconomic cleavages that heavily segregate the interaction patterns of Americans, recent research suggests that interactions with gays and lesbians are
relatively uniformly distributed across the population (DiPrete et al. 2011).14 This is especially
true for social ties within the family, which tend to be “strong ties” both in the emotional and
structural sense (Granovetter 1973). The implication is that, at least in recent years, both Republicans and Democrats have similar probabilities of knowing someone in their close social
circles who is gay or lesbian. Thus, the social influence process might have operated ‘close
to home’, from within the family outwards. This may explain why Republicans have turned
towards more progressive views so easily on these issues. After all, even if party identification
operates as a perceptual screen of the political world (Campbell et al. 1960), it seems safe to
expect that the coming out of a family member or close friend will be a much more persuasive
message than the partisan cues of the political elite.
In sum, empirical evidence supports the claim that public opinion changes on moral issues
have followed a secular trend in which both Democrats and Republicans have adopted more
progressive opinions, although at a different pace. We speculate about the micro-level processes that bring about such outcomes: the partisan lag in the diffusion curves is likely due to
mechanisms of homophily and selective disclosure in political discussion networks. Whereas
the extraordinary pace of the change on gay rights may be due to the diminished segregation
and increased visibility of openly gays and lesbians in people’s social networks. Taken together,
these considerations point to the different nature of public opinion change in the moral domain,
and the possible primacy of social diffusion processes over more classic, party-driven models
of opinion change.
Why is public opinion in the moral domain evolving differently from other domains? Although we cannot provide a fully satisfactory answer here, we mention a couple of possible reasons. First, not all issues are created equal. While the political debate in Western democracies
is usually organized around economic and eventually, geographic or ethnic cleavages (Lipset
and Rokkan 1967), most positions on moral issues do not logically follow from core political
ideologies. This is certainly true in most Western European countries, where the church-state
separation is often written in the Constitution, and the political debate is mainly organized
around issues of redistribution, welfare state, and taxation. However, even in the US, the logical
link between parties’ core ideologies and their stand on moral issues is weak at most (Converse
1964; Baldassarri and Goldberg 2014): for example, it is quite difficult to reconcile Republicans’ laissez faire economic agenda and their opposition to any form of gun control with their
heavily regulatory stand on reproductive issues. Second, moral issues are often concerned with
whether a certain behavior – e.g., women employment in the workforce, smoking marijuana,
gay raising kids – is considered acceptable. As a long tradition in sociology has demonstrated,
what is considered ‘moral’ often coincides with what is considered normal, or ‘average behavior’ in a society: thus the social norm that most people follow in a given space-time (Durkheim
1906). If this is the case, it is understandable why opinions on this type of issues are more
subjected to bottom-up dynamics of diffusion and social influence.
ABSTRACT: According to many scholars of public opinion, most of the fast-growing divide between Democrats and Republicans over the last few decades has taken place on moral issues. We find that the process of issue partisanship -- the sorting of political preferences along partisan lines -- properly accounts for public opinion dynamics in the economic and civil rights domains: on these issues Democrats as a whole have become more liberal and Republicans more conservative. However, when it comes to moral issues, the prominent change is a partisan secular trend, in which both Democrats and Republicans are adopting more progressive views on moral issues, although at a different rate. While Democrats are early adopters of progressive views, Republicans adopt the same views at a slower pace. This secular change can be easily (mis)interpreted as a sign of polarization because, at the onset of the process, the gap between party supporters broadens due to faster pace at which Democrats adopt progressive views, and only toward the end, the gap between partisan supporters decreases.
---
Furthermore, opinion change, especially on topics concerning gender roles, sexuality, marijuana legalization, and gay rights, has occurred too quickly to be accounted for by generational replacement or demographic shifts (Loftus 2001; Andersen and Fetner 2008; Fischer and Hout 2006). Instead, the secular trend observed for these issues is consistent with a social diffusion dynamic, which operates within generations. In addition, the lag in the adoption curves between Democrats and Republicans (and its persistence even when controlling for the demographic sorting of the electorate) points to the importance of partisan groups in the diffusion process.
Although we cannot provide empirical evidence of the micro-level dynamic of social influence, here we offer some considerations concerning some of the potential underlying mechanisms. In particular, as already anticipated in our general discussion of partisan secular trends,
media partisanship, the homophily of political discussion networks, and the mechanism of
selective disclosure may contribute to the social diffusion process documented in this paper.
Namely, progressive ‘innovators’, who are likely to be Democrats, will spread their views, first,
among like-minded Democrats, both because their political discussion networks are disproportionally composed by fellow Democrats, and because they selectively disclose their opinions
on salient issues to others who they anticipate will agree with them. However, since discussion networks are far from being perfectly homogeneous (Huckfeldt et al. 1995), progressive
opinions would eventually spread among Republicans as well.
In addition, some specific considerations concerning the structural position of gays and lesbians in social networks may partially explain why Republicans have so speedily embraced
secular views on LGBT issues when their elites chose to do otherwise. As with other minority
groups, knowing gays or lesbians has been shown to increase the support for gay rights among
almost all subgroups defined by socio-demographics, ideology, and partisanship (Lewis 2011).
However, compared to racial and socioeconomic cleavages that heavily segregate the interaction patterns of Americans, recent research suggests that interactions with gays and lesbians are
relatively uniformly distributed across the population (DiPrete et al. 2011).14 This is especially
true for social ties within the family, which tend to be “strong ties” both in the emotional and
structural sense (Granovetter 1973). The implication is that, at least in recent years, both Republicans and Democrats have similar probabilities of knowing someone in their close social
circles who is gay or lesbian. Thus, the social influence process might have operated ‘close
to home’, from within the family outwards. This may explain why Republicans have turned
towards more progressive views so easily on these issues. After all, even if party identification
operates as a perceptual screen of the political world (Campbell et al. 1960), it seems safe to
expect that the coming out of a family member or close friend will be a much more persuasive
message than the partisan cues of the political elite.
In sum, empirical evidence supports the claim that public opinion changes on moral issues
have followed a secular trend in which both Democrats and Republicans have adopted more
progressive opinions, although at a different pace. We speculate about the micro-level processes that bring about such outcomes: the partisan lag in the diffusion curves is likely due to
mechanisms of homophily and selective disclosure in political discussion networks. Whereas
the extraordinary pace of the change on gay rights may be due to the diminished segregation
and increased visibility of openly gays and lesbians in people’s social networks. Taken together,
these considerations point to the different nature of public opinion change in the moral domain,
and the possible primacy of social diffusion processes over more classic, party-driven models
of opinion change.
Why is public opinion in the moral domain evolving differently from other domains? Although we cannot provide a fully satisfactory answer here, we mention a couple of possible reasons. First, not all issues are created equal. While the political debate in Western democracies
is usually organized around economic and eventually, geographic or ethnic cleavages (Lipset
and Rokkan 1967), most positions on moral issues do not logically follow from core political
ideologies. This is certainly true in most Western European countries, where the church-state
separation is often written in the Constitution, and the political debate is mainly organized
around issues of redistribution, welfare state, and taxation. However, even in the US, the logical
link between parties’ core ideologies and their stand on moral issues is weak at most (Converse
1964; Baldassarri and Goldberg 2014): for example, it is quite difficult to reconcile Republicans’ laissez faire economic agenda and their opposition to any form of gun control with their
heavily regulatory stand on reproductive issues. Second, moral issues are often concerned with
whether a certain behavior – e.g., women employment in the workforce, smoking marijuana,
gay raising kids – is considered acceptable. As a long tradition in sociology has demonstrated,
what is considered ‘moral’ often coincides with what is considered normal, or ‘average behavior’ in a society: thus the social norm that most people follow in a given space-time (Durkheim
1906). If this is the case, it is understandable why opinions on this type of issues are more
subjected to bottom-up dynamics of diffusion and social influence.
Men Are Funnier than Women under a Condition of Low Self-Efficacy but Women Are Funnier than Men under a Condition of High Self-Efficacy
Men Are Funnier than Women under a Condition of Low Self-Efficacy but Women Are Funnier than Men under a Condition of High Self-Efficacy. Tracy L. Caldwell, Paulina Wojtach. Sex Roles, December 9 2019. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-019-01109-w
Abstract: The debate about whether women can be as funny as men pervades the popular press, and research has sometimes supported the stereotype that men are funnier (Mickes et al. 2011). The goal of the present research was to determine whether this gender difference can be explained by differences in beliefs about one’s capability for humor (“humor self-efficacy”). Male and female U.S. undergraduates (n = 64) generated captions for 20 cartoons and rated their own humor self-efficacy. Subsequently, an independent sample of 370 Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) users evaluated these captions in a knockout-style tournament in which pairs of captions were presented with each of the cartoons. Each participant was randomly assigned to evaluate captions which were authored by men and women selected to be either low or high in humor self-efficacy. In the initial round of the tournament, each caption was authored by a man and a woman matched for comparable levels of self-identified humor self-efficacy. In subsequent rounds, the remaining captions were paired randomly. MTurk users, unaware of the captioners’ gender, selected the captions of men as funnier only under the low self-efficacy condition and those of women as funnier under the high self-efficacy condition. These data suggest that self-efficacy may be a critical determinant of the successful performance of humor. When people say that women are not funny, they may be relying on an unfounded stereotype. We discuss how this stereotype may negatively affect perceptions of women in the workplace and other settings.
Keywords: Humor Cartoons Human sex differences Sex roles Stereotyped attitudes Sex role attitudes
Men Are Funnier than Women under a Condition of Low Self-Efficacy but Women Are Funnier than Men under a Condition of High Self-Efficacy. Tracy L. Caldwell, Paulina Wojtach. Sex Roles, December 9 2019. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-019-01109-w
Abstract: The debate about whether women can be as funny as men pervades the popular press, and research has sometimes supported the stereotype that men are funnier (Mickes et al. 2011). The goal of the present research was to determine whether this gender difference can be explained by differences in beliefs about one’s capability for humor (“humor self-efficacy”). Male and female U.S. undergraduates (n = 64) generated captions for 20 cartoons and rated their own humor self-efficacy. Subsequently, an independent sample of 370 Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) users evaluated these captions in a knockout-style tournament in which pairs of captions were presented with each of the cartoons. Each participant was randomly assigned to evaluate captions which were authored by men and women selected to be either low or high in humor self-efficacy. In the initial round of the tournament, each caption was authored by a man and a woman matched for comparable levels of self-identified humor self-efficacy. In subsequent rounds, the remaining captions were paired randomly. MTurk users, unaware of the captioners’ gender, selected the captions of men as funnier only under the low self-efficacy condition and those of women as funnier under the high self-efficacy condition. These data suggest that self-efficacy may be a critical determinant of the successful performance of humor. When people say that women are not funny, they may be relying on an unfounded stereotype. We discuss how this stereotype may negatively affect perceptions of women in the workplace and other settings.
Keywords: Humor Cartoons Human sex differences Sex roles Stereotyped attitudes Sex role attitudes
Men Are Funnier than Women under a Condition of Low Self-Efficacy but Women Are Funnier than Men under a Condition of High Self-Efficacy. Tracy L. Caldwell, Paulina Wojtach. Sex Roles, December 9 2019. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-019-01109-w
Abstract: The debate about whether women can be as funny as men pervades the popular press, and research has sometimes supported the stereotype that men are funnier (Mickes et al. 2011). The goal of the present research was to determine whether this gender difference can be explained by differences in beliefs about one’s capability for humor (“humor self-efficacy”). Male and female U.S. undergraduates (n = 64) generated captions for 20 cartoons and rated their own humor self-efficacy. Subsequently, an independent sample of 370 Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) users evaluated these captions in a knockout-style tournament in which pairs of captions were presented with each of the cartoons. Each participant was randomly assigned to evaluate captions which were authored by men and women selected to be either low or high in humor self-efficacy. In the initial round of the tournament, each caption was authored by a man and a woman matched for comparable levels of self-identified humor self-efficacy. In subsequent rounds, the remaining captions were paired randomly. MTurk users, unaware of the captioners’ gender, selected the captions of men as funnier only under the low self-efficacy condition and those of women as funnier under the high self-efficacy condition. These data suggest that self-efficacy may be a critical determinant of the successful performance of humor. When people say that women are not funny, they may be relying on an unfounded stereotype. We discuss how this stereotype may negatively affect perceptions of women in the workplace and other settings.
Keywords: Humor Cartoons Human sex differences Sex roles Stereotyped attitudes Sex role attitudes
Discussion
In replication of findings by Mickes et al. (2011) and
Greengross and Miller (2011), but contrary to those by
Howrigan and MacDonald (2008), our participants found
men to be, on average, more skilled at captioning New
Yorker cartoons than women. This difference was qualified,
as hypothesized, by the humor self-efficacy of the captioner;
male captioners were funnier in the low self-efficacy condition
and female captioners were funnier in the high self-efficacy
condition. Participants’ response to the question, “Who is funnier?,”
which can be interpreted as an implicit measure of
whether they endorse the stereotype that women are not funny,
varied by sample: The most frequent answer among
captioners in Phase 1, whose participants were all undergraduates, was
“neither” (42.2%), followed by “men” (38.2%),
then women (“19.6%”). This pattern was the same for men
and women. Those who rated the captions in Phase 2 were a
more age-diverse sample of MTurk users, and their answers
were “men” (44.7%), followed by “neither” (37.9%), then
“women” (17.3%) and these responses were heavily influenced by participants’
gender, such that those who responded
that men are funnier were overwhelmingly male, whereas
those who said women were funnier were overwhelmingly
female. However, contrary to Mickes et al.’s (2011) findings,
raters’self-reported preference for men’s humor did not cause
them to show a gendered preference for men’s humor greater
than that of women. In other words, although men (but not
women) told us that men are funnier, their preferences for
men’s humor was no greater than that of women, and it was
not in evidence when rating the captions of women who were
higher in self-efficacy.
We anticipated that men’s superiority at captioning New
Yorker cartoons would lessen under conditions of high self-efficacy
on the basis that the male and female captioners in
Mickes et al.’s (2011) study differed in their self-reported self-confidence.
We argue that this gender difference in self-confidence could
also account for the gender differences in
humor observed in other studies (Greengross and Miller 2011;
Howrigan and MacDonald 2008). When women internalize a
culture’s prescriptions against using humor, they chronically
operate under conditions of low self-efficacy. Our data suggest
that men and women are matched in their ability to perform
humor, but that their self-beliefs and the contexts that prime
these self-beliefs may influence its skilled performance.
Consider a compelling example of this reasoning in research
by Hull et al. (2016): Their participants were asked to produce
humor under one of two instructional cues, to either be funny
or to be catchy. All participants performed better when told to
be catchy, but women outperformed men when told to be
funny. Context mattered and confidence may be key. Also
consider research by Hooper et al. (2016), in which they asked
undergraduates from Britain, Canada, and Australia to rate
captions submitted to the New Yorker’s captioning contest by
men and women wishing to test their comic mettle. There
were no differences in the rated funniness of the captions,
except in Britain, where women’s captions were favored over
men’s. Their data show that when women have the confidence
to self-select into a captioning task, they perform at least
equally as well as men in some cultural contexts and better
in others for the same jokes.
The goal of the present study was to investigate whether
one could create a circumstance under which women could be
capable of performing humor nearly as well as men. The answer,
surprisingly, was that under conditions of high self-efficacy,
women were even more capable than men, a finding that
is “surprising” in light of the ubiquity of messages prohibiting
women’s performance of humor, including this comment on
the YouTube trailer for the all-female Ghostbusters reboot
(Sony Pictures Entertainment 2016): “Ok so I read the description
and I noticed something strange, it says ‘rebooted
with a new cast of hilarious characters’....Did these hilarious
character just not make it into the final movie or did I miss
something?” It could be easy to dismiss this kind of prejudice,
given that it is directed to four superstar comics whose careers
have fared quite well in spite of detractors. However, there are
contexts in which prejudice against women’s humor can be
more widely consequential. For example, Decker and
Rotondo (2001) found, in the workplace, that women who
used negative humor (sexual and offensive humor) were
judged as being less effective leaders than men who used the
same kind of humor and that this finding emerged even when
controlling for the gender of the respondent. When the humor
was positive, on the other hand, women were rated higher on
relationship behaviors and effectiveness than men. Their data
suggest that both men and women hold implicit beliefs about
humor and gender roles and that women’s financial well-being
is at greater risk than men’s when they use sexual and offensive humor.
Another place in which humor and gender are performed
with some risk is in romantic attraction. In the context of
heterosexual attraction, when it comes to humor, men have
indicated they prefer women who will laugh at their jokes to
those who will produce their own humor (Bressler et al. 2006;
Hone et al. 2015). Other research indicates that a woman’s use
of humor is, at best, irrelevant to her potential mate value (i.e.,
when given the choice between a woman who uses humor to
one who does not, they show no clear preference; Bressler and
Balshine 2006; Wilbur and Campbell 2011) and at worst, it
makes women less attractive (Lundy et al. 1998). Women’s
use of humor, then, may be the basis for rejection at the box
office, in the workplace, and in the dating context.
To be clear, there are just as many studies demonstrating
that men and women do not differ in their interest in humorous
partners in the context of romantic relationships (i.e., not all
men find humor unattractive; Buss 1988; DiDonato et al.
2013; Feingold 1992; Kenrick et al. 1990; Treger et al.
2013). Likewise, there are movie trailers starring all-female
casts of comics that are not trolled hard. For example, whereas
Sony Pictures Entertainment’s (2016) official Ghostbusters
trailer has nearly 300,000 YouTube comments, largely negative, Universal Pictures’s (2011) official Bridesmaids trailer
has under 1000. Perhaps the critical difference is that
Ghostbusters treads on hallowed male comics’ ground (the
original starred comedy darlings Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd,
and Harold Ramis) and Bridesmaids is a “chick flick.” Similar
hallowed ground was encroached upon in the newest take on
the comedy-heist “Oceans” series, Ocean 8, starring an allfemale cast,
whose YouTube trailer (Warner Bros. Pictures
2018) comments include, “Oh great, another all-female reboot,
‘cause Ghostbusters turned out great” and “Coming
soon: No Country for Old Women.” These examples suggest
that the answer to the question “Should women use humor?”
is: “Sure, as long as it is performed in qualitatively distinct
contexts from which men perform it.” Granted, these comments represent
the sentiments of a highly self-selected sample, thus, in future
research, one might explore just how representative
they are. Recall, however, that men’s selfprofessed preference for men’s over women’s humor was
not matched, in our sample of raters, with a measured preference for
men’s cartoon captions greater than that of women’s
cartoon captions. We take these data as preliminary evidence
that gender bias shaped men’s stated preferences.
Limitations
Overall, our data would seem to specify that the circumstance
under which men are likely to “out-humor” women is when
women’s self-efficacy is low. One shortcoming of our study is
that we cannot determine the provenance of our captioners’
self-efficacy: Did we create experimental contexts that caused
differences in humor self-efficacy or were these differences
pre-existing? Results from the caption-generation phase indicated we
were not able to demonstrate, at the level of the entire
sample, that we had successfully manipulated self-efficacy, so
we “cherry-picked” our captioners to create quasiexperimental
conditions of low and high self-efficacy, to determine if differences
in captioners’ self-efficacy were detectable by an independent
sample of raters. The quasiexperimental nature of our study makes it difficult to rule
out raw humor talent as a third variable that could simultaneously
explain captioners’ self-efficacy and their humorousness. That said,
this third variable explanation cannot explain
why men were perceived as funnier in the low self-efficacy
condition and women as funnier in the high self-efficacy condition; if
raw talent were the cause of captioners’self-efficacy
ratings and their humorousness, then it should have had the
effect of equalizing humor ability across gender. Nevertheless,
if our paradigm were to be used again, the manipulation of
self-efficacy would need to be strengthened to determine its
causality.
It is possible that we did in fact successfully manipulate
self-efficacy but that our assessment of it was not sensitive
enough. Bandura (1977) recommends a microanalytic assessment strategy
in which one assesses self-beliefs about a
targeted and objective behavioral outcome in a particular domain (e.g.,
“How confident are you that you can correctly
answer seven of these ten questions about global climate
change?”). Our assessment of humor self-efficacy consisted
of asking participants “How funny do you think others will
find your cartoon captions?” In hindsight, our question may
not have assessed self-beliefs so much as it did their beliefs
about others’ perceptions of their humor. An individual can
simultaneously be very confident that she can crack jokes that
she will find hilarious while recognizing that the average person
might not appreciate her attempts at humor. Moreover, our
question does not ask them about a behavioral outcome that
can be objectively measured. This is due in part to the subjectivity
of humor. Nevertheless, a rephrasing that comes closer
to Bandura’s original recommendation is: “How confident are
you that you can write at least three [or four or five, etc.]
captions that others with a similar sense of humor might find
funny?” A better assessment of self-efficacy is critical for
determining its role in explaining gender differences in humorous performance.
In short, participants within each of our quasi-experimental
conditions of the captioning phase shared something in common that
led to differences in their humorous performance.
We believe that self-efficacy was what caused variations in
their humorous performance, but we cannot completely rule
out raw talent as a third variable. A more effective manipulation
and assessment of self-efficacy is warranted.
Abstract: The debate about whether women can be as funny as men pervades the popular press, and research has sometimes supported the stereotype that men are funnier (Mickes et al. 2011). The goal of the present research was to determine whether this gender difference can be explained by differences in beliefs about one’s capability for humor (“humor self-efficacy”). Male and female U.S. undergraduates (n = 64) generated captions for 20 cartoons and rated their own humor self-efficacy. Subsequently, an independent sample of 370 Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) users evaluated these captions in a knockout-style tournament in which pairs of captions were presented with each of the cartoons. Each participant was randomly assigned to evaluate captions which were authored by men and women selected to be either low or high in humor self-efficacy. In the initial round of the tournament, each caption was authored by a man and a woman matched for comparable levels of self-identified humor self-efficacy. In subsequent rounds, the remaining captions were paired randomly. MTurk users, unaware of the captioners’ gender, selected the captions of men as funnier only under the low self-efficacy condition and those of women as funnier under the high self-efficacy condition. These data suggest that self-efficacy may be a critical determinant of the successful performance of humor. When people say that women are not funny, they may be relying on an unfounded stereotype. We discuss how this stereotype may negatively affect perceptions of women in the workplace and other settings.
Keywords: Humor Cartoons Human sex differences Sex roles Stereotyped attitudes Sex role attitudes
Men Are Funnier than Women under a Condition of Low Self-Efficacy but Women Are Funnier than Men under a Condition of High Self-Efficacy. Tracy L. Caldwell, Paulina Wojtach. Sex Roles, December 9 2019. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-019-01109-w
Abstract: The debate about whether women can be as funny as men pervades the popular press, and research has sometimes supported the stereotype that men are funnier (Mickes et al. 2011). The goal of the present research was to determine whether this gender difference can be explained by differences in beliefs about one’s capability for humor (“humor self-efficacy”). Male and female U.S. undergraduates (n = 64) generated captions for 20 cartoons and rated their own humor self-efficacy. Subsequently, an independent sample of 370 Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) users evaluated these captions in a knockout-style tournament in which pairs of captions were presented with each of the cartoons. Each participant was randomly assigned to evaluate captions which were authored by men and women selected to be either low or high in humor self-efficacy. In the initial round of the tournament, each caption was authored by a man and a woman matched for comparable levels of self-identified humor self-efficacy. In subsequent rounds, the remaining captions were paired randomly. MTurk users, unaware of the captioners’ gender, selected the captions of men as funnier only under the low self-efficacy condition and those of women as funnier under the high self-efficacy condition. These data suggest that self-efficacy may be a critical determinant of the successful performance of humor. When people say that women are not funny, they may be relying on an unfounded stereotype. We discuss how this stereotype may negatively affect perceptions of women in the workplace and other settings.
Keywords: Humor Cartoons Human sex differences Sex roles Stereotyped attitudes Sex role attitudes
Men Are Funnier than Women under a Condition of Low Self-Efficacy but Women Are Funnier than Men under a Condition of High Self-Efficacy. Tracy L. Caldwell, Paulina Wojtach. Sex Roles, December 9 2019. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-019-01109-w
Abstract: The debate about whether women can be as funny as men pervades the popular press, and research has sometimes supported the stereotype that men are funnier (Mickes et al. 2011). The goal of the present research was to determine whether this gender difference can be explained by differences in beliefs about one’s capability for humor (“humor self-efficacy”). Male and female U.S. undergraduates (n = 64) generated captions for 20 cartoons and rated their own humor self-efficacy. Subsequently, an independent sample of 370 Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) users evaluated these captions in a knockout-style tournament in which pairs of captions were presented with each of the cartoons. Each participant was randomly assigned to evaluate captions which were authored by men and women selected to be either low or high in humor self-efficacy. In the initial round of the tournament, each caption was authored by a man and a woman matched for comparable levels of self-identified humor self-efficacy. In subsequent rounds, the remaining captions were paired randomly. MTurk users, unaware of the captioners’ gender, selected the captions of men as funnier only under the low self-efficacy condition and those of women as funnier under the high self-efficacy condition. These data suggest that self-efficacy may be a critical determinant of the successful performance of humor. When people say that women are not funny, they may be relying on an unfounded stereotype. We discuss how this stereotype may negatively affect perceptions of women in the workplace and other settings.
Keywords: Humor Cartoons Human sex differences Sex roles Stereotyped attitudes Sex role attitudes
Men Are Funnier than Women under a Condition of Low Self-Efficacy but Women Are Funnier than Men under a Condition of High Self-Efficacy. Tracy L. Caldwell, Paulina Wojtach. Sex Roles, December 9 2019. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11199-019-01109-w
Abstract: The debate about whether women can be as funny as men pervades the popular press, and research has sometimes supported the stereotype that men are funnier (Mickes et al. 2011). The goal of the present research was to determine whether this gender difference can be explained by differences in beliefs about one’s capability for humor (“humor self-efficacy”). Male and female U.S. undergraduates (n = 64) generated captions for 20 cartoons and rated their own humor self-efficacy. Subsequently, an independent sample of 370 Amazon Mechanical Turk (MTurk) users evaluated these captions in a knockout-style tournament in which pairs of captions were presented with each of the cartoons. Each participant was randomly assigned to evaluate captions which were authored by men and women selected to be either low or high in humor self-efficacy. In the initial round of the tournament, each caption was authored by a man and a woman matched for comparable levels of self-identified humor self-efficacy. In subsequent rounds, the remaining captions were paired randomly. MTurk users, unaware of the captioners’ gender, selected the captions of men as funnier only under the low self-efficacy condition and those of women as funnier under the high self-efficacy condition. These data suggest that self-efficacy may be a critical determinant of the successful performance of humor. When people say that women are not funny, they may be relying on an unfounded stereotype. We discuss how this stereotype may negatively affect perceptions of women in the workplace and other settings.
Keywords: Humor Cartoons Human sex differences Sex roles Stereotyped attitudes Sex role attitudes
Discussion
In replication of findings by Mickes et al. (2011) and
Greengross and Miller (2011), but contrary to those by
Howrigan and MacDonald (2008), our participants found
men to be, on average, more skilled at captioning New
Yorker cartoons than women. This difference was qualified,
as hypothesized, by the humor self-efficacy of the captioner;
male captioners were funnier in the low self-efficacy condition
and female captioners were funnier in the high self-efficacy
condition. Participants’ response to the question, “Who is funnier?,”
which can be interpreted as an implicit measure of
whether they endorse the stereotype that women are not funny,
varied by sample: The most frequent answer among
captioners in Phase 1, whose participants were all undergraduates, was
“neither” (42.2%), followed by “men” (38.2%),
then women (“19.6%”). This pattern was the same for men
and women. Those who rated the captions in Phase 2 were a
more age-diverse sample of MTurk users, and their answers
were “men” (44.7%), followed by “neither” (37.9%), then
“women” (17.3%) and these responses were heavily influenced by participants’
gender, such that those who responded
that men are funnier were overwhelmingly male, whereas
those who said women were funnier were overwhelmingly
female. However, contrary to Mickes et al.’s (2011) findings,
raters’self-reported preference for men’s humor did not cause
them to show a gendered preference for men’s humor greater
than that of women. In other words, although men (but not
women) told us that men are funnier, their preferences for
men’s humor was no greater than that of women, and it was
not in evidence when rating the captions of women who were
higher in self-efficacy.
We anticipated that men’s superiority at captioning New
Yorker cartoons would lessen under conditions of high self-efficacy
on the basis that the male and female captioners in
Mickes et al.’s (2011) study differed in their self-reported self-confidence.
We argue that this gender difference in self-confidence could
also account for the gender differences in
humor observed in other studies (Greengross and Miller 2011;
Howrigan and MacDonald 2008). When women internalize a
culture’s prescriptions against using humor, they chronically
operate under conditions of low self-efficacy. Our data suggest
that men and women are matched in their ability to perform
humor, but that their self-beliefs and the contexts that prime
these self-beliefs may influence its skilled performance.
Consider a compelling example of this reasoning in research
by Hull et al. (2016): Their participants were asked to produce
humor under one of two instructional cues, to either be funny
or to be catchy. All participants performed better when told to
be catchy, but women outperformed men when told to be
funny. Context mattered and confidence may be key. Also
consider research by Hooper et al. (2016), in which they asked
undergraduates from Britain, Canada, and Australia to rate
captions submitted to the New Yorker’s captioning contest by
men and women wishing to test their comic mettle. There
were no differences in the rated funniness of the captions,
except in Britain, where women’s captions were favored over
men’s. Their data show that when women have the confidence
to self-select into a captioning task, they perform at least
equally as well as men in some cultural contexts and better
in others for the same jokes.
The goal of the present study was to investigate whether
one could create a circumstance under which women could be
capable of performing humor nearly as well as men. The answer,
surprisingly, was that under conditions of high self-efficacy,
women were even more capable than men, a finding that
is “surprising” in light of the ubiquity of messages prohibiting
women’s performance of humor, including this comment on
the YouTube trailer for the all-female Ghostbusters reboot
(Sony Pictures Entertainment 2016): “Ok so I read the description
and I noticed something strange, it says ‘rebooted
with a new cast of hilarious characters’....Did these hilarious
character just not make it into the final movie or did I miss
something?” It could be easy to dismiss this kind of prejudice,
given that it is directed to four superstar comics whose careers
have fared quite well in spite of detractors. However, there are
contexts in which prejudice against women’s humor can be
more widely consequential. For example, Decker and
Rotondo (2001) found, in the workplace, that women who
used negative humor (sexual and offensive humor) were
judged as being less effective leaders than men who used the
same kind of humor and that this finding emerged even when
controlling for the gender of the respondent. When the humor
was positive, on the other hand, women were rated higher on
relationship behaviors and effectiveness than men. Their data
suggest that both men and women hold implicit beliefs about
humor and gender roles and that women’s financial well-being
is at greater risk than men’s when they use sexual and offensive humor.
Another place in which humor and gender are performed
with some risk is in romantic attraction. In the context of
heterosexual attraction, when it comes to humor, men have
indicated they prefer women who will laugh at their jokes to
those who will produce their own humor (Bressler et al. 2006;
Hone et al. 2015). Other research indicates that a woman’s use
of humor is, at best, irrelevant to her potential mate value (i.e.,
when given the choice between a woman who uses humor to
one who does not, they show no clear preference; Bressler and
Balshine 2006; Wilbur and Campbell 2011) and at worst, it
makes women less attractive (Lundy et al. 1998). Women’s
use of humor, then, may be the basis for rejection at the box
office, in the workplace, and in the dating context.
To be clear, there are just as many studies demonstrating
that men and women do not differ in their interest in humorous
partners in the context of romantic relationships (i.e., not all
men find humor unattractive; Buss 1988; DiDonato et al.
2013; Feingold 1992; Kenrick et al. 1990; Treger et al.
2013). Likewise, there are movie trailers starring all-female
casts of comics that are not trolled hard. For example, whereas
Sony Pictures Entertainment’s (2016) official Ghostbusters
trailer has nearly 300,000 YouTube comments, largely negative, Universal Pictures’s (2011) official Bridesmaids trailer
has under 1000. Perhaps the critical difference is that
Ghostbusters treads on hallowed male comics’ ground (the
original starred comedy darlings Bill Murray, Dan Aykroyd,
and Harold Ramis) and Bridesmaids is a “chick flick.” Similar
hallowed ground was encroached upon in the newest take on
the comedy-heist “Oceans” series, Ocean 8, starring an allfemale cast,
whose YouTube trailer (Warner Bros. Pictures
2018) comments include, “Oh great, another all-female reboot,
‘cause Ghostbusters turned out great” and “Coming
soon: No Country for Old Women.” These examples suggest
that the answer to the question “Should women use humor?”
is: “Sure, as long as it is performed in qualitatively distinct
contexts from which men perform it.” Granted, these comments represent
the sentiments of a highly self-selected sample, thus, in future
research, one might explore just how representative
they are. Recall, however, that men’s selfprofessed preference for men’s over women’s humor was
not matched, in our sample of raters, with a measured preference for
men’s cartoon captions greater than that of women’s
cartoon captions. We take these data as preliminary evidence
that gender bias shaped men’s stated preferences.
Limitations
Overall, our data would seem to specify that the circumstance
under which men are likely to “out-humor” women is when
women’s self-efficacy is low. One shortcoming of our study is
that we cannot determine the provenance of our captioners’
self-efficacy: Did we create experimental contexts that caused
differences in humor self-efficacy or were these differences
pre-existing? Results from the caption-generation phase indicated we
were not able to demonstrate, at the level of the entire
sample, that we had successfully manipulated self-efficacy, so
we “cherry-picked” our captioners to create quasiexperimental
conditions of low and high self-efficacy, to determine if differences
in captioners’ self-efficacy were detectable by an independent
sample of raters. The quasiexperimental nature of our study makes it difficult to rule
out raw humor talent as a third variable that could simultaneously
explain captioners’ self-efficacy and their humorousness. That said,
this third variable explanation cannot explain
why men were perceived as funnier in the low self-efficacy
condition and women as funnier in the high self-efficacy condition; if
raw talent were the cause of captioners’self-efficacy
ratings and their humorousness, then it should have had the
effect of equalizing humor ability across gender. Nevertheless,
if our paradigm were to be used again, the manipulation of
self-efficacy would need to be strengthened to determine its
causality.
It is possible that we did in fact successfully manipulate
self-efficacy but that our assessment of it was not sensitive
enough. Bandura (1977) recommends a microanalytic assessment strategy
in which one assesses self-beliefs about a
targeted and objective behavioral outcome in a particular domain (e.g.,
“How confident are you that you can correctly
answer seven of these ten questions about global climate
change?”). Our assessment of humor self-efficacy consisted
of asking participants “How funny do you think others will
find your cartoon captions?” In hindsight, our question may
not have assessed self-beliefs so much as it did their beliefs
about others’ perceptions of their humor. An individual can
simultaneously be very confident that she can crack jokes that
she will find hilarious while recognizing that the average person
might not appreciate her attempts at humor. Moreover, our
question does not ask them about a behavioral outcome that
can be objectively measured. This is due in part to the subjectivity
of humor. Nevertheless, a rephrasing that comes closer
to Bandura’s original recommendation is: “How confident are
you that you can write at least three [or four or five, etc.]
captions that others with a similar sense of humor might find
funny?” A better assessment of self-efficacy is critical for
determining its role in explaining gender differences in humorous performance.
In short, participants within each of our quasi-experimental
conditions of the captioning phase shared something in common that
led to differences in their humorous performance.
We believe that self-efficacy was what caused variations in
their humorous performance, but we cannot completely rule
out raw talent as a third variable. A more effective manipulation
and assessment of self-efficacy is warranted.
Witnessing fewer credible cultural cues of religious commitment is the most potent predictor of religious disbelief, β=0.28, followed distantly by reflective cognitive style
Gervais, Will M., Maxine B. Najle, Sarah R. Schiavone, and Nava Caluori. 2019. “The Origins of Religious Disbelief: A Dual Inheritance Approach.” PsyArXiv. December 8. doi:10.31234/osf.io/e29rt
Abstract: Religion is a core feature of human nature, yet a comprehensive evolutionary approach toreligion must account for religious disbelief. Despite potentially drastic overreporting of religiosity[1], a third of the world’s 7+ billion human inhabitants may actually be atheists—merely people who do not believe in God or gods. The origins of disbelief thus present a key testing ground for theories of religion. Here, we evaluate the predictions of three prominent theoretical approaches to the origins of disbelief, and find considerable support for dual inheritance (gene-culture coevolution) approach. This dual inheritance model[2,3] derives from distinct literatures addressing the putative 1) core social cognitive faculties that enable mental representation of gods[4–7], 2) the challenges to existential security that motivate people to treat some god candidates as real and strategically important[8,9], 3) evolved cultural learning processes that influence which god candidates naïve learners treat as real rather than imaginary[3,10–12], and4) the intuitive processes that sustain belief in gods[13–15] and the cognitive reflection that may sometimes undermine it[16–18]. We explore the varied origins of religious disbelief by analyzing these pathways simultaneously in a large nationally representative (USA, N= 1417) dataset with preregistered analyses. Combined, we find that witnessing fewer credible cultural cues of religious commitment is the most potent predictor of religious disbelief, β=0.28, followed distantly by reflective cognitive style, β= 0.13, and less advanced mentalizing, β= 0.05. Low cultural exposure to faith predicted about 90% higher odds of atheism than did peak cognitive reflection. Further, cognitive reflection predicted reduced religious belief only among individuals who witness relatively fewer credible contextual cues of faith in others. This work empirically unites four distinct literatures addressing the origins of religious disbelief, highlights the utility of considering both evolved intuitions and cultural evolutionary processes in religious transmission, emphasizes the dual roles of content- and context-biased social learning[19], and sheds light on the shared psychological mechanisms that underpin both religious belief and disbelief.
Factors Predicting Religious (Dis)belief
To assess the four different factors that may drive religious disbelief, we measured participants’ mentalizing abilities, feelings of existential security, exposure to credible cues of religiosity (CREDs), and reflective versus intuitive cognitive style.
We measured advanced mentalizing abilities, which correspond to mindblind atheism, using the Perspective Taking 293 Subscale of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index75. This measure includes items like “I try to look at everybody’s side of a disagreement before I make a decision” and “Before criticizing somebody, I try to imagine how I would feel if I were in their place,” measured on a scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). This scale reached an acceptable level of reliability, α = 0.77, M = 4.79, SD = 0.78. We measured feelings of existential security, which corresponds to apatheism, with a number of items assessing concerns that are salient to participants and participant faith in institutions like the government, health care, and social security to provide aid in the face of need44. Items about the salience of different concerns included questions about how often participants worry about losing their job, worry about having enough money in the future, and feel they cannot afford things that are necessary. These items were assessed on a scale from 1 (never) to 4 (all the time). Illustrative items regarding faith in institutions include “How much do you feel confident in our country’s social security system” and “How much do you feel that people who start out poor can become wealthy if they work hard enough,” assessed on a scale from 1 (not at all) to 4 (a lot). Items measuring faith in institutions were reverse-scored, and all items were averaged together to form a composite index of existential insecurity (α = 0.77, M = 2.2, SD = 0.39), with higher scores reflecting more insecurity.
We measured cognitive reflection, which corresponds to analytic atheism, using nine items from the Cognitive Reflection Test76–78. This measure poses a series of questions to participants that rely on logical reasoning to answer correctly. All have a seemingly simple initial answer, but upon further consideration people arrive at a different (and correct) answer. We therefore measured whether or not participants provided the correct answers to these questions that require more cognitive reflection. If they answered a question correctly, they were given a 1, and if they answered it incorrectly, they were given a 0. Our full index of cognitive reflection is composed of the sum of the number of questions that each participant answered correctly, with a higher score thus indicating a more reflective and analytic cognitive style. The average score was 3.18, with a standard deviation of 2.66. We measured exposure to CREDs, which corresponds to inCREDulous 317 atheism, with the CREDs Scale10.
This scale assesses the extent to which caregivers demonstrated religious behaviors during the respondent’s childhood, such as going to religious services, acting as good religious role models, and making personal sacrifices to religion. The frequency of these types of behaviors was measured on a scale ranging from 1 (never) to 4 (always). This scale was highly reliable, α = 0.93, M = 2.42, SD = 0.84.
Abstract: Religion is a core feature of human nature, yet a comprehensive evolutionary approach toreligion must account for religious disbelief. Despite potentially drastic overreporting of religiosity[1], a third of the world’s 7+ billion human inhabitants may actually be atheists—merely people who do not believe in God or gods. The origins of disbelief thus present a key testing ground for theories of religion. Here, we evaluate the predictions of three prominent theoretical approaches to the origins of disbelief, and find considerable support for dual inheritance (gene-culture coevolution) approach. This dual inheritance model[2,3] derives from distinct literatures addressing the putative 1) core social cognitive faculties that enable mental representation of gods[4–7], 2) the challenges to existential security that motivate people to treat some god candidates as real and strategically important[8,9], 3) evolved cultural learning processes that influence which god candidates naïve learners treat as real rather than imaginary[3,10–12], and4) the intuitive processes that sustain belief in gods[13–15] and the cognitive reflection that may sometimes undermine it[16–18]. We explore the varied origins of religious disbelief by analyzing these pathways simultaneously in a large nationally representative (USA, N= 1417) dataset with preregistered analyses. Combined, we find that witnessing fewer credible cultural cues of religious commitment is the most potent predictor of religious disbelief, β=0.28, followed distantly by reflective cognitive style, β= 0.13, and less advanced mentalizing, β= 0.05. Low cultural exposure to faith predicted about 90% higher odds of atheism than did peak cognitive reflection. Further, cognitive reflection predicted reduced religious belief only among individuals who witness relatively fewer credible contextual cues of faith in others. This work empirically unites four distinct literatures addressing the origins of religious disbelief, highlights the utility of considering both evolved intuitions and cultural evolutionary processes in religious transmission, emphasizes the dual roles of content- and context-biased social learning[19], and sheds light on the shared psychological mechanisms that underpin both religious belief and disbelief.
Factors Predicting Religious (Dis)belief
To assess the four different factors that may drive religious disbelief, we measured participants’ mentalizing abilities, feelings of existential security, exposure to credible cues of religiosity (CREDs), and reflective versus intuitive cognitive style.
We measured advanced mentalizing abilities, which correspond to mindblind atheism, using the Perspective Taking 293 Subscale of the Interpersonal Reactivity Index75. This measure includes items like “I try to look at everybody’s side of a disagreement before I make a decision” and “Before criticizing somebody, I try to imagine how I would feel if I were in their place,” measured on a scale from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). This scale reached an acceptable level of reliability, α = 0.77, M = 4.79, SD = 0.78. We measured feelings of existential security, which corresponds to apatheism, with a number of items assessing concerns that are salient to participants and participant faith in institutions like the government, health care, and social security to provide aid in the face of need44. Items about the salience of different concerns included questions about how often participants worry about losing their job, worry about having enough money in the future, and feel they cannot afford things that are necessary. These items were assessed on a scale from 1 (never) to 4 (all the time). Illustrative items regarding faith in institutions include “How much do you feel confident in our country’s social security system” and “How much do you feel that people who start out poor can become wealthy if they work hard enough,” assessed on a scale from 1 (not at all) to 4 (a lot). Items measuring faith in institutions were reverse-scored, and all items were averaged together to form a composite index of existential insecurity (α = 0.77, M = 2.2, SD = 0.39), with higher scores reflecting more insecurity.
We measured cognitive reflection, which corresponds to analytic atheism, using nine items from the Cognitive Reflection Test76–78. This measure poses a series of questions to participants that rely on logical reasoning to answer correctly. All have a seemingly simple initial answer, but upon further consideration people arrive at a different (and correct) answer. We therefore measured whether or not participants provided the correct answers to these questions that require more cognitive reflection. If they answered a question correctly, they were given a 1, and if they answered it incorrectly, they were given a 0. Our full index of cognitive reflection is composed of the sum of the number of questions that each participant answered correctly, with a higher score thus indicating a more reflective and analytic cognitive style. The average score was 3.18, with a standard deviation of 2.66. We measured exposure to CREDs, which corresponds to inCREDulous 317 atheism, with the CREDs Scale10.
This scale assesses the extent to which caregivers demonstrated religious behaviors during the respondent’s childhood, such as going to religious services, acting as good religious role models, and making personal sacrifices to religion. The frequency of these types of behaviors was measured on a scale ranging from 1 (never) to 4 (always). This scale was highly reliable, α = 0.93, M = 2.42, SD = 0.84.
Sunday, December 8, 2019
NL: Occupation with the highest life satisfaction was ship/aircraft controller; lowest life satisfaction was in forestry; highest for women was creative & performing artist, for men it was keyboard operator
Van Leeuwen, J. & Veenhoven, R. Would I be happier as a teacher or a carpenter? Erasmus Happiness Economics Research Organization EHERO, Working Paper 2019/4. https://personal.eur.nl/veenhoven/Pub2010s/2019n-full.pdf
ABSTRACT: Most people are looking for ways to make their life as happy as possible. Since we work a great part of our life time, it is worth knowing which occupations will bring us the most happiness and which will bring the least. This requires information on how happy people are in different occupations and in particular, what kinds of people are the happiest in what kinds of occupation. We sought answerers to these questions using data taken from the WageIndicator for 2006 to 2014 for the Netherlands. The large dataset of 160.806 respondents made it possible to assess differences in happiness levels in 130 occupations and to split the results across 4 personal characteristics. The occupation in the Netherlands with the highest life satisfaction was ship, aircraft controller and technician working in this field. The occupation in the Netherlands with the lowest life satisfaction was forestry and related work. The occupation giving the most life satisfaction for women was creative and performing artist, for men it was keyboard operator.
Key words: Happiness, Life-satisfaction, Occupational choice
4.2 Further research along this line
Replication on a more representative dataset
This research can be repeated with more recent data and with a more representative data set e.g. using the workforce survey of Statistics Netherlands (CBS, Dutch Labour Force Survey (LFS), 2019) This will reduce the effect of self-selection and remove the effects of the economic recession.
Replication on a larger dataset
The WageIndicator provides not only data for the Netherlands but has information for 93 countries (WageIndicator, 2019). Pooling data obtained in other developed countries will produce a much larger dataset than used here, which will allows us to consider more specific kinds of people.
Subsequent research can provide insights into cross-national differences in happiness across occupations around the world.
Replicate on job-satisfaction
It is also possible to investigate job-satisfaction in the same way we have investigated life-satisfaction in this study. Job-satisfaction in the case of the data of the WageIndicator needs to be transform to an equal scale with life-satisfaction, to make it possible to investigate its cohesion, or lack of, with life-satisfaction. In the case of job-satisfaction we also need to investigate further personal scales next to personal characteristics, incombination with the scales needed for each occupation.
Assess difference between job-satisfaction and life-satisfaction
Above in section 2.1, we noted that it is easier to estimate the degree of job-satisfaction one will experience in a particular occupation than to predict how that occupation will affect one’s wider life-satisfaction. It is therefore worth getting a view on the differences that exist between jobsatisfaction and life-satisfaction in occupations. Are there substantial differences? If so, which occupations provide more job-satisfaction than life-satisfaction and which more life-satisfaction than job-satisfaction?
A specific group to be considered in this context, are the people who work as entrepreneurs. Of course, a distinction can be made between various types of entrepreneurship. For example, self-employed entrepreneurs and family entrepreneurs. This group of workers has not been examined, but would be a good topic for future research, that is to look at the life-satisfaction and job-satisfaction of different entrepreneurs.
Assess effect of job characteristics
Receiving direct feedback from peers, customers, patients, students or engineered devices might lead to a higher life satisfaction compared to a more indirect feedback when actions taken do not provide feedback and one would have to rely on one’s own judgement of the quality of the output delivered. Besides, the variation of this effect over the course of one’s career could also be assessed.
Assess effect of pay
Based on the results presented here it is possible to look at occupations in a differed way, we can now look both at income-based results of work and, importantly at the effect of types of occupation on life-satisfaction. This means that it becomes possible to see payment as a compensation for lower life satisfaction, a new way to look at our working lives’.
ABSTRACT: Most people are looking for ways to make their life as happy as possible. Since we work a great part of our life time, it is worth knowing which occupations will bring us the most happiness and which will bring the least. This requires information on how happy people are in different occupations and in particular, what kinds of people are the happiest in what kinds of occupation. We sought answerers to these questions using data taken from the WageIndicator for 2006 to 2014 for the Netherlands. The large dataset of 160.806 respondents made it possible to assess differences in happiness levels in 130 occupations and to split the results across 4 personal characteristics. The occupation in the Netherlands with the highest life satisfaction was ship, aircraft controller and technician working in this field. The occupation in the Netherlands with the lowest life satisfaction was forestry and related work. The occupation giving the most life satisfaction for women was creative and performing artist, for men it was keyboard operator.
Key words: Happiness, Life-satisfaction, Occupational choice
4.2 Further research along this line
Replication on a more representative dataset
This research can be repeated with more recent data and with a more representative data set e.g. using the workforce survey of Statistics Netherlands (CBS, Dutch Labour Force Survey (LFS), 2019) This will reduce the effect of self-selection and remove the effects of the economic recession.
Replication on a larger dataset
The WageIndicator provides not only data for the Netherlands but has information for 93 countries (WageIndicator, 2019). Pooling data obtained in other developed countries will produce a much larger dataset than used here, which will allows us to consider more specific kinds of people.
Subsequent research can provide insights into cross-national differences in happiness across occupations around the world.
Replicate on job-satisfaction
It is also possible to investigate job-satisfaction in the same way we have investigated life-satisfaction in this study. Job-satisfaction in the case of the data of the WageIndicator needs to be transform to an equal scale with life-satisfaction, to make it possible to investigate its cohesion, or lack of, with life-satisfaction. In the case of job-satisfaction we also need to investigate further personal scales next to personal characteristics, incombination with the scales needed for each occupation.
Assess difference between job-satisfaction and life-satisfaction
Above in section 2.1, we noted that it is easier to estimate the degree of job-satisfaction one will experience in a particular occupation than to predict how that occupation will affect one’s wider life-satisfaction. It is therefore worth getting a view on the differences that exist between jobsatisfaction and life-satisfaction in occupations. Are there substantial differences? If so, which occupations provide more job-satisfaction than life-satisfaction and which more life-satisfaction than job-satisfaction?
A specific group to be considered in this context, are the people who work as entrepreneurs. Of course, a distinction can be made between various types of entrepreneurship. For example, self-employed entrepreneurs and family entrepreneurs. This group of workers has not been examined, but would be a good topic for future research, that is to look at the life-satisfaction and job-satisfaction of different entrepreneurs.
Assess effect of job characteristics
Receiving direct feedback from peers, customers, patients, students or engineered devices might lead to a higher life satisfaction compared to a more indirect feedback when actions taken do not provide feedback and one would have to rely on one’s own judgement of the quality of the output delivered. Besides, the variation of this effect over the course of one’s career could also be assessed.
Assess effect of pay
Based on the results presented here it is possible to look at occupations in a differed way, we can now look both at income-based results of work and, importantly at the effect of types of occupation on life-satisfaction. This means that it becomes possible to see payment as a compensation for lower life satisfaction, a new way to look at our working lives’.
Acupuncture—A Question of Culture... and of skill to induce impression of being effective :-)
Acupuncture—A Question of Culture. Matthias Karst, Changwei Li. JAMA Netw Open. 2019;2(12):e1916929. Dec 6 2019, doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2019.16929
By the end of radiotherapy for head and neck cancers, more than 50% of patients experience radiation-induced xerostomia (RIX), a condition manifested by a long-lasting perception of dry mouth. Radiation-induced xerostomia is associated with a series of complications, such as difficulty sleeping and speaking, dysgeusia, and dysphagia, that significantly affect patients’ quality of life. A 2019 review of clinical trials1 compiled several strategies against RIX and reported that sialogogue medications, sparing parotid glands by intensity-modulated radiation therapy, and salivary gland transfer have been shown to be effective but at the cost of adverse events or persistent symptoms after treatment. A 2015 randomized clinical trial2 demonstrated that patients with RIX who received acupuncture-like transcutaneous electrical nerve stimulation had marginally better responses and significantly fewer adverse events compared with patients who received oral pilocarpine. This trial suggested that acupuncture may be a promising approach to prevent RIX.
In the study by Garcia et al,3 results of a 2-center, phase 3, randomized, sham-controlled clinical trial for the treatment and prevention of RIX with acupuncture are presented. Interestingly, one center was situated in the United States, and the other was in China. A classic 3-arm study design was used to compare true acupuncture (TA) and sham acupuncture (SA) with a standard care control (SCC). Compared with SCC, TA resulted in significantly lower xerostomia scores and lower incidence of clinically significant xerostomia 1 year after treatment, while the SA was not significantly associated with improved xerostomia scores. However, no significant difference between TA and SA xerostomia scores was observed, and both acupuncture groups combined showed significantly lower xerostomia scores compared with SCC. This phenomenon is often found in acupuncture trials and may be resolved by the increase of the overall sample sizes or, at least, by the disproportionate increase of the size of the TA group to detect differences between TA and SA.
One of the significant and exciting findings in the study by Garcia et al3 is the differences between the US and Chinese study sites. Among US patients, only the SA group showed a significantly better xerostomia score compared with the SCC group, while no differences were observed between the TA and SCC groups. In contrast, among Chinese patients, TA significantly improved the xerostomia scores compared with SA and SCC, while the SCC and SA had very similar efficacy. In other words, the Chinese study population clearly showed a hypothesis-confirming result, while the US study population seemed to have been more susceptible to SA. This finding coincides with the opposite tendency of the expectation scores during the course of the treatment: in the Chinese patients, confidence in the sham treatment decreased, while US patients built more confidence in the sham treatment through time. In China, most patients are well aware that without the de qi sensation, acupuncture treatment does not work. Acupuncture service has a very low price and is widely available in most community health care centers and hospitals in China.4 Therefore, Chinese acupuncturists have to have proficient needle manipulation skills to quickly elicit strong and long-lasting de qi sensations; otherwise, patients may switch to other acupuncturists. This may also explain the larger effect size of TA in the study site in China.
Usually in acupuncture trials, SA consists of using real acupuncture needles and inserting them superficially at non–acupuncture points (minimal acupuncture). In this study, SA consisted of a mixture of real and nonpenetrating placebo needles and a mixture of real and sham points. In addition, in the informed consent process, patients were told that 2 different acupuncture approaches would be used but that 1 approach might not target dry mouth symptoms. Although this aspect of the informed consent process was intended to maximize confidence in both acupuncture approaches, apparently in the Chinese setting characterized by a long cultural background of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), SA was experienced differently compared with TA. In this setting, Chinese clinicians are deeply familiar with TCM and acupuncture. Therefore, they may have felt more irritated using the SA procedure, a suggestion that they may have carried over to their patients. In contrast in Western societies, TCM and acupuncture are much less deeply rooted, which likely resulted in more uncertainties on specific acupuncture treatments. Given the nature of SA, it might be a reasonable way to use the same acupoints as in TA but manipulate needles in a countertreatment manner. For example, if the treatment protocol requires “tonifying energy” in an acupoint, the SA could “sedate energy” at the same acupoint. However, this is unethical for acupuncturists, as they believe that such treatment would worsen the condition being treated.
Findings in the study by Garcia et al3 support the idea that acupuncture exerts its effects not only or not mainly by needle site activity and specific neurophysiological mechanisms but also by expectations, conditioning, and suggestibility of clinicians and patients.5 The effects of these unspecific factors may be quite large. Together with many other 3-arm acupuncture trials in Western countries, results of the study by Garcia et al3 has disclosed what is referred to in the literature as the efficacy paradox,6 that is, even though TA and SA were similarly effective, the size of overall effect of any acupuncture was superior to standard therapy.
In a previous randomized, single-blind, placebo-controlled, multifactorial, mixed-methods clinical trial on chronic pain, the personality of individual practitioners (not the empathic behavior) and patient’s beliefs about treatment veracity independently had significant effects on outcomes.7 However, patients and acupuncturists are embedded in a larger cultural context in which acupuncture appears to support the therapeutic ritual of the patient in a unique way and plays a crucial role in the therapeutic outcome of the patient. In support of this, recent research has shown that these complex, ritual-induced biochemical and cellular changes in a patient’s brain are very similar to those induced by drugs.8
With these ideas in clinical acupuncture trials in mind, the cultural background should increasingly move to the center of attention. What was predicted in a small interview among patients with back pain came true: “In China, outcomes of active acupuncture will be still better than the outcomes of sham acupuncture.”9
Garcia et al.'s work, reference 3:
Effect of True and Sham Acupuncture on Radiation-Induced Xerostomia Among Patients With Head and Neck Cancer: A Randomized Clinical Trial. M. Kay Garcia et al. JAMA Netw Open. 2019;2(12):e1916910. Dec 6 2019, doi:10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2019.16910
Key Points
Question Can acupuncture prevent radiation-induced xerostomia, an adverse effect among patients with head and neck cancer undergoing radiation therapy?
Findings In this randomized clinical trial with 339 participants, 12 months after the end of radiation therapy, the xerostomia score of the true acupuncture group was significantly lower than that of the standard care control group.
Meaning These findings suggest that acupuncture should be considered for the prevention of radiation-induced xerostomia, but further studies are needed to confirm their clinical relevance and generalizability.
Abstract
Importance Radiation-induced xerostomia (RIX) is a common, often debilitating, adverse effect of radiation therapy among patients with head and neck cancer. Quality of life can be severely affected, and current treatments have limited benefit.
Objective To determine if acupuncture can prevent RIX in patients with head and neck cancer undergoing radiation therapy.
Design, Setting, and Participants This 2-center, phase 3, randomized clinical trial compared a standard care control (SCC) with true acupuncture (TA) and sham acupuncture (SA) among patients with oropharyngeal or nasopharyngeal carcinoma who were undergoing radiation therapy in comprehensive cancer centers in the United States and China. Patients were enrolled between December 16, 2011, and July 7, 2015. Final follow-up was August 15, 2016. Analyses were conducted February 1 through 28, 2019.
Intervention Either TA or SA using a validated acupuncture placebo device was performed 3 times per week during a 6- to 7-week course of radiation therapy.
Main Outcomes and Measures The primary end point was RIX, as determined by the Xerostomia Questionnaire in which a higher score indicates worse RIX, for combined institutions 1 year after radiation therapy ended. Secondary outcomes included incidence of clinically significant xerostomia (score >30), salivary flow, quality of life, salivary constituents, and role of baseline expectancy related to acupuncture on outcomes.
Results Of 399 patients randomized, 339 were included in the final analysis (mean [SD] age, 51.3 [11.7] years; age range, 21-79 years; 258 [77.6%] men), including 112 patients in the TA group, 115 patients in the SA group, and 112 patients in the SCC group. For the primary aim, the adjusted least square mean (SD) xerostomia score in the TA group (26.6 [17.7]) was significantly lower than in the SCC group (34.8 [18.7]) (P = .001; effect size = −0.44) and marginally lower but not statistically significant different from the SA group (31.3 [18.6]) (P = .06; effect size = −0.26). Incidence of clinically significant xerostomia 1 year after radiation therapy ended followed a similar pattern, with 38 patients in the TA group (34.6%), 54 patients in the SA group (47.8%), and 60 patients in the SCC group (55.1%) experiencing clinically significant xerostomia (P = .009). Post hoc comparisons revealed a significant difference between the TA and SCC groups at both institutions, but TA was significantly different from SA only at Fudan University Cancer Center, Shanghai, China (estimated difference [SE]: TA vs SCC, −9.9 [2.5]; P < .001; SA vs SCC, −1.7 [2.5]; P = .50; TA vs SA, −8.2 [2.5]; P = .001), and SA was significantly different from SCC only at the University of Texas MD Anderson Cancer Center, Houston, Texas (estimated difference [SE]: TA vs SCC, −8.1 [3.4]; P = .016; SA vs SCC, −10.5 [3.3]; P = .002; TA vs SA, 2.4 [3.2]; P = .45).
Conclusions and Relevance This randomized clinical trial found that TA resulted in significantly fewer and less severe RIX symptoms 1 year after treatment vs SCC. However, further studies are needed to confirm clinical relevance and generalizability of this finding and to evaluate inconsistencies in response to sham acupuncture between patients in the United States and China.
Saturday, December 7, 2019
High-achieving boys, to avoid bullying, use strategies to maintain an image of masculinity, for example becoming bullies themselves, disrupting the lessons, or devaluing girls’ achievements
Being bullied at school: the case of high-achieving boys. Sebastian Bergold et al. Social Psychology of Education, December 7 2019. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11218-019-09539-w
Abstract: Bullying victimization has been shown to negatively impact academic achievement. However, under certain circumstances, levels of academic achievement might also be a cause of bullying victimization. Previous research has shown that at least in Western countries, high school engagement is connoted by students as un-masculine. Therefore, high school engagement and achievement in school violate boys’, but not girls’, peer-group norm. This might put high-achieving boys at higher risk of bullying victimization as compared to high-achieving girls. The present study investigated boys’ and girls’ risk of bullying victimization, depending on different achievement levels. To this end, representative data of N = 3928 German fourth grade students were analyzed. Results showed that boys among the top-performers and also boys among the worst performers had a markedly higher risk of being bullied than girls showing the same achievement, whereas there were no such risk differences between genders in the average achievement groups. The relation between academic achievement and bullying victimization, features with regard to gender, and directions for future research are discussed.
Keywords: Bullying Peer victimization Academic achievement Gender differences Gender roles Elementary school
Abstract: Bullying victimization has been shown to negatively impact academic achievement. However, under certain circumstances, levels of academic achievement might also be a cause of bullying victimization. Previous research has shown that at least in Western countries, high school engagement is connoted by students as un-masculine. Therefore, high school engagement and achievement in school violate boys’, but not girls’, peer-group norm. This might put high-achieving boys at higher risk of bullying victimization as compared to high-achieving girls. The present study investigated boys’ and girls’ risk of bullying victimization, depending on different achievement levels. To this end, representative data of N = 3928 German fourth grade students were analyzed. Results showed that boys among the top-performers and also boys among the worst performers had a markedly higher risk of being bullied than girls showing the same achievement, whereas there were no such risk differences between genders in the average achievement groups. The relation between academic achievement and bullying victimization, features with regard to gender, and directions for future research are discussed.
Keywords: Bullying Peer victimization Academic achievement Gender differences Gender roles Elementary school
4 Discussion
Showing high engagement for school as a boy is against the peer-group norm
whereas doing so as a girl is not. Violating the peer-group norm, in turn, is
sanctioned by the classmates. As school engagement is an important determinant of
academic achievement, we investigated whether boys showing exceptionally high
academic achievement would be at higher risk of bullying victimization than girls
with exceptionally high academic achievement. We drew on representative data of
fourth graders from the combined TIMSS and PIRLS 2011 assessments conducted
in Germany.
4.1 General relation between academic achievement and bullying victimization
In accordance with previous research on the relation between academic achievement
and bullying victimization (e.g., Nakamoto and Schwartz 2010), we found that there
was a negative relation between both variables in general. The higher the level of
academic achievement, the lower was self-reported bullying victimization. Bullying
victimization was lowest in the profle with students exhibiting the highest achievement
level, which is in line with previous studies showing that high-performing or
gifted students in general are somewhat less often bullied than average students
(Estell et al. 2009; Peters and Bain 2011). This pattern is also in accordance with
studies investigating the social integration of gifted students (which, on average,
show markedly higher achievement than students with average ability; e.g., Rost
and Hanses 1997; Wirthwein et al. 2019). For example, gifted students in elementary
school age as well as in adolescence were found to be well-integrated into their
classes: They seemed to be even somewhat more popular among their classmates
and somewhat less rejected than students with average ability (e.g., Czeschlik and
Rost 1995; Rost 2009).
Whereas this is an encouraging result for high-performing and gifted students as
a whole, it is a worrying finding for low-performing students. It became apparent
that the frequency of victimization was alarming for students in the profles with
low achievement: A quarter of the Profle 1 students reported being bullied weekly,
and another 45% of these students reported being bullied once or twice a month.
Altogether, this makes well over two-thirds of these students being victimized to a
non-trivial extent. Of course, due to the cross-sectional nature of our data, we cannot draw any conclusions about the causal direction of this relation. Drawing on
previous research, it can be regarded as certain that bullying victimization impedes
academic achievement, probably through many diferent pathways (e.g., Buhs et al.
2006; Juvonen et al. 2000, 2011; Ladd et al. 1997, 2017; Schwartz et al. 2005).
However, there might additionally be an efect in the other direction. Very poor
achievement might also predispose students to being victimized by classmates. This
would accord with Olweus’ (1978) assumption that not only students with extremely
high, but also students with extremely low achievement might be at higher risk of
being bullied. This would also be in line with efects found in vocational contexts,
according to which not only high, but also low performers are victimized more
often than average performers (Jensen et al. 2014). Also the study by Ladd et al.
(2017) (see Sect. 1) might point in this direction, because most of the diferent profles of victimization trajectories in this study had difered in academic achievement
from the outset. If this causal direction should indeed prove true anti-bullying programs should pay greater attention to low performance as a risk factor for bullying
victimization.
4.2 Bullying victimization by academic achievement and gender
Although there was a clear negative relation between bullying victimization and academic achievement when considering the entire sample regardless of gender, taking
gender into consideration provided more nuanced results. Consistent with our main
hypothesis, we found that in the profle of students with extremely high achievement, boys had a markedly higher risk of being bullied than girls: Boys’ risk of
being bullied weekly was more than twice as large as girls’; and boys’ risk of being
bullied once or twice a month was increased by over 40% as compared with girls’.
Importantly, this was not the case in the profles in the middle of the achievement
spectrum, showing that this finding was specifc to the group of extreme high (and
low, see below) achievers. Although we cannot draw causal conclusions from this
finding either, it is at least consistent with the hypothesis that highly engaged and
therefore high-achieving boys (but not girls) violate the peer-group norm by showing high academic achievement and are therefore more prone to victimization than
girls engaging in, and excelling at, school. Importantly, as the students excelling
in one domain (e.g., reading) and the students excelling in the other domains (e.g.,
mathematics) were the same individuals, this finding did not difer across domains
stereotypically denoted as “male” or “female”.
Of course, one might argue that it might not be achievement (or engagement)
itself, which increases high-achieving boys’ risk of victimization. Instead, highachieving boys could show other, specifc behaviors or attitudes that increase their
risk. This would be consistent with the finding that gifted boys, but not so much
gifted girls, are seen by their teachers as being more maladjusted (Preckel et al.
2015), and maladjustment might easily make them victims of bullying (Eriksen
et al. 2014; Reijntjes et al. 2010, 2011; Schwartz et al. 1993). However, studies have
shown that those stereotypes do not match reality: Gifted students, whether they
may be boys or girls, do not show worse adjustment in any regard (e.g., Bergold
et al. 2015; Francis et al. 2016; Rost 2009). Therefore, this alternative explanation
appears unlikely.
Our finding has important practical implications: As a result of being bullied
because of their high engagement and achievement, boys might reduce their school
engagement and their academic achievement after having experienced victimization
in order to get themselves out of the fring line. Renold (2001) has also documented
further strategies of high-achieving boys to maintain masculinity, for example
becoming bullies themselves, disrupting the lessons, or devaluing girls’ achievements.
All these avoidance strategies come at a price too high for both the individual
student(s) and society in the long run. To avoid these undesirable consequences,
several interventions could be implemented. One problem surely is that victimized
students—and especially boys—often do not seek help from others, for example
from their teacher or from their parents (e.g., Hunter et al. 2004). The psychological
costs for help-seeking are often perceived as too high, comprising the fear of
(further) disapproval by the classmates (which is especially present in boys), feelings
of own weakness, and feelings of a lack of autonomy (not being able to solve
the problem on one’s own) (Boulton et al. 2017). One possibility to help victimized
students (especially boys) would be to encourage them to confde in their teachers or
their parents. This can be helpful, yet the efect heavily relies on the adult’s reaction
and on the specifc situation (Bauman et al. 2016). Especially for high-achieving
students, telling the teacher about victimization could sometimes be problematic
because some high-achieving students might already be perceived by their
classmates as the “teacher’s pet” (Babad 1995; Tal and Babad 1990; Trusz 2017). Telling
the teacher about bullying and disclosing the perpetrator(s) might then possibly
even worsen the situation. Therefore, intervention strategies could additionally start
at other points. One option would be to change the peer-group norm for boys. Interventions
could aim at a masculinization of academic achievement and engagement
in school. For example, the learning strategy of memorizing new material is more
often used by girls than by boys (e.g., Artelt et al. 2010; Heyder and Kessels 2016).
However, Heyder and Kessels (2016) showed that labeling memorizing with a
stereotypically masculine designation (“training consequently” vs. “memorizing diligently”)
increased boys’ choice of the memorizing strategy (whereas there was no
efect on girls’ choices). This could be a promising approach to make school
engagement seem more acceptable to boys and, thereby, to destigmatize boys who show
high levels of school engagement, which could in turn decrease their victimization.
Likewise, high academic achievement might be made more acceptable to boys by
labeling it as a result of competition, which is perceived as a stereotypically male
domain (e.g., Niederle and Vesterlund 2011). However, it would be important here
to defne competition in an intra-individual sense rather than in an inter-individual
sense, since competition between classmates would likely trigger average students’
upward comparisons, making negative reactions to the high-achieving students possibly
even more likely (Di Stasio et al. 2016; Festinger 1954). Rather, instruction
should stimulate intra-individual comparisons, inspiring boys to compete
with themselves to achieve better and better, with high(er) academic
achievement as a kind of trophy finally gained.
Another interesting finding, which we had however not predicted, was that not
only high-, but also low-achieving boys showed a greater risk of bullying
victimization than their female counterparts. Whereas the risk diference
was well-explainable for the high-achieving
students (violation of peer-group norm by showing high
engagement and achievement), it appears harder to explain it for the low-achieving
students, because displaying poor achievement (and engagement) is not inconsistent
with the male gender role. Maybe boys’ academic achievement sufers more from
victimization than girls’. Another explanation would be that especially
low-achieving boys rather than low-achieving girls and average- or high-performing boys react
more aggressively to victimization (aggression and cognitive ability are negatively
related; e.g., Duran-Bonavila et al. 2017), which might in turn evoke negative reactions
from the classmates, reinforce the perpetrator(s), and thus increase
victimization further (Salmivalli et al. 1996;
Sokol et al. 2015). However, as we cannot test
this hypothesis on the basis of our data, this could be a subject of future studies.
Data from reproductive suppression in humans support the argument that populations subjected to environments dangerous for children yield birth cohorts that exhibit great longevity
Reproductive suppression and longevity in human birth cohorts. Katherine B. Saxton Alison Gemmill Joan A. Casey Holly Elser Deborah Karasek Ralph Catalano. American Journal of Human Biology, December 6 2019. https://doi.org/10.1002/ajhb.23353
Abstract
Objectives: Reproductive suppression refers to, among other phenomena, the termination of pregnancies in populations exposed to signals of death among young conspecifics. Extending the logic of reproduction suppression to humans has implications for health including that populations exposed to it should exhibit relatively great longevity. No research, however, has tested this prediction.
Methods: We apply time‐series methods to vital statistics from Sweden for the years 1751 through 1800 to test if birth cohorts exposed in utero to reproductive suppression exhibited lifespan different from expected. We use the odds of death among Swedes age 1 to 9 years to gauge exposure. As the dependent variable, we use cohort life expectancy. Our methods ensure autocorrelation cannot spuriously induce associations nor reduce the efficiency of our estimates.
Results: Our findings imply that reproductive suppression increased the lifespan of 24 annual birth cohorts by at least 1.3 years over the 50‐year test period, and that 12 of those cohorts exhibited increases of at least 1.7 years above expected.
Conclusions: The best available data in which to search for evidence of reproductive suppression in humans support the argument that populations subjected to environments dangerous for children yield birth cohorts that exhibit unexpectedly great longevity.
Abstract
Objectives: Reproductive suppression refers to, among other phenomena, the termination of pregnancies in populations exposed to signals of death among young conspecifics. Extending the logic of reproduction suppression to humans has implications for health including that populations exposed to it should exhibit relatively great longevity. No research, however, has tested this prediction.
Methods: We apply time‐series methods to vital statistics from Sweden for the years 1751 through 1800 to test if birth cohorts exposed in utero to reproductive suppression exhibited lifespan different from expected. We use the odds of death among Swedes age 1 to 9 years to gauge exposure. As the dependent variable, we use cohort life expectancy. Our methods ensure autocorrelation cannot spuriously induce associations nor reduce the efficiency of our estimates.
Results: Our findings imply that reproductive suppression increased the lifespan of 24 annual birth cohorts by at least 1.3 years over the 50‐year test period, and that 12 of those cohorts exhibited increases of at least 1.7 years above expected.
Conclusions: The best available data in which to search for evidence of reproductive suppression in humans support the argument that populations subjected to environments dangerous for children yield birth cohorts that exhibit unexpectedly great longevity.
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