Dissatisfaction with breast size affects 70.7 % of women sampled: linked to greater Neuroticism, lower Conscientiousness, lower Western media exposure, greater local media exposure, lower financial security, & younger age

The Breast Size Satisfaction Survey (BSSS): Breast size dissatisfaction and its antecedents and outcomes in women from 40 nations. Viren Swami et al. Body Image, Volume 32, March 2020, Pages 199-217. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.bodyim.2020.01.006

Highlights
•    Majority of women sampled (70.7 %) were dissatisfied with their breast size.
•    A number of significant antecedents and outcomes of breast size dissatisfaction were identified.
•    Relationships with antecedents and outcomes were stable across 40 nations.

Abstract: The Breast Size Satisfaction Survey (BSSS) was established to assess women’s breast size dissatisfaction and breasted experiences from a cross-national perspective. A total of 18,541 women were recruited from 61 research sites across 40 nations and completed measures of current-ideal breast size discrepancy, as well as measures of theorised antecedents (personality, Western and local media exposure, and proxies of socioeconomic status) and outcomes (weight and appearance dissatisfaction, breast awareness, and psychological well-being). In the total dataset, 47.5 % of women wanted larger breasts than they currently had, 23.2 % wanted smaller breasts, and 29.3 % were satisfied with their current breast size. There were significant cross-national differences in mean ideal breast size and absolute breast size dissatisfaction, but effect sizes were small (η2 = .02–.03). The results of multilevel modelling showed that greater Neuroticism, lower Conscientiousness, lower Western media exposure, greater local media exposure, lower financial security, and younger age were associated with greater breast size dissatisfaction across nations. In addition, greater absolute breast size dissatisfaction was associated with greater weight and appearance dissatisfaction, poorer breast awareness, and poorer psychological well-being across nations. These results indicate that breast size dissatisfaction is a global public health concern linked to women’s psychological and physical well-being.

4. Discussion

Women’s breasts – particularly breast size – play an important role in shaping body and appearance anxieties (e.g., Lee, 1997; Millsted & Frith, 2003; Swami, Cavelti et al., 2015), yet comparatively little research has considered these issues from a cross-national perspective. Even less research has examined antecedents and outcomes of breast size dissatisfaction across nations, which is important because it is unclear to what extent women’s breasted experiences in WEIRD nations can be generalised to women in other cultural and national contexts. The BSSS was set up to address these gaps in the literature: through analyses of our data from 18,541 women in 40 nations, we are able to draw a number of important conclusions about cross-national differences and similarities in breast size ideals and dissatisfaction, as well as antecedents and outcomes of breast size dissatisfaction in diverse national contexts. Below, we provide a summary of the main findings of the BSSS before considering implications of our work.

4.1. Breast size ideals and dissatisfaction across nations

The BSSS dataset suggests that breast size ideals were relatively homogeneous across nations. Although there was a significant cross-national difference in ideal breast size, the effect size of the difference was small and suggestive of only minor cross-national variation. In fact, ideal breast size ratings were relatively homogeneous, with mean values falling between figures 6 through 8 in the BSRS. This is consistent with the suggestion that, despite historical differences across nations, breast size ideals have become largely homogenous in nations sampled in the BSSS. Just as there now appears to be a near-global idealisation of thinness in sites of high socioeconomic status (Swami, 2015; Swami, Frederick et al., 2010), the BSSS data indicate a similar homogenisation of breast size ideals in women. This finding is important because it suggests that the objectification of medium-to-large breasts is now a global phenomenon, including in parts of the world that may have historically de-emphasised breast aesthetics (Miller, 2003, 2006). It should also be noted that, partially consistent with our hypothesis, greater rurality (but not financial security) was associated with the idealisation of larger breasts, although effect sizes were weak and likely a reflection of sampling issues – a concern we return to below.

Importantly, mean ideal breast size ratings were higher than mean current breast size ratings in the vast majority that we sampled, although the magnitude of the difference varied. In the total dataset, just under a majority of women (i.e., 47.5 %) that were sampled indicated a preference for larger breasts than they currently had, while just under a quarter (i.e., 23.2 %) desired smaller breasts and under a third (i.e., 29.3 %) reported no discrepancy between their ideal and current breast sizes. This is consistent with existing research in WEIRD nations suggesting that a majority (Swami, Cavelti et al., 2015) or close to a majority of women (Lombardo et al., 2019; Swami & Furnham, 2018) wanted larger breasts than they currently had. Nevertheless, it should be noted that there was some cross-national variation in (absolute) breast size dissatisfaction ratings, with a small effect size. Of note, larger breast size dissatisfaction in some nations (particularly the United Kingdom, Egypt, China, Japan, and Brazil) appeared to be primarily driven by smaller current breast size; that is, while ideal breast size was largely homogeneous across nations, greater breast size dissatisfaction was found in nations where women reported smaller mean current breast sizes.

4.2. Antecedents of breast size dissatisfaction

4.2.1. Socioeconomic status

In the BSSS, we also examined a number of potential antecedents of breast size dissatisfaction, but our results were inconsistent with our hypotheses. That is, we hypothesised that greater financial security and urbanicity (i.e., proxies for higher socioeconomic status), respectively, would be associated with greater breast size dissatisfaction. However, our results suggested that urbanicity was not significantly associated with breast size dissatisfaction (except in women who desired larger breasts than they currently had), whereas lower rather than higher financial security was associated with greater breast size dissatisfaction. One possibility here is that, unlike body dissatisfaction (Swami, Frederick et al., 2010), increasing financial security affords women greater opportunities to negotiate breasted experiences by, for instance, de-emphasising the importance of breast size, de-coupling the breasts from an aesthetic gaze, or (re-)defining breast size ideals in a manner that is healthier in terms of one’s body image. Conversely, the pressure to view the breasts in purely aesthetic terms or to internalise a male gaze of breasts as providers of gratification for men may be heightened for women who are less financially secure, precisely because their financial insecurity affords fewer opportunities to negotiate breasted experiences. That is, among financially insecure women, there may be greater pressure to treat the breasts as assets that play performative roles, such as in terms of attracting potential partners or to attain material benefits (see Edmonds, 2010).

Of course, it should be noted that the weak relationships between proxies of socioeconomic status and breast size dissatisfaction likely reflect the fact that participants in the BSSS were all recruited from largely urbanised sites. That is, we did not include samples from explicitly rural research sites, which means there was limited within-nation variation in actual socioeconomic status to warrant a fuller test of our hypotheses. It may also reflect the fact that both urbanicity and perceived financial security are imprecise indices of socioeconomic status (Braveman et al., 2005). The most direct way of examining this issue in further research would be to sample participants from the same nation but from sites varying in socioeconomic status (e.g., Swami & Tovée, 2005b, 2005b). Although such studies have previously examined breast size ideals within a single nation (Swami & Tovée, 2013a), it is noteworthy that no previous study has extended this to include examinations of breast size dissatisfaction. Doing so would provide a fuller understanding of the relationships between socioeconomic status and breast size dissatisfaction and also help clarify some of our explanations above.

4.2.2. Personality

Consistent with our hypothesis, we found that higher Neuroticism was significantly associated with greater breast size dissatisfaction. This corroborates previous work indicating that Neuroticism is associated with more negative body image generally (for a review, see Allen & Walter, 2016) and may reflect the fact that individuals who score highly on this trait are more likely to experience negative emotional states and become dissatisfied more easily. In addition, individuals who score highly on Neuroticism may also be more sensitive to appearance evaluation and rejection, which heightens breast size dissatisfaction. There is also some evidence that women scoring higher on Neuroticism are more likely to misperceive their body size as larger than they actually are (Hartmann & Siegrist, 2015; Sutin & Terracciano, 2016), and it might be suggested that these individuals are also more likely to misperceive their current breast size.

Beyond Neuroticism, our results also indicated that lower Conscientiousness was significantly associated with greater breast size dissatisfaction. Although this result was unexpected, one recent review concluded that there was a negative relationship between Conscientiousness and negative body image, but only in studies classified as having low risk of bias (Allen & Walter, 2016; see also Allen, Vella, Swann, & Laborde, 2018). Examining associations between facets of Conscientiousness and breast size dissatisfaction may help scholars to better understand this relationship. For example, there is evidence that lower scores on some Conscientiousness facets – primarily low self-control (i.e., greater impulsivity, spontaneity, and carelessness) – are associated with greater body preoccupation (Ellickson-Larew, Naragon-Larew, & Watson, 2013). Facet-level analyses may also be useful in terms of other personality dimensions (Roberts & Good, 2010), as it may help to more accurately determine personality traits that shape breast size dissatisfaction.

4.2.3. Media exposure

In contrast to our hypothesis, we found that exposure to Western media was negatively, rather than positively, associated with greater breast size dissatisfaction. This finding stands in marked contrast to the extant literature indicating that exposure to Western media is associated with more negative body image (e.g., Swami, Frederick et al., 2010; Swami, Mada, & Tovée, 2012). Interpreting the present finding is complicated by the fact that we were working with the total BSSS dataset, which may obscure the meaning, importance, and impact of Western media in specific national and cultural contexts (Anderson-Fye, 2004; Becker, 2004; Swami, 2020). It should also be noted that these analyses are limited by the focus on media exposure per se, rather than perceived pressure from, and the internalisation of, breast size ideals that are communicated through Western media. In addition, there were likely ceiling effects in mean Western media exposure across nations (a reflection of the fact that all research sites were largely urbanised), as well as limited variation in breast size dissatisfaction scores that any predictor could account for.

In contrast to the effects of exposure to Western media, our results indicated that greater exposure to local media was significantly and positively associated with breast size dissatisfaction. Indeed, the strength of the relationship between local media exposure and breast size dissatisfaction was stronger than that of Western media exposure. Thus, it would seem that local media play an important role in engendering breast size dissatisfaction, possibly through the communication of breast size narratives that are “tailored” for local populations (Swami, 2020). A good example of such local transmission is Latin American telenovelas, which idealise larger breast sizes though in ways that are often specific to local socio-political and gendered narratives (Edmonds, 2010; Smith, 2017). More generally, it has been reported that local (Asian) media play a more important role than Western media in predicting appearance concerns in Chinese women (Jackson, Jiang, & Chen, 2016). The BSSS results fit this broader perspective and suggests that local media may play a crucial role in communicating narratives about ideal breast size, which in turn pressure women to attain culturally-sanctioned ideals.

4.2.4. Age

The results of our analyses also indicated that age was inversely related to breast size dissatisfaction. Previous studies have neglected to explore associations between breast size dissatisfaction and participant age, whereas the broader literature examining associations between negative body and age have returned equivocal results, with large-sample studies indicating a positive relationship (Frederick et al., 2008; Swami, Frederick et al., 2010; Swami, Tran, Stieger, Voracek, & The YouBeauty.com Team, 2015), a negative relationship (Frederick et al., 2016), or no significant association (Runfola et al., 2013). In terms of breast size dissatisfaction specifically, it is possible that breast objectification pressures decline with age (see Tiggemann & Lynch, 2001), such that older women experience less pressure to attain breast size ideals or develop embodiment practices that challenge constraining appearance ideals (Piran, 2016). Older age may also be associated with lifespan experiences, such as the transition to motherhood and breastfeeding, that help focus women’s attention on breast functionality (e.g., a maternal view of breasts that emphasises nurturing; Chang, Chao, & Kenney, 2006; Earle, 2003) and reduces preoccupation with the sexual uses of breasts (Bojorquez-Chapela, Unikel, Mendoza, & de Lachica, 2013; Harrison, Obeid, Haslett, McLean, & Clarkin, 2019; Lombardo et al., 2019), though it should also be noted that midlife breast changes may also impact sexual satisfaction (Thomas, Hamm, Borrero, Hess, & Thurston, 2019).

4.3. Outcomes of breast size dissatisfaction

4.3.1. Body image and psychological well-being

As hypothesised, greater breast size dissatisfaction was significantly and positively associated with both weight and appearance dissatisfaction. This is consistent with previous work showing that greater breast size dissatisfaction is significantly associated with higher scores on a range of indices of negative body image (Forbes & Frederick, 2008; Frederick et al., 2008; Junqueira et al., 2019; Swami & Furnham, 2018). The most straightforward interpretation of the present finding is that breast size dissatisfaction is an important facet of global negative body image (Swami, Tran et al., 2015). Importantly, the BSSS data also indicated that greater breast size dissatisfaction was significantly associated with lower self-esteem and subjective happiness. The former finding corroborates previous research showing that breast size dissatisfaction is associated with lower self-esteem (Koff & Benavage, 1998; Swami, Tran et al., 2015). Taken together, the present results suggest that breast size dissatisfaction may have substantive and detrimental links to both global body image and psychological well-being.

4.3.2. Breast awareness

Partially consistent with our hypothesis and previous research with British women (Swami & Furnham, 2018), analysis of the BSSS dataset indicated that greater breast size dissatisfaction was associated with poorer breast awareness, as indexed through lower breast self-examination frequency and lower confidence in detecting breast change, though not greater estimated delay in seeking professional help upon discovering breast change. These effects appeared to be primarily driven by participants who desired larger breasts than they currently had, whereas associations in participants who desired smaller breasts were not significant. These findings nevertheless remain important: breast cancer is the leading cause of cancer-related mortality in women worldwide (Torre, Siegel, Ward, & Jemal, 2016) and poor survival rates are reliably associated with poorer breast awareness (for a review, see Richards, Westcombe, Love, Littlejohns, & Ramirez, 1999). Conversely, more positive breast awareness is associated with improved efficacy in breast cancer detection (Harmer, 2011; Mant, 1991; World Health Organization, 2017) and early diagnosis (Gadgil et al., 2017), but our results suggest that breast size dissatisfaction may act as a barrier to optimal breast awareness. As discussed by Swami and Furnham (2018), breast size dissatisfaction may result in avoidance behaviours and cognitions (i.e., avoiding or distrusting one’s breasts) that reduce breast awareness, particularly if one’s breasts trigger feelings of anxiety, shame, and embarrassment. Importantly, our results indicated that the negative association between breast size dissatisfaction and self-examination frequency and confidence in detecting breast change, respectively, was stable across nations sampled in the BSSS, which requires urgent public health intervention.

4.4. Implications

The results of the BSSS suggest a relatively homogenised idealisation of medium-to-large breasts, in tandem with similar levels of breast size dissatisfaction across all sites that were sampled. Indeed, over two-thirds of women sampled in the BSSS reported some form of breast size dissatisfaction, with most of these women indicating that they wanted larger breasts than they currently had. Just as a thin ideal for women’s bodily attractiveness is now dominant across many nations (Swami, 2015; Swami, Frederick et al., 2010), our results point to the homogenisation of breast size ideals, which in turn may shape women’s breasted experiences. Perhaps most importantly, greater breast size dissatisfaction was robustly associated with poorer psychological well-being and lower breast awareness. Based on these results, one conclusion we might draw is that breast size dissatisfaction represents a global public health, with important consequences for the psychological and physical well-being of women in many places.

Most immediately, we urge greater scholarly attention to issues related to breast size dissatisfaction and, concomitantly, the development of targeted interventions aimed at reducing breast size dissatisfaction. Various techniques – such as cognitive restructuring, changing negative body language, and size-estimate exercises – have been shown to successfully promote healthier body image (for a meta-analysis, see Alleva, Sheeran, Webb, Martijn, & Miles, 2015), but it will be important to determine the extent to which such methods are efficacious at reducing breast size dissatisfaction specifically. Of course, it is possible that reducing breast size dissatisfaction will require more tailored interventions. Such a tailored approach might involve interventionist and therapeutic techniques designed to reduce self-objectification of one’s breasts and effective negotiations of sociocultural contexts that value idealised feminine embodiment (see Roberts & Waters, 2004; Tylka & Augustus-Horvath, 2011). In addition, interventions that promote greater appreciation of the functional value of women’s breasts (e.g., their role in nurturing and sustenance) may be vital to shift attention away from unrealistic and unattainable beauty ideals, though this should not come at the expense of women’s own needs (Piran, 2016; Schmied & Lupton, 2001). Such interventions may be particularly valuable if they also promote better breast awareness, which could empower women to take a more active role in breast cancer practices (Anastasi & Lusher, 2019). Importantly, whatever intervention methods are developed will need to be sensitive to national contexts and meet the informational, healthcare, and corporeal needs of women.

Depolarizing American voters: Democrats and Republicans are equally susceptible to false attitude feedback

Depolarizing American voters: Democrats and Republicans are equally susceptible to false attitude feedback. Thomas Strandberg et al. PLOS, February 5, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0226799

Abstract: American politics is becoming increasingly polarized, which biases decision-making and reduces open-minded debate. In two experiments, we demonstrate that despite this polarization, a simple manipulation can make people express and endorse less polarized views about competing political candidates. In Study 1, we approached 136 participants at the first 2016 presidential debate and on the streets of New York City. Participants completed a survey evaluating Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump on various personality traits; 72% gave responses favoring a single candidate. We then covertly manipulated their surveys so that the majority of their responses became moderate instead. Participants only noticed and corrected a few of these manipulations. When asked to explain their responses, 94% accepted the manipulated responses as their own and rationalized this neutral position accordingly, even though they reported more polarized views moments earlier. In Study 2, we replicated the experiment online with a more politically diverse sample of 498 participants. Both Clinton and Trump supporters showed nearly identical rates of acceptance and rationalization of their manipulated-to-neutral positions. These studies demonstrate how false feedback can powerfully shape the expression of political views. More generally, our findings reveal the potential for open-minded discussion even in a fundamentally divided political climate.

Discussion

There is an ongoing quest to create a less polarized and more open-minded political climate in the United States [2, 23–25]. We believe this to be an important effort for several reasons. Studies show that polarization can bias information processing and decision making in detrimental ways [5–6, 48]. As a result, it often leads to fear, anger, and animosity towards the opposition [1, 9–10]. Polarization is also associated with dogmatic intolerance, which in turn increases the propensity to behave antisocially and to deny free speech [49]. Furthermore, polarization erodes central parts of civic society, such as trust in the government and media [50]. However, for a depolarization movement to be effective, we need to advance our theories on political attitude change and better understand the mechanisms underlying depolarization.
To contribute to this effort, we tested the choice blindness paradigm [26] with American voters just before the 2016 American general election. Our aim was to investigate whether participants could become less polarized in their political views. Study 1 was conducted during the week of the first presidential debate; Study 2 was conducted online with a larger and more representative sample. Participants responded to a survey comparing Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump on various leadership traits. In both studies, the participants in our sample were clearly polarized when entering the study. Participants that favored either of the candidates had on average only 2 to 3 “open-minded” responses out of 12, defined by a response in the middle 30% of the visual analog scales. Participants then received false feedback about their responses: we nearly doubled the number of items that participants had in the open-minded category. Only a few of these manipulations were detected and corrected, which resulted in an overall score that made it appear as if the participants were more open-minded in their views towards the candidates. When asked to explain their score, the great majority of the participants accepted and justified their apparent open-mindedness, even though they had reported more polarized views moments earlier.

Supporters of Clinton and Trump are similarly susceptible to false feedback

In Experiment 2, both Clinton and Trump supporters behaved similarly on the experimental measures: they had similar correction rates to the choice blindness manipulations and justified their open-minded score to similar degrees. This is the first study we are aware of that demonstrates that liberals and conservatives are equally susceptible to false feedback about their own attitudes. Given previous findings that acceptance and justification of false survey feedback can lead to lasting changes in political attitudes [30], we see the lack of difference between Trump supporters and Clinton supporters as contributing to the ongoing research on the psychology of ideology. So far, this line of research indicates that liberals and conservatives are different in some aspects, such as personality [33], values [35–36], and thinking styles [38–39]. However, they are both similarly susceptible to cognitive biases [42–43]. Our findings show that choice blindness applies equally to conservatives and liberals. More generally, choice blindness offers a useful tool to test how liberals and conservatives reason—or rationalize—when presented with false information.

Choice blindness as a method to study depolarization

The current study was not intended as a practical method to influence voters but rather as a novel investigation of experimental depolarization in the political domain. We find that giving people false feedback can be an effective way to, at least momentarily, make them perceive themselves as more open towards competing candidates. This shows that even deeply held beliefs depend on situational factors and can be flexible under certain circumstances. From a theoretical perspective, we believe that participants interpret their own behavior—in this case their survey responses—and infer the reasons behind these responses [51–54]. Choice blindness could therefore be useful to study the depolarization of extreme views. For example, we could measure how susceptibility to choice blindness and confabulation are affected by the direction of the manipulation, such as going from polarized to moderate, or vice versa. This could help us understand whether being moderate or undecided is a distinct pole of its own. If so, we could explore whether these moderate views are more or less susceptible to false information. Here, the framing of moderate views may play an important role. In our studies, participants received positive false feedback about their survey responses. Instead of suggesting to people that they are open-minded, we might have found different results if participants had been told that they were “wishy-washy”, “flip-flopping”, “uncertain”, “centrist”, or even “moderate”. Future work could examine how participants behave when they are given false negative or more neutral feedback as well.
The effectiveness of choice blindness in the political domain distinguishes it from many other forms of persuasion, such as perspective-taking [55–56]. In a recent study, Catapano and colleagues [57] found that such methods are less effective for deep-seated attitudes, such as those relating to politics. In fact, imagining the perspectives of out-group members can even backfire and hinder subsequent attitude change. This could partially be explained by the fact that in those paradigms, participants are fully aware that the perspective they consider is not their own and that the arguments they express are hypothetical. In choice blindness experiments, however, participants often believe that the response they are asked to explain reflects their own true attitude.

Limitations and future studies

In Experiment 1, only 12% of all manipulations were corrected, but in Experiment 2, 41% of them were. The reasons behind this difference are difficult to isolate given the variation in design between the two studies (such as the number of manipulations, the instructions for revisiting their responses, and verbal versus written explanations). One potential explanation is the plausibility of the manipulation. In Experiment 1, the manipulations were performed using a magic trick, which is extremely improbable in the context of a typical political opinion survey. Likely none of the participants had ever filled out a pen-and-paper survey that changed seconds later. Thus, if the participants lack perfect access to their own attitudes (or if political attitudes are not stored for us to access; [58–59]), then the manipulated survey responses ought to function as a prime source of evidence about their own attitudes [51–52]. The (presumably non-conscious) inference may look something like: “I wrote these responses, so either they must be my true attitudes, or else I made several large errors”. So, if people see themselves as competent at answering a simple questionnaire, making a series of large errors would seem less plausible. In contrast, in Experiment 2, even though we attempted to replicate the general procedure of the original trick, participants were faced with a far less magical procedure. People are familiar with malfunctioning computer programs and websites, and thus our participants would have had little difficulty in concluding that there may have simply been a software error when saving their responses that needs correcting.
Another explanation might be the difference between verbally explaining versus silently revising the manipulations. While participants in Experiment 2 were also confronted with the manipulations, they did not have to engage in the mental task of having to recall or generate arguments for them. On the face of it, one might expect this additional reasoning process to generate more corrections, presumably by helping participants think more deeply about the issue and discovering that they do not agree with the manipulated position. However, if deliberation serves not as attitudinal fact-checking but as a way for participants to further commit to and defend their own ostensible attitudes, the reasoning process might lead to fewer corrections [53–54]. A third explanation could be simply that Experiment 2 was conducted closer to the election compared to Experiment 1, and that a larger proportion of the participants in Experiment 2 had firmly decided who they would vote for. Finally, it could also have been that the cover story in Experiment 2—telling participants to check their responses in case they had been affected by presentation order—may have primed participants be more attentive and to search for inconsistencies.
Prior to the current study, choice blindness had only been used to study what might be called “repolarization”—for example by shifting people from agreeing to disagreeing with a statement. Here, for the first time, we show that it is possible to use the same methodology to depolarize people, by making them adopt the idea that they are more “open-minded”.
In future studies, we could also explore more global attitude shifts. In the two experiments presented here, the manipulations did not influence the candidate competency/favorability ratings. Had this been found, it would have been a unique case of attitude generalization where manipulation on some character judgments would bleed over and affect another more general trait. Perhaps political competency is judged somewhat independently of the specific traits in our survey.

Obesity: Limited trend data covering recent decades support significant growth of BMI ≥40 population since the 1980s

Rising prevalence of BMI ≥40 kg/m2: A high‐demand epidemic needing better documentation. Kath Williamson, Amy Nimegeer, Michael Lean. Obesity Reviews, February 4 2020, https://doi.org/10.1111/obr.12986

Summary: Whilst previously rare, some surveys indicate substantial increases in the population with body mass index (BMI) ≥40 kg/m2 since the 1980s. Clinicians report emerging care challenges for this population, often with high resource demands. Accurate prevalence data, gathered using reliable methods, are needed to inform health care practice, planning, and research. We searched digitally for English language sources with measured prevalence data on adult BMI ≥40 collected since 2010. The search strategy included sources identified from recent work by NCD‐RisC (2017), grey sources, a literature search to find current sources, and digital snowball searching. Eighteen countries, across five continents, reported BMI ≥40 prevalence data in surveys since 2010: 12% of eligible national surveys examined. Prevalence of BMI ≥40 ranged from 1.3% (Spain) to 7.7% (USA) for all adults, 0.7% (Serbia) to 5.6% (USA) for men, and 1.8% (Poland) to 9.7% (USA) for women. Limited trend data covering recent decades support significant growth of BMI ≥40 population. Methodological limitations include small samples and data collection methods likely to exclude people with very high BMIs. BMI ≥40 data are not routinely reported in international surveys. Lack of data impairs surveillance of population trends, understanding of causation, and societal provision for individuals living with higher weights.

4.3 Strengths and limitations

This review has concentrated on robustly measured data to establish the international prevalence rates for BMI ≥40. Whilst the rationale for exclusion of self‐report data is sound, in that it commonly underestimates BMI, the exclusion also acts as a limitation, for example, by excluding EHIS data, which covers many European countries. The sample sizes possible with measured data are reduced by the need for resources to make measurements, and there is potential bias against including very heavy individuals whose mobility is impaired. In some cases, the upper limit of scales excluded the heaviest individuals. These limitations would tend to underestimate the true prevalence of the highest BMI categories, not overestimate.
Applying a lower threshold of BMI ≥35 would have broadened the available data, whilst potentially weakening the focus on the highest BMI category, where costs and clinical complexity is greatest. Some studies report the lower threshold of BMI ≥35 particularly those examining Asian populations where different BMI cut‐offs relating to overweight and obesity are often applied.98
Limiting the review to the English language prevented examination of some original data sources, which could only be located in their native language, for example, Spanish for Chile and Mexico. It was not possible to locate English versions of these, and resources did not allow for translation. The OECD reports these original sources in English in its database, but only at BMI thresholds of 25.0 to 29.9 and BMI ≥30, with prevalence for Chile and Mexico the highest in the world, above even those of the United States.99 Thus, they are likely to have significant BMI ≥40 prevalence. Additionally, whilst the search processes were broad, encompassing a variety of sources and used systematic methods, they were not exhaustive, as might be expected from a formal systematic literature review or meta‐analysis. We believe that they represent a reliable summary of the current evidence base on BMI ≥40, as it is available to decision makers. Some individual sources have not been included, notably those from non‐English publications, but they are unlikely to alter the very consistent conclusions.

An Excess of Positive Results in Psychology: The large gap betwwen standard reports and registered reports suggests that authors underreport negative results to an extent that threatens cumulative science

Scheel, Anne M., Mitchell Schijen, and Daniel Lakens. 2020. “An Excess of Positive Results: Comparing the Standard Psychology Literature with Registered Reports.” PsyArXiv. February 5. doi:10.31234/osf.io/p6e9c

Abstract: When studies with positive results that support the tested hypotheses have a higher probability of being published than studies with negative results, the literature will give a distorted view of the evidence for scientific claims. Psychological scientists have been concerned about the degree of distortion in their literature due to publication bias and inflated Type-1 error rates. Registered Reports were developed with the goal to minimise such biases: In this new publication format, peer review and the decision to publish take place before the study results are known. We compared the results in the full population of published Registered Reports in Psychology (N = 71 as of November 2018) with a random sample of hypothesis-testing studies from the standard literature (N = 152) by searching 633 journals for the phrase ‘test* the hypothes*’ (replicating a method by Fanelli, 2010). Analysing the first hypothesis reported in each paper, we found 96% positive results in standard reports, but only 44% positive results in Registered Reports. The difference remained nearly as large when direct replications were excluded from the analysis (96% vs 50% positive results). This large gap suggests that psychologists underreport negative results to an extent that threatens cumulative science. Although our study did not directly test the effectiveness of Registered Reports at reducing bias, these results show that the introduction of Registered Reports has led to a much larger proportion of negative results appearing in the published literature compared to standard reports.

Check also Researchers frequently make inappropriate requests to statisticians: Removing/altering data to support the hypothesis; interpreting the findings on the basis of expectation, not results; not reporting the presence of key missing data; & ignoring violations of assumptions

Researcher Requests for Inappropriate Analysis and Reporting: A U.S. Survey of Consulting Biostatisticians. Min Qi Wang, Alice F. Yan, Ralph V. Katz. Annals of Internal Medicine, https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2018/11/researchers-frequently-make.html

And How to crack pre-registration: There are methods for camouflaging a registered study as successful

How to crack pre-registration: Toward transparent and open science. Yuki Yamada. Front. Psychol. Sep 2018. https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2018/09/how-to-crack-pre-registration-there-are.html

And Questionable Research Practices prevalence in ecology: cherry picking statistically significant results 64%, p hacking 42%, and hypothesising after the results are known (HARKing) 51%. Such practices have been directly implicated in the low rates of reproducible results

Questionable research practices in ecology and evolution. Hannah Fraser et al. PLOS One, Jul 2018. https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2018/07/questionable-research-practices.html

And The scientific practices of experimental psychologists have improved dramatically:

Psychology's Renaissance. Leif D. Nelson, Joseph P. Simmons, and Uri Simonsohn. Annual Review of Psychology, forthcoming. https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2017/11/the-scientific-practices-of.html

From 2015... Increasingly rational choice theory is viewed as a normative theory of rationality: what economic agents ought to do in order to be rational

Hands, D. Wade, Normative Rational Choice Theory: Past, Present, and Future (March 2015). SSRN: http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1738671

Abstract: The economics profession has traditionally viewed rational choice theory as a positive scientific theory. Normative economics was associated exclusively with ethics and should be kept strictly separate from positive scientific economics. This paper argues that the profession is changing in this regard. Increasingly rational choice theory is viewed as a normative theory of rationality: what economic agents ought to do in order to be rational. It is argued that the change initiated from within a community of critics – experimental psychologists – but it has now become widely accepted within many areas of economics. The paper explains this change and examines some of the possible causes and consequences of this development.

Keywords: rational choice theory, expected utility theory, demand theory, methodology, normative economics
JEL Classification: B2, B4


… psychological theories of intuitive thinking cannot match the elegance
and precision of formal normative models of belief and choice, but this is
just another way of saying that rational models are psychologically
unrealistic. (Daniel Kahneman, 2003, p. 1449)

0. Introduction
A specter is haunting microeconomics: the specter of normativity. Rational choice is the core theory of modern microeconomics and as such economists have traditionally considered it – in both its risky (expected utility) and risk-free (ordinal utility) instantiations – to be a positive scientific theory. In fact, for the majority of mainstream economists since the 1940s, rational choice was not only a positive-scientific theory, it was also a very powerful and successful scientific theory (at least when compared to the available alternatives from nonmainstream economics and/or the other social sciences). Although it was common to admit that real agents might not possess stable well-ordered preferences and/or to be able to complete the necessary computations in the way the theory asserts, such methodological foibles were considered relatively minor and did not undermine the economics profession's general support of rational choice theory. The consensus was that rational choice was a powerful theory that provided empirically supported and practically reliable predictions of, and explanations for, the behavior of economic agents: both individuals and more aggregate agents such as households, firms, and nations.

Of course while the majority of economists supported rational choice theory, there were also critics who strongly denied that it "provided empirically supported and practically reliable predictions of, and explanations for, the behavior of economic agents." Although such critics came in many different varieties and political-economic positions – from those inspired by Institutionalism or Marxism, to various Austrian positions – for the most part they also viewed rational choice theory as a positive scientific theory; they just thought it was not a very good scientific theory and that better alternatives were available. They argued either that rational choice theory did not accurately characterize (even approximately) the decision-making processes of real economic agents, or that it failed to accurately predict the observable behavior of such agents, or both; but for both the critics as well as the defenders within economics, rational choice theory was an attempt to provide a positive scientific theory of economic behavior.

This paper will argue that the economics profession has changed in this regard. Although the transformation is far from complete, the tendency during the last few years has been for economists to increasingly view rational choice theory (hereafter RCT) as a normative rather than a positive theory about the behavior of economic agents. The relevant normativity involves rationality, not morality – what one ought to do in order to be rational, not what one ought to do in order to be moral, good, etc. – but it is a normative interpretation and thus constitutes a radical departure from the way that RCT has traditionally been perceived among economists. It will be argued that this change initiated from within a community of critics – contemporary behavioral economics and associated work in experimental psychology – but it has increasingly spread to the wider community of economists. Although this interpretation of RCT is relatively new among economists, it has a long history in experimental psychology, decision theory, and various branches of philosophy. The paper discusses the history of the normative interpretation, the recent change within economics, and examines some of the possible causes and consequences of this development.


5. Conclusion
The purpose of this paper has been to explain the normative turn in recent experimental and behavioral economics, to suggest that it is beginning to be accepted more widely among economists, and to raise some questions about the causes and consequences of this change. Section two discussed the various arguments that philosophers have offered for the normativity of RCT – a theory of what one ought to do in order to be rational – and used the Friedman-Savage work on EUT during the 1950s as an example of the differences between the way that economists and philosophers have viewed RCT. Section two also made the case that economists have traditionally equated the normative exclusively with the ethically normative. Section three examined the results of the experimental and behavioral economics literature of the last few decades with a particular emphasis on the influence of experimental psychology. The many empirical anomalies of RCT were discussed and it was argued that the recently emerging heuristics-and-biases tradition in economics – like many philosophers, but unlike most economists (at least traditionally) – tend to view RCT as a normative theory of rationality. The case was also made in section three that economists seem to be changing their view of RCT in the direction of philosophers and those in the psychological tradition; this may be the case for economists more generally, but it is clearly the case for experimental and behavioral economists, even those who are not necessarily sympathetic to ideas from experimental psychology. The tendency for economists to view RCT as a normative theory of rationality and to separate the normative from the ethical was called the normative turn. The last section examined four of the many possible questions/concerns raised by the normative turn. The introduction of these four topics was intended to raise questions and further discussion on these various issues, not to defend a particular position regarding either the causes or the consequences of the normative turn. There seems to be little doubt about the presence of the normative interpretation of RCT within experimentally-based areas of economics and if the change is becoming more widespread, as it was suggested here, the impact will be quite significant. It is too early to tell what all this might eventually mean, but this paper has been an attempt to make the reader aware of the change and to draw attention to some of the possible consequences.

The effect of U.S. aid on growth is positive, but military and food iad have no effect; the effect is smaller for countries that are well endowed with natural resources, less ethnically polarized, and more aligned with the U.S.

Help or hindrance? U.S. aid on growth. Myongjin Kim & Leilei Shen. Applied Economics Letters, Jan 27 2020. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504851.2020.1720902

ABSTRACT: We distinguish between U.S. aid and non-U.S. aid and study the effects on growth in recipient countries. Our analysis exploits time variation in aid due to changes in the supply of U.S. aid and cross-sectional variation in a country’s tendency to receive any U.S. aid. We find that U.S. aid has a positive effect on growth. In particular, U.S. economic aid has a positive effect on growth while U.S. military and food aid have no effect on growth. There is also no evidence of U.S. aid crowding out aid from other countries. The effect of U.S. aid on growth is smaller for countries that are well endowed with natural resources, less ethnically polarized, and more aligned with the U.S.

KEYWORDS: U.S. aid, growth
JEL CLASSIFICATION: F35, O10, O40

From the 2017 version:
4 Results

We begin our analysis by rst reporting the OLS estimates of equation (2), which are presented
in columns 1 to 4 in Table 2. Columns 1 to 4 report estimates of correlation between U.S. aid
and annual real GDP per capita growth. The correlation between total U.S. aid and growth is
close to zero and statistically insigni cant. U.S. economic aid is pro-cyclical and only marginally
signi cant at 10%. U.S. food aid is counter-cyclical and signi cant at 1%. Column (5) reports the
correlation between non-U.S. aid and growth and it is close to zero and insigni cant.
Columns 6 to 9 report 2SLS estimates of equation (2). According to the estimates using the full
set of controls reported in column 6, a one percentage point increase in U.S. aid increases GDP
per capita growth by 0.19 standard deviation, or 1.7 percentage points on average. This e ect is
statistically signi cant at ve percent level. Column 7-9 suggest that the e ect of U.S. economic
aid is also positive on growth, however, U.S. military aid and food aid have no signi cant impact
on growth. Column 10 suggests that the e ect of non-U.S. aid is negative but it is statistically
insigni cant.
To assess the plausibility of the positive e ect U.S. aid on growth, it is useful to compare the
magnitude to estimates from other studies. The recent study by Arndt and Jones (2015) suggests
that one percentage point increase in all aid received is expected to boost real GDP per capita
growth rate by 0.30 percentage points in the long run. The comparison shows that the e ect of
U.S. aid on growth in our context is bigger than the e ect of total aid received on growth. Thus,
it is important to distinguish sources of aid by donor countries and types of aid when studying the
e ffects of aid on growth.
We interpret our estimates as showing that U.S. aid increases growth in recipient countries, an
alternative explanation is that U.S. aid crowds out other types of aid. For example, donor countries
may respond to an increase in U.S. aid by reducing their own aid provisions. If these other forms
of aid reduce growth, then U.S. aid crowd-out can explain why U.S. aid increases growth. It is
also possible that an increase in U.S. aid could actually cause total aid received by a country to
decline. We examine the e ect of U.S. aid on non-U.S. aid received by a country and report the
estimates in Table 3. The estimates show that U.S. aid does not crowd out aid from other donor
countries. U.S. military and food aid have no e ect on the provision of aid from non-U.S. donor
countries, and U.S. economic aid has a positive e ffect.
We also consider the influences of other factors that may contribute to growth. We nd the
e ects of U.S. aid on growth are not heterogeneous across the following factors: income, political
institutions, ethnic diversity, alignment with the U.S., and natural resource dependence.

Skin colour, prostitution, Mexico: A one standard deviation increase in darkness reduces an escort’s price by approximately 10 pct

The higher price of whiter skin: an analysis of escort services. Raymundo M. Campos-Vazquez. Applied Economics Letters, Feb 4 2020. https://doi.org/10.1080/13504851.2020.1725229

Abstract: How much are people willing to pay extra for sexual services with a white woman instead of one with darker skin? Skin colour assessed from photographs of women on escort websites in Mexico was compared with price information to answer this question. Women with darker skin were found to be underrepresented, consistent with self-selection into other occupations with an expectation of higher wages. Lighter-skinned escorts also charge more than darker women. Controlling for estimated age and physical measures like weight, hair colour, and body type, a one standard deviation increase in darkness reduces an escort’s price by approximately 10 percent.

Keywords: Wage differentials, skin colour, prostitution, Mexico
JEL Classification: C80, J16, J30, J70, O54

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Conclusions

The demand for sexual services affects the relative returns for specific traits and the self-selection patterns into that labor market. Using a sample of women from internet escort services, this paper finds two key results. First, white and dark brown skin colors are underrepresented in this market as compared with the national population and the escort sample is whiter than the population of Mexican women. Second, there is a penalty for darker skin color in the hourly price women charge: approximately 10 percent for an increase in skin color of one standard deviation. Weight, skin color, and bust size have the largest effect on the price charged. In order to measure attractiveness, future studies focusing on the sexual services market need to account for at least these three variables.

American elections & perceptions of electoral integrity: Citizens’ electoral mistrust is due to conspiratorial beliefs & populist values, irrespective of partisan identification, partisan strength, or affiliation with the losing side

The paranoid style of American elections: explaining perceptions of electoral integrity in an age of populism. Pippa Norris, Holly Ann Garnett & Max Grömping. Journal of Elections, Public Opinion and Parties, Volume 30, 2020 - Issue 1, Pages 105-125. Jan 2020. https://doi.org/10.1080/17457289.2019.1593181

ABSTRACT: Polls report that, contrary to the evidence, one quarter of Americans believe that millions of illegal votes were cast in the 2016 elections. What explains these types of beliefs? This article tests the predictors of public evaluations of electoral integrity in the 2016 American Presidential election, as measured by judgements about the fairness of the voting processes in the 2016 American National Election Study. We demonstrate that conspiratorial beliefs and populist values contribute towards citizens’ electoral mistrust. The results suggest that the paranoid style of American politics is alive and well in contemporary US elections.

Political polarization in climate change views increases with higher education & income; higher education particularly strengthens the conservative white male (CWM) effect; individualism mediates the ideological divide

Does socioeconomic status moderate the political divide on climate change? The roles of education, income, and individualism. Matthew T. Ballew et al. Global Environmental Change, Volume 60, January 2020, 102024. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.gloenvcha.2019.102024

Highlights
•    Political polarization in climate change views increases with higher education and income.
•    Higher education particularly strengthens the conservative white male (CWM) effect.
•    Individualism mediates the ideological divide in climate change views.
•    Individualism mediates the CWM effect only for those with higher education.

Abstract: Previous research documents that U.S. conservatives, and conservative white males in particular, tend to dismiss the threat of climate change more than others in the U.S. public. Other research indicates that higher education and income can each exacerbate the dismissive tendencies of the political Right. Bridging these lines of research, the present study examines the extent to which higher education and/or income moderate the ideological divide and the “conservative white male effect” on several climate change opinions, and whether these effects are mediated by an individualistic worldview (e.g., valuing individual liberty and limited government). Using nationally representative survey data of U.S. adults from 2008 to 2017 (N = 20,024), we find that across all beliefs, risk perceptions, and policy preferences examined, the ideological divide strengthens with both higher education and higher income. However, educational attainment plays a stronger role than income in polarizing the views of conservative white males. Further analyses support the hypothesis that differences in individualism partially explain the increased political polarization among more educated and higher-income adults, as well as greater dismissiveness among conservative white males relative to other demographic groups. These results highlight key moderators of opinion polarization, as well as ideological differences among conservatives, that are often overlooked in public discourse about climate change. Implications for climate change education and communication across demographic groups are considered.

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4. Discussion
In a large, nationally representative dataset of the U.S. public (2008–2017; N = =20,024), we find that the ideological divide in climate change opinion in the U.S. is exacerbated by higher educational attainment and higher income, thus supporting previous research (e.g., Bohr, 2014; Drummond and Fischhoff, 2017; Ehret et al., 2017; Hamilton, 2011). Further, expanding on research on the “conservative white male effect” (e.g., McCright and Dunlap, 2011b), we find that education plays a stronger and more consistent role than income in bolstering the views of conservative white males—a subgroup of the U.S. population that has been found to be particularly dismissive of climate change and resistant to mitigation policy. Although education seems to positively predict global warming views (e.g., belief that it is happening, is human-caused, etc.) among the U.S. public generally, moderation tests reveal that educational attainment may, conversely, strengthen conservative white males’ dismissive tendencies and opposition to climate policy. Higher education is consistently associated with increased polarization between conservative white males and other Americans across several global warming beliefs, risk perceptions, and policy preferences (e.g., support for CO2 regulation). Although higher income is associated with increased polarization between conservative white males and other Americans on some measures (e.g., policy support), the patterns for income were not as consistent as those for education.

Among conservatives and the conservative white male subgroup, our analyses suggest that those with more education (some college or more) are significantly less likely than those with less education (high school or less) to view global warming as human-caused, to worry about global warming, to perceive it as a risk (in some cases), and to support some climate change mitigation policies. For example, compared to those who are less educated, more educated conservative white males are less worried about global warming (23%% vs. 30% of those with less education), less likely to perceive it as a personal risk (12% vs. 21%), and less supportive of regulating greenhouse gas (CO2) emissions (46% vs. 55%). Further, among conservative white males, compared to differences in views by income, differences by educational attainment are found across a wider range of opinion metrics: education is negatively associated with expressed beliefs and risk perceptions (and to a stronger degree, as indicated by comparisons of effect sizes) for conservative white males than for conservatives in general. While income was significantly negatively associated with some pro-climate views for conservatives in general, these relationships were generally non-significant for conservative white males. Together, these results suggest that, compared to income, educational attainment may play a stronger and more robust role in widening the ideological divide, particularly between conservative white males and other adults in the U.S.

In addition, as hypothesized, education and income significantly moderate ideological differences in individualism. For conservatives and conservative white males, there is a positive relationship between both education and income and endorsing an individualistic worldview; yet, the relationship is negative for other U.S. adults. Further, the results of the moderated mediation analyses suggest that differences in individualism explain, in part, how higher educational attainment and income exacerbate the ideological divide in climate change opinion. For conservative white males in particular, however, education again seems to be a stronger predictor of individualism than income, which, in turn, partially explains how higher educational attainment enhances opinion polarization between conservative white males and other demographic groups. In fact, conditional indirect effect analyses show that individualism significantly mediates differences between conservative white males and other Americans only for those with average or higher education. These results suggest that educational attainment may bolster tendencies of conservative white males to value individualism, and thus strengthen ideologically based opinions about climate change.

Together, the results of this study align with several theoretical accounts, including identity protective cognition (Kahan et al., 2007), ideological consistency and elite cues (e.g., Ehret et al., 2017), and models of the self across socioeconomic status contexts (e.g., Stephens et al., 2014). Because exposure to climate science typically increases alongside higher education (Bohr, 2014), and higher education also leads to increased exposure to the norms of one's political ingroup (Ehret et al., 2016), conservatives and conservative white males, in particular, may be more aware of and motivated to defend ideological positions associated with their worldviews (e.g., individualism) when confronted with information about climate change and climate-related policies (e.g., regulating CO2 emissions). Our findings also support current theoretical accounts of the conservative white male effect which posit a process of reinforcing one's worldview to protect against opposing knowledge and information (McCright and Dunlap, 2011b,2013). Our data suggest a strengthened individualistic worldview may be one way in which higher educational attainment may influence conservative white males’ climate change opinions in ways that diverge from other U.S. adults. Alternatively, lower socioeconomic status (particularly education) may limit ideological polarization by attenuating individualistic resistance to government intervention.

Importantly, individualism, as conceptualized and operationalized here, as well as in previous research (e.g., Peters and Slovic, 1996; Smith and Leiserowitz, 2014), has clear connections to libertarian values reflecting a focus on individual liberty and limited government involvement (Iyer et al., 2012). As discussed by Iyer and colleagues, the visibility of, and interest in, libertarian values increased in 2008 with the presidential campaign of Texas Congressman Ron Paul and the rise of the Tea Party in 2009. Resistance to government intervention also appears to be common oppositional rhetoric among the political Right (at least among politicians and interest groups) when it comes to U.S. policymaking (e.g., Campbell and Kay, 2014). These values are distinct from other elements of conservatism, such as traditionalism (respect for traditions, institutions, and authority; see Iyer et al., 2012). Because we find that increased individualism partially explains the increased ideological divide associated with higher education and income, it is plausible that conservatives who are higher in socioeconomic status—particularly educated conservative white males—also more strongly identify with libertarianism or hold stronger libertarian values compared to other members of the U.S. public. Future work might further examine ideological differences among conservatives to better understand both pro- and anti-climate positions within the political Right, and the extent to which social and political libertarianism might explain these differences.

5. Limitations and future directions
Future research might further investigate additional processes and disentangle theoretical accounts that explain how social class influences political polarization in climate change opinion. Other mechanisms may well play a role in driving opinion polarization. For instance, Ehret and colleagues (2017) found that as liberals and conservatives become more educated, they also show more interest in government and public affairs, and media and political messengers (i.e., elite cues) communicating these interests, which partially explains divergence in environmental support. Similarly, elite cues may also play a role in reinforcing ideologies and worldviews (for instance, libertarian views that the government should not get involved in people's lives). Another possibility is that greater interdependence observed among lower-SES individuals (e.g., Eom et al., 2018; Stephens et al., 2014) may dampen effects of ideological polarization by reducing libertarian-driven resistance to climate policies. Future research might examine this possibility. Because mitigating climate change is paramount to the future of humanity and other species (IPCC, 2018), it is important to understand the processes by which certain groups become dismissive of climate change and resistant to climate policy, and what factors might limit dismissiveness and opposition.

In addition, income and education are only two of many potential socioeconomic indicators and, thus, further research is needed to understand whether the current results generalize to other dimensions of social class, such as occupational status or subjective assessments (i.e., perceived ranking relative to others; Kraus et al., 2009). Future research might extend our understanding of the relationship between social class and the ideological divide in climate change opinion, for instance, by incorporating subjective aspects of social class (e.g., perceived class rank; Kraus et al., 2009) and the extent to which they influence polarization relative to objective indicators.

Importantly, this study aggregates cross-sectional surveys and, thus, provides only correlational evidence of the role of socioeconomic status and individualism in shaping climate change opinion polarization. Although experimental manipulation of such variables may be difficult or impractical, longitudinal research may provide some additional insights. For example, future studies might track individuals across the political spectrum over the course of their education, or changes in socioeconomic status (e.g., changes in income, employment status), to better understand what factors predict change in climate attitudes, beliefs, and policy preferences over time. Moreover, future work in this area might also help uncover ways to counteract the effect that higher educational attainment may have among the political Right.

6. Implications
The current study has implications for how to foster pro-climate opinion and action, and for identifying subgroups in the U.S. who may be more receptive to climate change education and communication campaigns than others. For example, communicating the scientific consensus is an effective gateway to fostering pro-climate views among the political Right (van der Linden et al., 2015) and people can learn about the scientific consensus through discussion with friends and family (Goldberg et al., 2019). Education initiatives might highlight the scientific consensus on human-caused climate change to combat dismissive tendencies. Also, because misinformation (e.g., the notion that there is scientific uncertainty about climate change) is disseminated through certain media outlets, an “inoculation” strategy may further help to counteract dismissiveness (van der Linden et al., 2017; see also Cook et al., 2017). That is, when individuals are preemptively told that some groups intentionally work to promote doubt on the scientific facts of climate change, it helps build resistance against misinformation. Education initiatives might consider inoculation techniques to help neutralize the negative effects of misinformation on public understanding of climate change.

Further, public discourse focusing on the politicization of climate change and the general ideological divide (e.g., the Right vs. Left) may be exaggerating partisan differences and overlooking distinct sources of opposition (see Van Boven et al., 2018). As we show here, there is clear heterogeneity among conservatives. Conservative white males higher in socioeconomic status (particularly in education) seem to be among the primary oppositional demographic groups, and our findings suggest that this may be due, in part, to heightened individualism among this group. Conversely, conservatives lower in socioeconomic status (including conservative white males) express less opposition and individualism, suggesting they represent an overlooked demographic group that could help bridge political divides on climate change, particularly when it comes to mitigation policy (Pearson et al., 2017). Communications with the public might be sensitive to this distinction. For instance, conservatives higher in socioeconomic status might be more receptive to individual- or libertarian-framed messages (e.g., emphasizing free-market solutions that reinforce notions of individual autonomy; Campbell and Kay, 2014), whereas those lower in socioeconomic status might be more open to government intervention and community-driven action plans.

Although public understanding of climate change has increased over the last five years in the U.S. (Leiserowitz et al., 2018) and there is evidence that understanding is on the rise among the political Right (Leiserowitz et al., 2019), political polarization on the issue remains stark. Tailoring climate change education and communication for different audiences within the U.S. public may help narrow the partisan divide on climate change and foster greater consensus in pro-climate views.

Funding: This project was supported by the 11th Hour Project, the Energy Foundation, the Grantham Foundation, and the MacArthur Foundation.

Why did the countries which first benefitted from access to the New World - Castile and Portugal - decline relative to their followers, especially England and the Netherlands?

Comparative European Institutions and the Little Divergence, 1385-1800. António Henriques, Nuno Palma. EHES Working Paper, No. 171, November 2019. http://ehes.org/EHES_171.pdf

Abstract: Why did the countries which first benefitted from access to the New World - Castile and Portugal - decline relative to their followers, especially England and the Netherlands? The dominant narrative is that worse initial institutions at the time of the opening of Atlantic trade explain Iberian divergence. In this paper, we build a new dataset which allows for a comparison of institutional quality over time. We consider the frequency and nature of parliamentary meetings, the frequency and intensity of extraordinary taxation and coin debasement, and real interest spreads for public debt. We find no evidence that the political institutions of Iberia were worse until at least the English Civil War.

JEL Codes: N13, N23, O10, P14, P16
Keywords: Atlantic Traders, New Institutional Economics, The Little Divergence



4. Conclusion

Iberia's economic divergence was not a consequence of inferior initial institutions. At
least prior to the civil wars of the mid seventeenth century, England did not have more
constraints on executive power or an environment more protective of property rights than
Spain or Portugal. Unlike what is argued by authors such as Tilly (1994), Acemoglu et al.
(2005) and Hough and Grier (2015), Iberian political institutions were not structurally
worse than England. At some point England did have better institutions, but that point
occured considerably later than 1500. Accordingly, explanations for the little divergence
among Atlantic traders which rely on variation in the quality of \initial institutions" (in
particular, constraints on executive power by 1500 or earlier), such as that by Acemoglu
et al. (2005), cannot be correct.42
While 1500 is too early for any significant di erence in institutional quality to be
noticeable, 1688 is too late. With regards to England, the measures that we present in this
paper confirm the views of scholars who argue that the emphasis of North and Weingast
(1989) and others on the Glorious Revolution is overdone and instead emphasize earlier
progress (e.g. O'Brien, 1988, 2002, 2012; Jha, 2015; Murrell, 2017). By 1688 England
was already driving ahead both in terms of checks on executive power and state capacity.
At the same time, Iberian institutions experienced a considerable deterioration over the
late seventeenth century: the Cortes eventually stopped meeting, the monarchs resorted
to monetary manipulations and public debt was issued less frequently and became less
liquid.
Our findings also discredit the modern incarnation of the "Black Legend" (La Leyenda
Negra), the notion that the divergent economic trajectories within Europe and the two
Americas can be explained by an institutional path-dependence going back as far as
the sixteenth century or earlier. As argued, when Atlantic trade developed, Portugal
and Spain could not be dismissed as "highly absolutist" or extractive empires, let alone
regarded as endowed with inferior institutions. The right of non-European municipalities
to take part in the Cortes is a reminder of how these empires were built under an executive
power that had to negotiate instead of simply imposing.
In this paper we have shown that the little divergence in European institutions and
incomes does not lie with the deus ex machina of initial institutions going back to the
medieval period. An implication is that they must instead be found in events taking place
during the early modern period. Another implication is that the lackluster economic performance
of the Iberian empires and their successor independent states in Latin America
was not the result of an institutional path-dependence defined circa 1500.

Fifty years ago, Zajonc, Heingartner, and Herman (1969) conducted a famous experiment on social enhancement and inhibition of performance in cockroaches; no evidence of a social-facilitation effect

Replicating Roaches: A Preregistered Direct Replication of Zajonc, Heingartner, and Herman’s (1969) Social-Facilitation Study. Emma Halfmann, Janne Bredehöft, Jan Alexander Häusser. Psychological Science, February 4, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797620902101

Abstract: Fifty years ago, Zajonc, Heingartner, and Herman (1969) conducted a famous experiment on social enhancement and inhibition of performance in cockroaches. A moderating effect of task difficulty on the effect of the presence of an audience, as revealed by impaired performance in complex tasks and enhanced performance in simple tasks, was presented as the major conclusion of this research. However, the researchers did not test this interaction statistically. We conducted a preregistered direct replication using a 2 (audience: present vs. absent) × 2 (task difficulty: runway vs. maze) between-subjects design. Results revealed main effects for task difficulty, with faster running times in the runway than the maze, and for audience, with slower running times when the audience was present than when it was absent. There was no interaction between the presence of an audience and task difficulty. Although we replicated the social-inhibition effect, there was no evidence for a social-facilitation effect.

Keywords: social facilitation, social inhibition, Zajonc, replication, cockroach, open data, open materials, preregistered

Christians’ self‐ratings are consistently lower than what they perceive to be the moral values of other Christians, due to comparison to Christian exemplars (religious leaders), not from a sense of humility

Diverging Perceptions of Personal Moral Values and the Values of One's Religious Group. Travis Daryl Clark  Richard C. Grove  Heather K. Terrell  Casey Swanson. Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion, February 3 2020. https://doi.org/10.1111/jssr.12644

Abstract: A popular notion in many religions is that less pious individuals are also less moral. We sought to test the self‐described moral values of religious and nonreligious individuals under the framework of Moral Foundations Theory. In Study 1, we found that atheists differ from Christians in some moral domains. We also found evidence that Christians’ self‐ratings are consistently lower than what they perceive to be the moral values of other Christians. This finding contradicts previous findings that suggest that Christians may inflate their positive characteristics relative to their peers in other domains. In Studies 2 and 3, we tested several alternative explanations for this finding. Preliminary evidence suggests that Christians rate their moral values lower in comparison to Christian exemplars such as religious leaders, and not from a sense of humility. In contrast, atheists may not have exemplars for such a comparison.

Why liberal white women pay a lot of money to learn over dinner how they're racist: A growing number of women are paying to confront their privilege – and racism – at dinners that cost $2,500

Why liberal white women pay a lot of money to learn over dinner how they're racist.  Poppy Noor. The Guardian, Feb 3 2020. https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/feb/03/race-to-dinner-party-racism-women

A growing number of women are paying to confront their privilege – and racism – at dinners that cost $2,500

Freshly made pasta is drying on the wooden bannisters lining the hall of a beautiful home in Denver, Colorado. Fox-hunting photos decorate the walls in a room full of books. A fire is burning. And downstairs, a group of liberal white women have gathered around a long wooden table to admit how racist they are.

“Recently, I have been driving around, seeing a black person, and having an assumption that they are up to no good,” says Alison Gubser. “Immediately after I am like, that’s no good! This is a human, just doing their thing. Why do I think that?”

This is Race to Dinner. A white woman volunteers to host a dinner in her home for seven other white women – often strangers, perhaps acquaintances. (Each dinner costs $2,500, which can be covered by a generous host or divided among guests.) A frank discussion is led by co-founders Regina Jackson, who is black, and Saira Rao, who identifies as Indian American. They started Race to Dinner to challenge liberal white women to accept their racism, however subconscious. “If you did this in a conference room, they’d leave,” Rao says. “But wealthy white women have been taught never to leave the dinner table.”

Rao and Jackson believe white, liberal women are the most receptive audience because they are open to changing their behavior. They don’t bother with the 53% of white women who voted for Trump. White men, they feel, are similarly a lost cause. “White men are never going to change anything. If they were, they would have done it by now,” Jackson says.

White women, on the other hand, are uniquely placed to challenge racism because of their proximity to power and wealth, Jackson says. “If they don’t hold these positions themselves, the white men in power are often their family, friends and partners.”

It seems unlikely anyone would voluntarily go to a dinner party in which they’d be asked, one by one, “What was a racist thing you did recently?” by two women of color, before appetizers are served. But Jackson and Rao have hardly been able to take a break since they started these dinners in the spring of 2019. So far, 15 dinners have been held in big cities across the US.

The women who sign up for these dinners are not who most would see as racist. They are well-read and well-meaning. They are mostly Democrats. Some have adopted black children, many have partners who are people of color, some have been doing work towards inclusivity and diversity for decades. But they acknowledge they also have unchecked biases. They are there because they “know [they] are part of the problem, and want to be part of the solution,” as host Jess Campbell-Swanson says before dinner starts.

Campbell-Swanson comes across as an overly keen college student applying for a prestigious internship. She can go on for days about her work as a political consultant, but when it comes to talking about racism, she chokes.

“I want to hire people of color. Not because I want to be … a white savior. I have explored my need for validation … I’m working through that … Yeah. Um … I’m struggling,” she stutters, before finally giving up.

Across from Campbell-Swanson, Morgan Richards admits she recently did nothing when someone patronizingly commended her for adopting her two black children, as though she had saved them. “What I went through to be a mother, I didn’t care if they were black,” she says, opening a window for Rao to challenge her: “So, you admit it is stooping low to adopt a black child?” And Richards accepts that the undertone of her statement is racist.

As more confessions like this are revealed, Rao and Jackson seem to press those they think can take it, while empathizing with those who can’t. “Well done for recognizing that,” Jackson says, to soothe one woman. “We are all part of the problem. We have to get comfortable with that to become part of the solution.”

Carbonara is heaped on to plates, and a sense of self-righteousness seems to wash over the eight white women. They’ve shown up, admitted their wrongdoing and are willing to change. Don’t they deserve a little pat on the back?

Erika Righter raises her tattooed forearm to her face, in despair of all of the racism she’s witnessed as a social worker, then laments how a white friend always ends phone calls with “Love you long time”.

“And what is your racism, Erika?” Rao interrupts, refusing to let her off the hook. The mood becomes tense. Another woman adds: “I don’t know you, Erika. But you strike me as being really in your head. Everything I’m hearing is from the neck up.”

Righter, a single mother, retreats before defending herself: “I haven’t read all the books. I’m new to this.”

A lot of people hate Saira Rao.

“The American flag makes me sick,” read a recent tweet of hers. Another: “White folks – before telling me that your Indian husband or wife or friend or colleague doesn’t agree with anything I say about racism or thinks I’m crazy, please Google ‘token,’ ‘internalized oppression’ and ‘gaslighting’.”

She wasn’t always this confrontational, she says. Her “awakening” began recently.

After Rao’s mother died unexpectedly a few years ago, she moved to Denver from New York to be around her best friends – a group of mostly white women from college. She wasn’t new to being the only person of color, but she was surprised to notice how they would distance themselves whenever she’d talk frankly about race.

Then, fuelled by anger at Trump’s election after she’d campaigned tirelessly for Hillary Clinton, Rao ran for Congress in 2018 against a Democratic incumbent on an anti-racist manifesto, and criticized the “pink-pussy-hat-wearing” women of the Democratic party. It was during this campaign Rao met Jackson, who works in real estate. Jackson recalls her initial impressions of Rao as “honest, and willing to call a thing a thing”.

It’s that brashness that led to Race for Dinner. Rao is done with affability. “I’d spent years trying to get through to white women with coffees and teas – massaging them, dealing with their tears, and I got nowhere. I thought, if nothing is going to work, let’s try to shake them awake.”

The genesis of Race to Dinner wasn’t straightforward. Months after a dinner discussion about race with a white friend of Jackson’s went south, Rao bumped into that friend, who had started reading Reni Eddo-Lodge’s Why I’m No Longer Talking to White People About Race.

“She told me that the dinner had changed everything for her, and asked if we could do another,” says Rao. The friend invited other guests, Rao reluctantly agreed, then hated that second dinner, too. But then white women began flooding her inbox asking her to do it again.

In the beginning, Rao’s dinner-party tone was much more argumentative. But it left her looking less like a human and more like some kind of real-life trolling bot. Women at the dinners were always crying. Some of those dinners got out of hand – attendees have tried to place their hands on Jackson and Rao, and racial slurs have been thrown around.

“My blood pressure went up. I’d work myself up into a frenzy at every dinner. I realized [that] if I walk away feeling I am going to have a stroke, we should try a different tactic,” Rao says.

Susan Brown attended one of those earlier dinners. She says she felt like Rao and Jackson were angry at her the whole time, without ever learning why. She found Rao needlessly provocative and mean-spirited, unaware of her own class privilege, and divisive. She felt the dinner set her up to fail.

Another previous attendee, who did not want to be named, says she found Rao to be dogmatic, and presented a distorted depiction of history, leaving out facts that do not fit her narrative. At one point, she referred to Rao as “the Trump of the alt-left”.

But even for those who complained, something has changed. Brown read White Fragility – a book released last year that posits every person partakes to some degree in racism and needs to confront that – and realized many of the things she was commending herself for needed to be re-evaluated. The book is now assigned reading for women before they can attend a dinner.

The woman who compared Rao to Trump went to a city council meeting to speak up about the death of a young black man in her area. She attributes that specifically to Jackson’s call for solidarity.

In recent months, Jackson and Rao changed the model. They didn’t want to just have women rely on them to shout at them for being racist and then go home.

“We began to expect more of them,” says Rao. That meant asking the women to speak up. To own their racism. It meant getting them to do the required reading, as well as follow-up discussions, where they decide how to do better anti-racist work.

In the conversation that followed the dinner, Campbell-Swanson, who couldn’t get her racist thoughts out, committed to writing a journal, jotting down daily decisions or thoughts that could be considered racist, and think about how to approach them differently.
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Lisa Bond, who was hired because Rao and Jackson thought there would be instances when participants would feel more comfortable expressing their feelings to another white woman, says this will help her see how unmonitored thoughts can lead to systemic racism. “If our ability to spot these things increases, our ability to challenge it will increase,” says Bond.

Bond says about 65% of participants engage meaningfully in post-dinner conversations with her. But weren’t these women already doing the work? Don’t they want to speak to those women who have no intention of challenging themselves?

“There are so many people worse than us,” says Bond. “I have gotten to the point where I no longer try to pay attention to what someone else is doing. I don’t talk about the 53% [who voted for Trump] because I’m not one of them.”

What is in her power, she says, is forcing herself to talk to her sister, who did vote for Trump, even when it gets difficult. She emphasizes this work has to continue, no matter who is president.

“If Trump were impeached tomorrow and we got a new president, a lot of white liberal people will go back to living their lives just as before, and that’s what we have to prevent,” she says. “All that’s happened is we can see racism now, while before we could cover it up. That’s why we need these dinners. So when we get a new person in and racism is not as obvious, we won’t just crawl back to being comfortable.”

Japan now plans to build as many as 22 new coal-burning power plants at 17 different sites in the next five years

Japan Races to Build New Coal-Burning Power Plants, Despite the Climate Risks. Hiroko Tabuchi. The New York Times, Feb. 3, 2020. https://www.nytimes.com/2020/02/03/climate/japan-coal-fukushima.html

Just beyond the windows of Satsuki Kanno’s apartment overlooking Tokyo Bay, a behemoth from a bygone era will soon rise: a coal-burning power plant, part of a buildup of coal power that is unheard-of for an advanced economy.

It is one unintended consequence of the Fukushima nuclear disaster almost a decade ago, which forced Japan to all but close its nuclear power program. Japan now plans to build as many as 22 new coal-burning power plants — one of the dirtiest sources of electricity — at 17 different sites in the next five years, just at a time when the world needs to slash carbon dioxide emissions to fight global warming.

“Why coal, why now?” said Ms. Kanno, a homemaker in Yokosuka, the site for two of the coal-burning units that will be built just several hundred feet from her home. “It’s the worst possible thing they could build.”

Together the 22 power plants would emit almost as much carbon dioxide annually as all the passenger cars sold each year in the United States. The construction stands in contrast with Japan’s effort to portray this summer’s Olympic Games in Tokyo as one of the greenest ever.

The Yokosuka project has prompted unusual pushback in Japan, where environmental groups more typically focus their objections on nuclear power. But some local residents are suing the government over its approval of the new coal-burning plant in what supporters hope will jump-start opposition to coal in Japan.

The Japanese government, the plaintiffs say, rubber-stamped the project without a proper environmental assessment. The complaint is noteworthy because it argues that the plant will not only degrade local air quality, but will also endanger communities by contributing to climate change.

Carbon dioxide released into the atmosphere is the major driver of global warming, because it traps the sun’s heat. Coal burning is one of the biggest single sources of carbon dioxide emissions.

Japan is already experiencing severe effects from climate change. Scientists have said that a heat wave in 2018 that killed more than 1,000 people could not have happened without climate change.  Because of heat concerns, the International Olympic Committee was compelled to move the Tokyo Olympics’ marathon events to a cooler city almost 700 miles north.

Japan has used the Olympics to underscore its transition to a more climate-resilient economy, showing off innovations like roads that reflect heat. Organizers have said electricity for the Games will come from renewable sources.

Coal investments threaten to undermine that message.

Under the Paris accord, Japan committed to rein in its greenhouse gas emissions by 26 percent by 2030 compared to 2013 levels, a target that has been criticized for being “highly insufficient” by climate groups.

“Japan touts a low-emissions Olympics, but in the very same year, it will start operating five new coal-fired power plants that will emit many times more carbon dioxide than anything the Olympics can offset,” said Kimiko Hirata, international director at the Kiko Network, a group that advocates climate action.

Japan’s policy sets it apart from other developed economies. Britain, the birthplace of the industrial revolution, is set to phase out coal power by 2025, and France has said it will shut down its coal power plants even earlier, by 2022. In the United States, utilities are rapidly retiring coal power and no new plants are actively under development.

But Japan relies on coal for more than a third of its power generation needs. And while older coal plants will start retiring, eventually reducing overall coal dependency, the country still expects to meet more than a quarter of its electricity needs from coal in 2030.

“Japan is an anomaly among developed economies,” said Yukari Takamura, an expert in climate policy at the Institute for Future Initiatives at the University of Tokyo. “The era of coal is ending, but for Japan, it’s proving very difficult to give up an energy source that it has relied on for so long.”

Japan’s appetite for coal doesn’t solely come down to Fukushima. Coal consumption has been rising for decades, as the energy-poor country, which is reliant on imports for the bulk of its energy needs, raced to wean itself from foreign oil following the oil shocks of the 1970s.

Fukushima, though, presented another type of energy crisis, and more reason to keep investing in coal. And even as the economics of coal have started to crumble — research has shown that as soon as 2025 it could become more cost-effective for Japanese operators to invest in renewable energy, such as wind or solar, than to run coal plants — the government has stood by the belief that the country’s utilities must keep investing in fossil fuels to maintain a diversified mix of energy sources.

Together with natural gas and oil, fossil fuels account for about four-fifths of Japan’s electricity needs, while renewable sources of energy, led by hydropower, make up about 16 percent. Reliance on nuclear energy, which once provided up to a third of Japan’s power generation, plummeted to 3 percent in 2017.

The Japanese government’s policy of financing coal power in developing nations, alongside China and South Korea, has also come under scrutiny. The country is second only to China in the financing of coal plants overseas.

At the United Nations climate talks late last year in Madrid, attended by a sizable Japanese contingent, activists in yellow “Pikachu” outfits unfurled “No Coal” signs and chanted “Sayonara coal!”

A target of the activists’ wrath has been Japan’s new environment minister, Shinjiro Koizumi, a charismatic son of a former prime minister who is seen as a possible future candidate for prime minister himself. But Mr. Koizumi has fallen short of his predecessor, Yoshiaki Harada, who had declared that the Environment Ministry would not approve the construction of any more new large coal-fired power plants, but lasted less than a year as minister.

Mr. Koizumi has shied away from such explicit promises in favor of more general assurances that Japan will eventually roll back coal use. “While we can’t declare an exit from coal straight away,” Mr. Koizumi said at a briefing in Tokyo last month, the nation “had made it clear that it will move steadily toward making renewables its main source of energy.”

The Yokosuka project has special significance for Mr. Koizumi, who hails from the port city, an industrial hub and the site of an American naval base. The coal units are planned at the site of an oil-powered power station, operated by Tokyo Electric Power, that shuttered in 2009, to the relief of local residents.

But that shutdown proved to be short-lived.

Just two years later, the Fukushima disaster struck, when an earthquake and tsunami badly damaged a seaside nuclear facility also owned by Tokyo Electric. The resulting meltdown sent the utility racing to start up two of the eight Yokosuka oil-powered units as an emergency measure. They were finally shut down only in 2017.

What Tokyo Electric proposed next — the two new coal-powered units — has left many in the community bewildered. To make matters worse, Tokyo Electric declared that the units did not need a full environmental review, because they were being built on the same site as the oil-burning facilities.

The central government agreed. The residents’ lawsuit challenges that decision.

Some new coal projects have faced hiccups. Last year, a consortium of energy companies canceled plans for two coal-burning plants, saying they were no longer economical. Meanwhile, Japan has said it will invest in carbon capture and storage technology to clean up emissions from coal generation, but that technology is not yet commercially available.

Coal’s fate in Japan may reside with the country’s Ministry of Trade, which pulls considerable weight in Tokyo’s halls of power. In a response to questions about the coal-plant construction, the ministry said it had issued guidance to the nation’s operators to wind down their least-efficient coal plants and to aim for carbon-emissions reductions overall. But the decision on whether to go ahead with plans rested with the operators, it said.

“The most responsible policy,” the ministry said, “is to forge a concrete path that allows for both energy security, and a battle against climate change.”

Local residents say the ministry’s position falls short. Tetsuya Komatsubara, 77, has operated a pair of small fishing boats out of Yokosuka for six decades, diving for giant clams, once abundant in waters off Tokyo.

Scientists have registered a rise in the temperature of waters off Tokyo of more than 1 degree Celsius over the past decade, which is wreaking havoc with fish stocks there.

Mr. Komatsubara can feel the rise in water temperatures on his skin, he said, and was worried the new plants would be another blow to a fishing business already on the decline. “They say temperatures are rising. We’ve known that for a long time,” Mr. Komatsubara said. “It’s time to do something about that.”

Written erotica 2000-2016: As in video, found no meaningful increase in either the amount of content with violence, family (incest), or BDSM themes or popularity of any of the three transgressive themes within the erotic narratives

Change in the Popularity of Transgressive Content in Written Erotica between 2000 and 2016. Martin Seehuus, Ariel B. Handy & Amelia M. Stanton. The Journal of Sex Research, Feb 3 2020. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2020.1716206

ABSTRACT: There is a widely held belief that the amount and intensity of transgressive content in pornography have been rising. Reliably assessing for such an increase, however, is complicated by methodological factors including hand-coding content using conflicting a priori definitions of what constitutes transgressive content. In response to those limitations, the present study used the results of a published empirical content analysis of ~250,000 erotic stories written over 16 years to determine if the amount or popularity of transgressive content (stories high in the themes of violence, family (incest), or BDSM) has changed in that timeframe. Results from the present study indicated no meaningful increase in either the amount of content with those themes or popularity (as measured by story views per day) of any of the three transgressive themes within the erotic narratives over the 16-year period of analysis. These results, in addition to recent research presenting similar findings within pornographic video, do not support popular perceptions that erotic material is becoming increasingly transgressive. Rather, such content within internet-based erotic material, and particularly erotic narratives, appears to be relatively consistent.

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A primary concern some hold about violent or transgressive
content within erotic material is that consuming such
content may increase the perpetration of sexual violence (for
a comprehensive discussion, see Shor & Seida, 2019). This is
a valid concern. If this were the case, our data and the work of
others would suggest that the rate of sexual violence should be
relatively stable over time. However, a review of US governmental
statistics on violence against women (both reported
and unreported to law enforcement) shows a decline from
a peak rate of 5.0 acts of sexual violence per 1,000 women in
1994 to 1.8 acts of sexual violence per 1,000 women in 2010
(Planty, Langton, Krebs, Berzofsky, & Smiley-McDonald,
2013). This decline, combined with data indicating an increase
in overall viewership of pornography over approximately the
same time period (Gorman et al., 2010; Klaassen & Peter,
2015; Price et al., 2016; Wright et al., 2016), suggests that,
on the macro level, pornography viewership may have no
effect (or even a protective effect, as per Fisher et al., 2013)
on violence. Alternatively, any effect of violent pornography
on sexual violence may have been countered by other societal
forces.