Disgust: While avoiding contaminated food is a key adaptive problem, we also had to avoid having sex with individuals that could harm our survival, our children’s survival, or generally reproductive success

Sexual Disgust: An Evolutionary Perspective. Courtney L. Crosby and David M. Buss.  Emotion Researcher, 2020. emotionresearcher.com/sexual-disgust-an-evolutionary-perspective/

Introduction: One of the first emotions explored by Charles Darwin, disgust, presumably evolved to solve adaptive problems related to our health. Examples of these problems include avoiding ingesting toxic or pathogenic substances, such as rotting meat or moldy mushrooms. However, a key scientific question is whether disgust evolved to solve adaptive challenges in addition to food consumption. Darwin described disgust as a revulsion to offensive objects, primarily those of taste, but extended to anything that causes extreme dislike or distaste—through vision, smell, or touch (Darwin, 1872). While avoiding contaminated food is a key adaptive problem that our human ancestors faced, they also had to avoid having sex with individuals that could harm their survival, their children’s survival, or more generally their reproductive success. Sexual disgust may have evolved as a somewhat specialized emotion—based on the underlying architecture of disgust—to solve these problems (Tybur, Lieberman, & Griskevicius, 2009).

Big Five traits are associated with the frequency with which we visit different places on a daily basis; & spending time in a particular place predicts momentary personality states & their short-term trait expression over time

Matz, S. C., & Harari, G. M. (2020). Personality–place transactions: Mapping the relationships between Big Five personality traits, states, and daily places. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, May 2020. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000297

Abstract: People actively select their environments, and the environments they select can alter their psychological characteristics in the moment and over time. Such dynamic person–environment transactions are likely to play out in the context of daily life via the places people spend time in (e.g., home, work, or public places like cafes and restaurants). This article investigates personality–place transactions at 3 conceptual levels: stable personality traits, momentary personality states, and short-term personality trait expressions. Three 2-week experience sampling studies (2 exploratory and 1 confirmatory with a total N = 2,350 and more than 63,000 momentary assessments) were used to provide the first large-scale evidence showing that people’s stable Big Five traits are associated with the frequency with which they visit different places on a daily basis. For example, extraverted people reported spending less time at home and more time at cafés, bars, and friends’ houses. The findings also show that spending time in a particular place predicts people’s momentary personality states and their short-term trait expression over time. For example, people reported feeling more extraverted in the moment when spending time at bars/parties, cafés/restaurants, or friends’ houses, compared with when at home. People who showed preferences for spending more time in these places also showed higher levels of short-term trait extraversion over the course of 2 weeks. The findings make theoretical contributions to environmental psychology, personality dynamics, as well as the person–environment transactions literature, and highlight practical implications for a world in which the places people visit can be easily captured via GPS sensors.

Advisors want their advice to be used – but not too much: An interpersonal perspective on advice taking

Advisors want their advice to be used – but not too much: An interpersonal perspective on advice taking. Fabian Ache, Christina Rader, Mandy Hütter. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Volume 89, July 2020, 103979. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2020.103979

Highlights
• Advisors do not always want advisees to fully adopt their advice
• Advisees weight advice more strongly than advisors want for difficult items
• Both weighting more and less than advisors want causes negative evaluations
• Negative evaluations decrease willingness to give advice again

Abstract: Much advice taking research investigates whether advice weighting accords to normative principles for maximizing decision accuracy. The present research complements this normative perspective with an interpersonal one, arguing that judges should also pay attention to how much their advisors want them to weight advice. In four experiments, we found that advisors do not always want their advice to be adopted fully. Instead, they often give advice about which they are uncertain and therefore want their advice to be averaged with judges' initial opinions or not used at all. Furthermore, advisors' desired advice weighting is often congruent with the judges' actual weighting, but moderators that affect advisor or judge confidence can cause desired and actual weighting to diverge (Experiments 1 and 2). When tasks were difficult, judges put more weight on the advice than advisors desired, because increasing the difficulty of the task led advisors to want their advice weighted less, whereas judges placed more weight on the advice. The reverse was true for easy tasks (Experiment 2). Importantly, both weighting more and less than advisors desired caused advisors to evaluate judges more negatively, which resulted in reduced willingness to give advice again in the future (Experiments 3 and 4), indicating that advisors want their advice used, but not too much.

Keywords: AdviceInterpersonal relationsJudgmentOpinion revisionWisdom of crowds

All investigations of police practice that were preceded by "viral" incidents of deadly force have led to a large and statistically significant increase in homicides and total crime

Policing the Police: The Impact of "Pattern-or-Practice" Investigations on Crime. Tanaya Devi, Roland G. Fryer Jr. NBER Working Paper No. 27324, June 2020. https://www.nber.org/papers/w27324

This paper provides the first empirical examination of the impact of federal and state "Pattern-or-Practice" investigations on crime and policing. For investigations that were not preceded by "viral" incidents of deadly force, investigations, on average, led to a statistically significant reduction in homicides and total crime. In stark contrast, all investigations that were preceded by "viral" incidents of deadly force have led to a large and statistically significant increase in homicides and total crime. We estimate that these investigations caused almost 900 excess homicides and almost 34,000 excess felonies. The leading hypothesis for why these investigations increase homicides and total crime is an abrupt change in the quantity of policing activity. In Chicago, the number of police-civilian interactions decreased by almost 90% in the month after the investigation was announced. In Riverside CA, interactions decreased 54%. In St. Louis, self-initiated police activities declined by 46%. Other theories we test such as changes in community trust or the aggressiveness of consent decrees associated with investigations -- all contradict the data in important ways.

People use facial information to infer others’ leadership potential across numerous domains; but what forms the basis of these judgements and how much do they matter?

How static facial cues relate to real-world leaders’ success: a review and meta-analysis. Miranda Giacomin & Nicholas O. Rule. European Review of Social Psychology, Volume 31, 2020 - Issue 1, Pages 120-148, Jun 7 2020. https://doi.org/10.1080/10463283.2020.1771935

ABSTRACT: People use facial information to infer others’ leadership potential across numerous domains; but what forms the basis of these judgements and how much do they matter? Here, we quantitatively reviewed the literature on perceptions of leaders from facial cues to better understand the association between physical appearance and leader outcomes. We used standard random-effects meta-analytic techniques to determine how appearance cues relate to leader perceptions and associated constructs. Appearance cues suggesting the presence of qualities often desired in leaders correlated with leader selection and success (M Z-r =.26, 95% CI [.21,.31]). Larger effect sizes emerged for popularity outcomes (i.e., those based on perceptions) than for performance outcomes (i.e., those based on external measures). These data help to explain how people envision leaders and their characteristics, providing potential insights to why they select and follow particular individuals over others.

KEYWORDS: Leader, person perception, facial appearance, CEO, attractiveness