63-year-old man, after gunshot to the head, became “content,” light-hearted, and prone to joking and punning; prior to his brain injury, he suffered from frequent depression and suicidal ideation

Positive Emotions from Brain Injury: The Emergence of Mirth and Happiness. Mario F. Mendez and Leila Parand. Case Reports in Psychiatry, Volume 2020, Article ID 5702578, Jan 29 2020. https://doi.org/10.1155/2020/5702578

Rolf Degen's take: https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/1308081276965064706

Abstract: Brain injury can result in an increase in positive emotions. We describe a 63-year-old man who presented with a prominent personality change after a gunshot wound to the head. He became “content,” light-hearted, and prone to joking and punning. Prior to his brain injury, he suffered from frequent depression and suicidal ideation, which subsequently resolved. Examination showed a large right calvarial defect and right facial weakness, along with memory impairment and variable executive functions. Further testing was notable for excellent performance on joke comprehension, good facial emotional recognition, adequate Theory of Mind, and elevated happiness. Neuroimaging revealed loss of much of the right frontal and right anterior lobes and left orbitofrontal injury. This patient, and the literature, suggests that frontal predominant injury can facilitate the emergence of mirth along with a sense of increased happiness possibly from disinhibited activation of the subcortical reward/pleasure centers of the ventral striatal limbic area.

3. Discussion

This patient had a heightened sense of mirth and happiness after his brain injury. The loss of much of his right frontal and right anterior temporal lobes, and damage to left orbitofrontal cortex, altered his personality towards not just silly joking consistent with Witzelsucht but an actual increase in his appreciation of humor. He also maintained a very positive outlook and increased apparent happiness or contentment, per his report. On examination, he was able to detect jokes and identify them as funny, and he consistently described himself as very happy despite his brain injury and situation.

Beyond his joking or “Witzelsucht” from the German words for joke (Witz) and addiction (Sucht) [4, 5], this patient had increased mirth. Mundane experiences and others’ jokes caused him amusement. Investigators have characterized the neurobiology of humor as involving several modular aspect [1, 13]. The first is the cognitive aspect, or getting the joke, namely, the perception of incongruity or of incompatibility between an anticipated perspective and the punchline. Second, with resolution of the incongruity, there is the actual humor appreciation or mirth involving the dopaminergic pleasure/reward centers of the ventral striatum and nucleus accumbens (VS/NA) [14–16]. The frontal lobes participate in incongruity detection and resolution, with the left frontal more responsive to simple humor [16–18], and the right more engaged with complex humor [14, 19–21]. In addition, other regions may contribute to incongruity detection and resolution, such as the temporoparietal junction, the precuneus, the posterior cingulate cortex, and the parahippocampal gyrus [22]. Once incongruity is resolved, the new explanation triggers emotionally pleasurable responses experienced as mirth [9, 14, 15, 23, 24]. Since this patient could “get a joke,” his changes appeared at the level of the ease of elicitation of mirth.

The regions associated with the experience of mirth include the VS/NA as well as connections from the anterior cingulate gyrus (ACG), posterior insula, and frontal (left>right) lobe [25–28]. Deep brain stimulation of the VS/NA induces mirth and enhances effective connectivity from the ACG to the VS [25, 26]. As well as promoting surprise, electrical stimulation of the rostral pregenual ACG can also elicit laughter with mirth [27, 29, 30]. The experience of mirth can occur with the rerepresentation and integration of interoceptive information in the insula [28]. Finally, the frontal lobes trigger humor appreciation through connections with these structures [14–16, 20, 29, 31, 32].

The formation and regulation of happiness seem to be associated with significant reductions in activity in the right prefrontal cortex, as well as increased activity in the VS/NA [33]. The left frontal lobe may produce a default state biased towards happy or positive interpretations [34]. For example, cortical sites that produce mirth when stimulated tend to be located in the dominant hemisphere close to language areas [35, 36]. Furthermore, disruption of left frontostriatal emotion regulation systems can impair the ability to suppress positive emotions such as happiness [37]. Together, these findings, as well as the patient’s increased appreciation of humor, suggest that his brain lesion facilitated or released his VS/NA area from any negative input or inhibition. This view must be interpreted cautiously from the analysis of a single patient. There may be other explanations for the patient’s positive emotions, such as the simple relief from depression after his head injury, or as a result of alleviation of stress from no longer functioning as a minister. Nevertheless, his personality change was quite dramatic shortly after recovering from his gunshot wound to the head.

We conclude that positive emotions such as mirth and happiness can emerge from brain lesions and persist. The loss of much of the right frontal and right anterior temporal lobes and damage to the left orbitofrontal cortex facilitated a positive sense of amusement and a positive outlook described as “contentment” by this patient. The literature suggests that this can occur in patients with predominant damage to the right frontal lobe, but also affecting left frontostriatal circuits. These observations warrant further investigation as they speak to the source of positive emotions in humans.

When unethically-earned money is first "laundered" -the cash is physically exchanged for the same amount but from a different arbitrary source- people spent it as if it was earned ethically

 Mental Money Laundering: A Motivated Violation of Fungibility. Alex Imas, George Loewenstein & Carey Morewedge. Carnegie Mellon University Working Paper, September 8 2020. https://ssrn.com/abstract=3662841

Abstract: People exploit flexibility in mental accounting to relax psychological constraints on spending. Four studies demonstrate this in the context of moral behavior. The first study replicates prior findings that people donate more money to charity when they earned it through unethical versus ethical means. However, when the unethically-earned money is first "laundered" - the cash is physically exchanged for the same amount but from a different arbitrary source - people spent it as if it was earned ethically. This mental money laundering represents an extreme fungibility violation: exchanging "dirty" money for the same sum coming from a "clean" source significantly changed people's propensity to spend it prosocially. The second study demonstrates that mental money laundering generalizes to cases in which ethically and unethically earned money is mixed. When gains from ethical and unethical sources were pooled, people spent the entire pooled sum as if it was ethically earned. The last two studies provide mixed support for the prediction that people actively seek out laundering opportunities for unethically earned money, suggesting partial sophistication about these effects. These findings provide new evidence for the ease with which people can rationalize misbehavior, and have implications for consumer choice, corporate behavior and public policy.

Why do we have big gluteal muscles?

Why do we have big gluteal muscles? Daniel Kolitz. Gizmodo, September 21, 2020. https://www.gizmodo.com.au/2020/09/why-do-we-have-butts/

Some experts gave their opinion in 2018. Among them, Jason Bourke, Paleontologist and Assistant Professor of Anatomy, New York Institute of Technology College of Osteopathic Medicine at Arkansas State:

The structures we refer to as butt cheeks in humans are comprised of the gluteal muscles: gluteus minimus, gluteus medius, and gluteus maximus. Of the three gluteal muscles, gluteus maximus is responsible for the signature shape of the human derriere. It originates from a line that runs from our upper ilium (the pelvic bone that people often call their hips) down towards our coccyx (tailbone). The muscle attaches close to the top of our femur (thigh bone). The gluteus maximus functions as our major leg extensor and is the main driver of our legs when running, climbing stairs, getting up from a seated position etc. It’s the powerhouse muscle we call upon whenever we need to perform major postural changes, or when we need to move our legs fast. That’s why sprinters, and weightlifters that do heavy-weighted squats tend to have very round and firm buttocks (i.e., “squat butt”).

Because the muscle originates and inserts across a fairly small distance, it needs to produce a lot of force to get our legs to move. This makes the muscle very large, but since there is not a lot of space for the muscle to sit, the muscle fibres expand outwards and – thanks to gravity – downwards resulting in our hallmark hind ends.

The shape of our rear end is practically unique to our species. As we transitioned from quadrupedal apes to bipedal ones, our pelvis underwent radical changes to handle the weight of our entire torso resting on top of it. This required substantial reorientation of many of our hip muscles and it put our major leg extensor (gluteus maximus) in this weird position where it seems to almost hang off of our pelvis. There are a few other species of mammals that have what we might term “butt cheeks”. Namely horses, which show substantial developments of their rear ends as well. As with humans, well-developed gluteal muscles are responsible for the roundness of horse butts. However, unlike humans, horses achieved this shape via expansion of a different gluteal muscle, their gluteus medius. In fact, a large gluteus medius is pretty standard for most mammals. Humans are unique in expanding our gluteus maximus instead, which is no doubt a response to the unique physical demands of our strange way of walking.

Moral Choice When Harming Is Unavoidable

Moral Choice When Harming Is Unavoidable. Jonathan Z. Berman, Daniella Kupor. Psychological Science,  September 8, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797620948821

Abstract: Past research suggests that actors often seek to minimize harm at the cost of maximizing social welfare. However, this prior research has confounded a desire to minimize the negative impact caused by one’s actions (harm aversion) with a desire to avoid causing any harm whatsoever (harm avoidance). Across six studies (N = 2,152), we demonstrate that these two motives are distinct. When decision-makers can completely avoid committing a harmful act, they strongly prefer to do so. However, harming cannot always be avoided. Often, decision-makers must choose between committing less harm for less benefit and committing more harm for more benefit. In these cases, harm aversion diminishes substantially, and decision-makers become increasingly willing to commit greater harm to obtain greater benefits. Thus, value trade-offs that decision-makers refuse to accept when it is possible to completely avoid committing harm can suddenly become desirable when some harm must be committed.

Keywords: moral choice, value trade-offs, harm aversion, harm avoidance, protected values, open data, open materials, preregistered

General Discussion

Across six studies, we demonstrated that the preference to avoid inflicting any harm not only is distinct from but also outweighs the preference to minimize its impact. Our results suggest that the manner in which individuals bracket instances of harm affects their willingness to commit harm (cf. Read, Loewenstein, Rabin, Keren, & Laibson, 1999). For instance, individuals may be more reluctant to commit a second violation a month after a first violation than they would be if the second violation occurred just moments after the first. This is because the two harmful actions may be more likely to be bracketed together in the latter case and may thus be perceived as an unavoidable-harm context.

Although we focused our examination on decisions impacting social welfare, similar outcomes may occur for decisions that are exclusively self-relevant. For instance, research suggests that individuals are particularly averse to holding debt if they do not need to be in debt but prefer to take on more debt to maintain their assets if holding debt is unavoidable (Sussman & Shafir, 2012).

Finally, in Study 4, we found that even when greater harm produced diminishing marginal benefits, individuals were still more willing to commit greater harm than when it was possible to commit no harm. However, there is likely a threshold for which committing more harm is no longer perceived as worthwhile. Future research can investigate factors that affect this threshold.

In sum, we found that decision-makers who can completely avoid committing a harmful act frequently choose to do so. However, when committing some harm is unavoidable, decision-makers become increasingly willing to trade off greater harm for greater benefits.

Older chimpanzees have more propensities to engage with others

Shifting sociality during primate ageing. Zarin P. Machanda and Alexandra G. Rosati. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. September 21 2020. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2019.0620

Rolf Degen's take: https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/1307911120343183360

Abstract: Humans exhibit major age-related shifts in social relationships along with changes in social and emotional psychological processes that underpin these behavioural shifts. Does social ageing in non-human primates follow similar patterns, and if so, what are the ultimate evolutionary consequences of these social shifts? Here we synthesize empirical evidence for shifts in social behaviour and underlying psychological processes across species. Focusing on three elements of social behaviour and cognition that are important for humans—propensities to engage with others, the positive versus negative valence of these interactions, and capabilities to influence others, we find evidence for wide variation in the trajectories of these characteristics across primates. Based on this, we identify potential modulators of the primate social ageing process, including social organization, sex and dominance status. Finally, we discuss how comparative research can contextualize human social ageing.

Culture among animals is most likely more widespread and pervasive than commonly thought and an important avenue to local adaptation; we most likely built upon a very broad, pre-existing cultural capacity

Animal cultures: how we've only seen the tip of the iceberg. Caroline Schuppli and Carel P. van Schaik. Evolutionary Human Sciences, Volume 1 2019, e2, May 9 2019. https://doi.org/10.1017/ehs.2019.1

Abstract: For humans we implicitly assume that the way we do things is the product of social learning and thus cultural. For animals, this conclusion requires proof. Here, we first review the most commonly used procedure for documenting animal culture: the method of exclusion, which charts geographic behavioral variation between populations as evidence for culture. Using published data, we show that, whereas it is an adequate proof of principle, the method of exclusion has major deficiencies when capturing cultural diversity and complexity. Therefore, we propose a new method, namely the direct counting of socially learned skills, which we apply to previously collected data on wild orangutans. This method reveals a far greater cultural repertoire among orangutans, and a different distribution of cultural elements among behavioral domains than found by the method of exclusion, as well as clear ecological correlates for most cultural elements. The widespread occurrence of social learning ability throughout the animal kingdom suggests that these conclusions also apply to many other species. Culture is most likely more widespread and pervasive than commonly thought and an important avenue to local adaptation. The complex and normative dimensions of culture seem unique to our species, but were most likely built upon a very broad, pre-existing cultural capacity that we inherited from our ancestors.

Discussion

The base of the great ape culture iceberg

The orangutan example suggests that by relying on the MoE to assess cultural repertoires we have so far only discovered the tip of the great ape culture iceberg (i.e. C ₁ >> C_ME; Figure 4). The MoE produces a biased sample of highly complex and conspicuous behaviors and dismisses a vast array of socially learned behaviors that covary with ecological factors. By counting socially learned skills, however, we are beginning to get to know the base of this iceberg. Cultural repertoires are mainly composed of basic, low-complexity subsistence skills, most of which show clear ecological correlates (e.g. knowledge of diet composition and processing techniques). Thus, a lot of (but not all) cultural variation may indeed be ecologically induced (C _Ecol is a major part of C ₁ and C _Var).

At the same time, a systematic reliance on social learning under similar ecological conditions may very well lead to many universal cultural behavior patterns across populations. The most striking example in the orangutans for this is nest building: even though it is an orangutan universal, it takes young orangutans years of close observation and subsequent practice before they can build nests good enough to spend the night in (Schuppli et al., 2016a), and socially deprived young apes will never be able to do so (Bernstein, 1962; Videan, 2006). The basic construction of nests (a rim made of intertwined long branches) is highly comparable across different orangutan populations, presumably because it is the most latent solution to the problem (Tennie et al., 2009; high C _U but low C _Ecol).

How much culture is there in other animals?

The points discussed above are unlikely to be true only for orangutans or great apes in general but most certainly apply to all species that rely on social learning. Although numerous species, including insects, fish, birds and mammals, are now known to be capable of social learning (reviewed by Galef and Laland, 2005; Rapaport and Brown, 2008; Reader and Biro, 2010; Whiten, 2017), for most, social learning has so far only been shown in captivity, which does not elucidate to what extent species indeed use this ability in the wild (Reader and Biro, 2010; Whiten and van de Waal, 2018). Even though behavioral scientists now increasingly acknowledge the role of social learning (van Schaik and Burkart, 2011; Tomasello, 1999; van Schaik et al., 2017), it is still widely treated as the rare and complex exception under the skill acquisition modes.

However, social learning can be quite simple given that many forms of social learning (e.g. enhancement or facilitation) do not require higher forms of cognition but nonetheless produce faithful behavioral copies owing to shared affordances. Furthermore, from the perspective of naïve immatures, a strong reliance on social learning is highly adaptive because social learning is less dangerous and more efficient than independent learning: it reduces the risk of getting injured or poisoned, increases learning speed by allowing the learning individual to benefit from what others have figured out before and increases the signal strength of relevant information (van Schaik and Burkart, 2011). Social learning thus allows for the fast acquisition of skills and the acquisition of more complex skills, and naïve individuals will benefit from choosing this option whenever they can. As such, we expect social learning to be most prominent in species with contact between generations, high social tolerance toward immatures, and an extended period of immaturity.

Over the last two decades it has become increasingly clear that social learning is indeed an important means of natural skill acquisition for many mammal and bird species, as evidenced in inherited dietary specializations, selective observations of skilled individuals, master apprentice interactions, effects of the presence of role models on foraging success or links between social networks and skill repertoires (Coelho et al., 2015; Estes et al., 2003; Griesser and Suzuki, 2016; Guinet and Bouvier, 1995; Hobaiter et al., 2014; Kitowski, 2009; Krutzen et al., 2005; Lonsdorf, 2006; Mann et al., 2007; Matsuzawa et al., 2001; Ottoni et al., 2005; Rapaport and Brown, 2008; Schuppli et al., 2016a). Direct observations of the spread of recently made innovations through social groups are bound to be rare but have been made in natural populations (Allen et al., 2013; Hobaiter et al., 2014; Kendal et al., 2010). Interspecific cross-fostering experiments, be they designed or accidental, although both quite rare, have impressively demonstrated the pervasiveness of social learning of life's skills (Rowley and Chapman, 1986; Sheppard et al., 2018; Slagsvold and Wiebe, 2007; Warner, 1988).

Culture is therefore likely to be pervasive in all species that pass on knowledge and skills socially. However, most of these species’ skills will show little or no geographic variation, except for the most complex skills, which are the least likely to be invented and retained. In several species, the acquisition of basic foraging skills was shown to be socially mediated: in aye-ayes (Daubentonia madagascariensis), for example, immatures learn tap-foraging – for which they even have morphological specializations – far less readily in the absence of adult role models (Krakauer, 2005).

Since social learning can be very simple, culture does not require a large brain and it is therefore unlikely to be a hallmark of cognitive complexity (Byrne et al., 2004; Laland and Hoppitt, 2003), although the efficiency of cultural transmission may also favor the evolution of greater investment in brains (van Schaik and Burkart, 2011).

Remaining challenges in the animal culture debate

Detecting animal culture irrespective of geographic variation is challenging and may not always be possible. Aside from peering, social learning can also happen via observation at longer distances, socially induced encounters with environmental features and acoustic transmission. Thus, in order to be able to draw conclusions about and compare cultural repertoires across species, it is crucial to find appropriate ways to detect social learning according to the species’ main transmission mode as well as to take different transmission modes into account. The SLS will thus most likely only rarely produce integral cultural repertoires. In most cases, however, it will be able to lift a significant part of the so far hidden base of the culture iceberg above the surface.

Implications for human culture

Most elements which we nowadays naturally call the product of human culture can be found across the globe and are thus human universals. In this time of increasing connectedness and global exchange even the most complex human innovations often quickly reach the status of universals and would not be recognized as socially learned innovations by their geographic distribution. Yet everyone would agree that these innovations are an important part of our cultural repertoire.

What differentiates animal from human culture is the lack of normativity, the virtual absence of cumulative culture and the enormous diversity of human cultural elements (Laland and Galef, 2009; Whiten, 2017; Whiten and van Schaik, 2007). These three features seem to remain a hallmark of human culture and seem to be linked to the evolution of our species’ skill-intensive, technology-dependent foraging niche (van Schaik et al., 2019; Laland, 2017). However, the unique human cultural constellation was built on a surprisingly broad and evolutionarily deep foundation.

Like psychology more broadly, developmental psychology has long suffered from a narrow focus on children from WEIRD societies

Cross-cultural, developmental psychology: integrating approaches and key insights. Dorsa Amir, Katherine McAuliffe. Evolution and Human Behavior, Volume 41, Issue 5, September 2020, Pages 430-444. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2020.06.006

Abstract: Like psychology more broadly, developmental psychology has long suffered from a narrow focus on children from WEIRD societies—or those that are Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic. In this review, we discuss how developmental scientists have sought to correct this bias through two complementary approaches: one centered on detailed, ethnographic investigations of child development within populations (increasing the depth of our understanding) and one focused on larger, multi-site studies that test children on standardized tasks across populations (increasing breadth). We review key papers from each of these approaches, describe how they are currently practiced, and discuss their strengths and weaknesses. Next, we highlight exemplary papers from the adult literature that offer useful insights, namely the importance of formal modeling and a greater focus on studying variation at multiple levels of analysis. We end by outlining best practices for future waves of cross-cultural, developmental science. Overall, we argue that a more integrated perspective, combining the strengths of the breadth & depth approaches, can help better elucidate the developmental origins of human behavioral diversity.

Keywords: DevelopmentCross-cultural psychologyDevelopmental psychologyWEIRD

Daily politics is a stressor: Understandably, people frequently tried to regulate their politics-induced emotions using cognitive strategies (reappraisal and distraction); this regulation predicted greater well-being

Feinberg, Matthew, Brett Q. Ford, Sabrina Thai, Arasteh Gatchpazian, and Bethany Lassetter. 2020. “The Political Is Personal: Daily Politics as a Chronic Stressor.” PsyArXiv. September 19. doi:10.31234/osf.io/hdz97

Rolf Degen's take: https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/1307539072177582081

Abstract: Politics and its controversies have permeated everyday life, but the daily impact of politics is largely unknown. Here, we conceptualize politics as a chronic stressor with important consequences for people’s daily lives. We used longitudinal, daily-diary methods to track U.S. participants as they experienced daily political events across two weeks (Study 1: N=198, observations=2,167) and, separately, across three weeks (Study 2: N=811, observations=12,790) to explore how daily political events permeate people’s lives and how they cope with this influence of politics. In both studies, daily political events consistently evoked negative emotions, which corresponded to worse psychological and physical well-being, but also increased motivation to take political action (e.g., volunteer, protest) aimed at changing the political system that evoked these emotions in the first place. Understandably, people frequently tried to regulate their politics-induced emotions; and successfully regulating these emotions using cognitive strategies (reappraisal and distraction) predicted greater well-being, but also weaker motivation to take action. Although people can protect themselves from the emotional impact of politics, frequently-used regulation strategies appear to come with a trade-off between well being and action. To examine whether an alternative approach to one’s emotions could avoid this trade-off, we measured emotional acceptance in Study 2 (i.e., accepting one’s emotions without trying to change them) and found that successful acceptance predicted greater daily well-being but no impairment to political action. Overall, this research highlights how politics can be a chronic stressor in people’s daily lives, underscoring the far-reaching influence politicians have beyond the formal powers endowed unto them.

Longitudinal data from the Child Development Project: Parental psychological control perceived at age 16 predicts insecure attachment at age 18, which then predicts psychological intimate partner violence at age 24

Psychological Intimate Partner Violence, Insecure Attachment, and Parental Psychological Control from Adolescence to Emerging Adulthood. So Young Choe, Jungeun Olivia Lee, Stephen J. Read. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, September 15, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1177/0886260520957974

Abstract: We examine if psychological intimate partner violence (pIPV) is predicted by parental psychological control (PPC) via insecure attachment. Our results analyzing longitudinal data from the Child Development Project show that PPC perceived at age 16 predicts insecure attachment at age 18, which then predicts pIPV at age 24. Moreover, the paths with attachment anxiety are consistently significant while ones with attachment avoidance are not. Further, all the paths are significant regardless of the gender of the adolescents and parents, which indicates that PPC is detrimental regardless of the gender of the adolescents or parents. Lastly, PPC perceived at age 16 does not directly predict pIPV at age 24, which suggests that social learning theory of aggression (Bandura, 1978) may not explain the association from PPC to pIPV. Our results suggest that research and practice would benefit by considering PPC as an antecedent of pIPV via insecure attachment from adolescence to emerging adulthood.

Keywords: parental psychological control, attachment, intimate partner violence

93 math teachers grading exam papers: those who underestimated their own implicit stereotypes engaged in more pro-male discrimination compared to those who overestimated or accurately estimated them

On the Origins of Gender-Biased Behavior: The Role of Explicit and Implicit Stereotypes. Eliana Avitzour, Adi Choen, Daphna Joel, Victor Lavy. NBER Working Paper No. 27818, September 2020. https://www.nber.org/papers/w27818

Abstract: In recent years, explicit bias against women in Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) is disappearing but gender discrimination is still prevalent. We assessed the gender-biased behavior and related explicit and implicit stereotypes of 93 math teachers to identify the psychological origins of such discrimination. We asked the teachers to grade math exam papers and assess the students’ capabilities while manipulating the perceived gender of the students to capture gender-biased grading and assessment behavior. We also measured the teachers’ implicit and explicit stereotypes regarding math, gender, and talent. We found that implicit, but not explicit, gender stereotypes correlated with grading and assessment behavior. We also found that participants who underestimated their own implicit stereotypes engaged in more pro-male discrimination compared to those who overestimated or accurately estimated them. Reducing implicit gender stereotypes and exposing individuals to their own implicit biases may be beneficial in promoting gender equality in STEM fields.

We show evidence that a well-socialized companion cat was able to reproduce actions demonstrated by a human model

Did we find a copycat? Do as I Do in a domestic cat (Felis catus). Claudia Fugazza, Andrea Sommese, Ákos Pogány & Ádám Miklósi. Animal Cognition (2020). Sep 18, 2020. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10071-020-01428-6

N=1

Abstract: This study shows evidence of a domestic cat (Felis catus) being able to successfully learn to reproduce human-demonstrated actions based on the Do as I Do paradigm. The subject was trained to reproduce a small set of familiar actions on command “Do it!” before the study began. To test feature–contingent behavioural similarity and control for stimulus enhancement, our test consisted of a modified version of the two-action procedure, combined with the Do as I Do paradigm. Instead of showing two different actions on an object to different subjects, we applied a within-subject design and showed the two actions to the same subject in separate trials. We show evidence that a well-socialized companion cat was able to reproduce actions demonstrated by a human model by reproducing two different actions that were demonstrated on the same object. Our experiment provides the first evidence that the Do as I Do paradigm can be applied to cats, suggesting that the ability to recognize behavioural similarity may fall within the range of the socio-cognitive skills of this species. The ability of reproducing the actions of a heterospecific human model in well-socialized cats may pave the way for future studies addressing cats’ imitative skills.

Discussion

Our results show the first experimental evidence of the domestic cat’s ability of matching actions to the actions displayed by a heterospecific, human demonstrator in the Do as I Do paradigm. Thereby we provide evidence that the capacity of reproducing actions of a heterospecific model could be considered within the range of cats’ cognitive skills.

Based on the cat’s performance, we argue that she has the ability to map the different body parts and movements of the human demonstrator into her own body parts and movements, at least to some extent. Ebisu’s ability to reproduce the demonstrator’s actions when different actions were shown on the same object allow excluding that behavioural similarity relied only on perceptual factors, such as increased attention to the stimulus. In fact, the cat’s flexibly modified her behaviour based on the different actions that were demonstrated, thereby excluding stimulus enhancement and goal emulation as explanations for the behavioural similarity between demonstrator and observer (Dawson and Foss, 1965; Akins and Zentall 1996; van de Waal et al. 2012).

The two actions chosen as demonstrations were of similar difficulty for the cat and this is confirmed by similar success in reproducing those. One of the two actions—the paw action—was not completely novel for the cat, since she had been trained to touch other objects with her paw. In the case of this action, therefore, the novelty in the test consisted of the object to be touched. However, the face action had not been previously trained, and Ebisu had never been required to perform or imitate this action before the experiment. Her reproduction of the face-rubbing action since the first trial when this action was demonstrated indicates that she was able to generalize the Do as I Do rule to reproduce this action too. This also suggests that cats may have the ability to map the different body parts and movements of the human demonstrator into their own body parts. Face-rubbing is a behaviour that pertains to the natural repertoire of cats (Machado and Genaro 2014; Vitale Shreve and Udell 2017b). However, this action was not included in the Do as I Do training, and Ebisu had never been trained to perform it. Transfer tests of this kind, in which successful performance on one cognitive task is applied to another, ensure that the subjects learned a rule and not a stimulus–response association (Shea and Heyes 2010).

Importantly, in the very first trial when rubbing face on the box was demonstrated (trial 1, Table 3), Ebisu performed both actions: she touched the box with her paw (a body movement that belonged to her training repertoire) and she also rubbed her face on the box. Although this trial was excluded from the action matching analysis due to its ambiguity, we note that the cat performed the demonstrated action after the very first time seeing it and this shows that the cat was already able to use the demonstration as a sample against which to match her behaviour at the start of the experiment. The performance of the cat can be explained by imitation (Whiten and Ham 1992) or, alternatively, by response facilitation (Byrne 1994).

Unexpectedly, Ebisu did not always approach the object used by her owner during the demonstrations and in 4 trials she performed the demonstrated action “on nothing” or on the floor (so-called “vacuum actions”, Huber et al. 2009). This happened in three face action trials and in one paw action trials, suggesting that it was not an action-specific response. Moreover, the cat did not approach the object (and location) where the demonstration was performed more likely than chance level. This may simply be due to fatigue and reduced motivation related to the compromised health of the cat (i.e., it may be due to tiredness or low motivation, making it more likely that the subject would save energy and not move from her starting position).

Ebisu’s health condition did not allow further testing; therefore, some caution should be taken before generalizing the results to other actions, not tested in the present study. However, the results obtained by combining the Do as I Do method and the two-action procedure allow us to exclude that the cat’s performance relied on other processes, such as stimulus enhancement or goal emulation. These findings provide evidence that the cat was able to successfully learn to reproduce human-demonstrated actions with the Do as I Do method. Cats, similar to dogs (e.g. Fugazza and Miklósi 2014), might be able to map the different body parts and movements of the human demonstrator into their own body parts, at least with regard to the tested actions. Ebisu’s motivation for food and training activities made it possible to successfully train her with the Do as I Do method. Our experience about the time investment and difficulty of training cats prevented us from testing other subjects, therefore, the extent to which we can generalize these results to the cat population in general takes further investigation. We suggest that cats possess the cognitive skill to reproduce the actions of conspecific and—if properly socialized—also heterospecific models. Therefore, we think that these results could be replicated, provided that the subjects can be motivated enough by food, toys/play or social reward, to collaborate with a human trainer.

2016 US elections: “Born this way”-type beliefs in the innateness & immutability of sexual orientation did not significantly distinguish respondents’ support for presidential candidates or party affiliation

Grzanka, P. R., Zeiders, K. H., Spengler, E. S., Hoyt, L. T., & Toomey, R. B. (2020). Do beliefs about sexual orientation predict voting behavior? Results from the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity, 7(3), 241–252. https://doi.org/10.1037/sgd0000434

Rolf Degen's take: https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/1307025853277253639

Abstract: Research has shown that beliefs about sexual orientation, including the naturalness, discreteness, and informativeness of sexual orientation categories, are associated with varying levels of sexual prejudice. Less is known about how these and other sexual orientation beliefs may correspond with broader social and political attitudes, including party affiliation and voting behavior. The present study explored voting intention and political party affiliation, as well as other constructs not directly associated with sexuality, among a sample of emerging adults (N = 286) immediately prior to the 2016 U.S. presidential election. Using a person-centered statistical approach, we replicated sexual orientation belief profiles found in prior research and observed significant associations between belief profiles and intentions to vote for certain candidates, as well as party affiliation, ambivalent sexist attitudes, and number of reported lesbian, gay, and bisexual friends. Notably, “born this way”-type beliefs in the innateness and immutability of sexual orientation did not significantly distinguish respondents’ support for presidential candidates or political party affiliation. We situate these results within existing research on essentialist beliefs and point to implications of these findings for ongoing research, clinical work, and advocacy for sexual minority rights

Himba women who face greater resource constraints are less discriminating in the number of partners they are open to, & have stronger preferences for resource-related traits; number of dependants was an important predictor

Resource demands reduce partner discrimination in Himba women. Sean P. Prall and Brooke A. Scelza. Evolutionary Human Sciences (2020), 2, e45, doi:10.1017/ehs.2020.43

Abstract: Where autonomy for partner choice is high, partner preferences may be shaped by both social and ecological conditions. In particular, women’s access to resources can influence both the type and number of partnerships she engages in. However, most existing data linking resources and partner choice rely on either priming effects or large demographic databases, rather than preferences for specific individuals. Here we leverage a combination of demographic data, food insecurity scores and trait and partner preference ratings to determine whether resource security modulates partner preferences among Himba pastoralists. We find that while food insecurity alone has a weak effect on women’s openness to new partners, the interaction of food insecurity and number of dependent children strongly predicts women’s openness to potential partners. Further, we show that women who have more dependants have stronger preferences for wealthy and influential men. An alternative hypothesis derived from mating-market dynamics, that female desirability affects female preferences, had no effect. Our data show that women who face greater resource constraints are less discriminating in the number of partners they are open to, and have stronger preferences for resource-related traits. These findings highlight the importance of ecological signals in explaining the plasticity of mate preferences.

Keywords: mate choice; food insecurity; transactional sex

Discussion

Male access to resources is believed to be one of the primary factors in female mate choice, and has
broad empirical support across taxa. Here, we examine how resource scarcity affects women’s openness to new partners, and how the relative importance of resource-related traits changes as resource
scarcity increases. Women with more dependants, and women with more dependants who are
more food insecure, show attenuated discrimination of potential partners, and are more likely to
give any individual male higher preference ratings. We also predicted that other resource related traits,
as rated by women in the study community, should be similarly related to female preference with
higher resource scarcity predicting greater weighting of these traits. Livestock wealth, as reported by
men, was a strong predictor of female preference. However, other male traits which may signal
resource acquisition or sharing potential, including being generous and hardworking, showed no relationship to resource need. In other words, while women with more dependants tended to prefer
wealthier men, the degree to which a man was viewed as being hardworking, generous or attractive
did not differ across women with varyng resource need.
Our data show a positive correlation between resource scarcity and the level of discrimination used
in a partner choice task. While definitively demonstrating a causal relationship between scarcity and
selectivity is not possible with these data, we did test an alternative hypothesis that this relationship
was simply the product of a relationship between resource need and position on the mating market,
Our results indicate that relative mate value, as measured by male desirability ratings of women, has no
impact on female preferences. Women who were viewed as more desirable by men were not more discriminating in their judgments. Given the large and multifaceted literature on assortative mating, this
finding warrants further study. In particular, use of women’s assessments of their own desirability
(self-perceived mate value), instead of male assessed desirability, may show stronger associations
Figure 2. Posterior predictions for interaction effect of number of dependants and status assessments on reported mate preferences. Posterior medians and 95% credible intervals for each rating category shown
with women’s mate choice. Here, we focus on the role that resource scarcity plays in determining preferences, but we recognize that this is just one of many potential pressure points that could be influencing partner choice.

The methods used in this study differ markedly from those that are currently standard in mate
choice studies within evolutionary psychology. We rely on individualized demographics and food
security ratings, rather than primes of resource scarcity. We also collected preference data for members
of the respondents’ own community, people well known to them, rather than standardized images or
priming vignettes. This more individualized approach is believed to increase ecological validity in
these sorts of tasks (Gervais, 2017). Furthermore, the study was conducted in a community where
resource scarcity is particularly salient, as chronic drought and limited access to market goods
mean that food insecurity is a common concern. This study therefore provides an important complement to previous findings, which have largely relied on samples from student populations in countries where resource scarcity is less common.

We found that number of dependants was an important predictor of partner preferences, both on
its own and in conjunction with food insecurity. In the case of shifting trait preferences, number of
dependants was a stronger predictor than food insecurity. It may be because food insecurity is chronically high in this population that food security alone does not produce enough variation to see large effects. Number of dependants represents a longer-term measure of resource stress than food security,
which has seasonal components, and which may fluctuate somewhat depending on conditions like the
number of recent funerals or ceremonies (where food is more abundant), as well as cultural practices
to cope with drought and low food availability (Bollig, 2010).
The results from this study add an interesting complement to the broader literature on transactional
sex and risky sexual behavior. Concurrent and sequential partnerships are common among Himba,
and not stigmatized in the way they are in many places. The majority of married men and women
across age groups have at least one additional partner, and these relationships are often long-lasting,
at times spanning several decades (Scelza et al., 2020b; Scelza & Prall, 2018). The transfer of resources
is commonly cited as an important component of women’s relationships with both their husbands and
their lovers. These can range from expectations about provisioning of cash or food to help with an
emergency to smaller food gifts and trinkets such as bracelets and mobile airtime. We therefore see
the relationship between resource stress and openness to romantic partners to be driven in part by
expectations that men can buffer shortfalls, in much the same way that transactional sex operates
in other sub-Saharan contexts.

Limitations

This study uses a novel trait and partner preference trait rating task, where participants rate individuals
known to them in the community. In most cases, this is preferable to using self-perceived traits, in that
it assesses community perception of individual community members, and as such should be a more
accuate representation of individual characteristics. However, this means that these results are difficult
to compare with many similar studies that use self-perceived mate value (e.g. Fisher, Cox, Bennett, &
Gavric, 2008). Additionally, trait ratings of known individuals may be subject to bias based on personal history, and traits like attractiveness are subject to non-physical influences when assessing
known individuals (Kniffin & Wilson, 2004). However, other ratings including being influential
and hardworking require knowledge of the individual in question, and the statistical methods make
idiosyncratic ratings unlikely to impact results. Complex interactions including marital status of the
rater and ratee, interpersonal dynamics and other unknown effects may be at play in the preference
ratings. Additionally, in our preference task, women were asked about how much they would like
to be in a relationship with a given set of men, but we did not specify whether this would be a marital
or non-marital relationship. Since divorce and remarriage are common, as are poygyny and concurrency, partnership status is not a disqualifer of a potential future partner, or partner interest more
broadly, but future work will seek to clarify how women best utilize different partner types.

There are other potential explanations for the relationship between resource scarcity and partner preferences that were not directly tested in this study. Some practitioners of life history theory predict that
early life stressors (including reduced access to resources) might lead to a faster life history, including
being open to a greater number of sexual partners (Simpson, Griskevicius, Kuo, Sung, & Collins, 2012).
Because of limitations in the data we had available and questions of ecological validity, we did not test
this theory here. Food insecurity in this population is largely a function of access to livestock and maize,
both of which are highly dependent on rainfall. In this drought-prone environment fluctuations in
wealth are not uncommon, so that a family with plentiful resources one year could after a multiyear
drought be suffering greatly. Given this stochasticity, as well as demographic factors like high rates
of divorce, remarriage and fosterage, which influence household composition, we do not have a simple
measure of early life stress that we could use here as a predictor. Furthermore, in our ethnographic
interviews women and men have continually stressed the importance of resource transfers as being
an important facet of both formal (marital) and informal romantic relationships. Therefore, we focused
here on how current measures of need might impact partner choice.

First, Best, Forbidden and Worst Kisses: Memorable Experiences of Intimate Kisses Among U.S. Adults

First, Best, Forbidden and Worst: Memorable Experiences of Intimate Kisses Among Heterosexual and Sexual Minority U.S. Adults. Kendra S. Wasson Simpson et al. Journal of Relationships Research, Volume 112020, e11, September 2020. https://doi.org/10.1017/jrr.2020.7

Abstract: Intimate kissing is often viewed as a preliminary or ancillary behaviour in studies exploring sexual interactions. There is a lack of research that focuses on differentiating the types of intimate kisses, including the contexts in which they occur, and desirable and undesirable features. The current study was designed to assess memories of first, best, forbidden and worst kisses. Participants were 691 U.S. adults (mean age 32.27 years; 55% identified as male) who completed an online survey addressing kissing attitudes and experiences using both structured and open-ended survey tools. Four themes emerged through content analysis: physical components, connection to the partner, context, and emotions evoked; and these are discussed for all four types of kissing memories. Findings are discussed in terms of embodiment that intimate kisses capture, their role as a metric of one's attraction to a partner, and the means by which kissing experiences might solidify a sense of oneself as a sexual person.