We the ugly can be subject to structurally unjust patterns of sexual desire; the others can be held responsible for correcting this injustice

Sexual Desire and Structural Injustice. Tom O'Shea. Journal of Social Philosophy (forthcoming). Oct 2020. https://philpapers.org/rec/OSHSDA

Rolf Degen's take: https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/1318434723962769409

Abstract: This article argues that political injustices can arise from the distribution and character of our sexual desires and that we can be held responsible for correcting these injustices. It draws on a conception of structural injustice to diagnose unjust patterns of sexual attraction, which are taken to arise when socio-structural processes shaping the formation of sexual desire compound systemic domination and capacity-deprivation for the occupants of a social position. Individualistic and structural solutions to the problem of unjust patterns of sexual attraction are assessed in the context of racialised sexual aversion, racial fetishism, and the desexualisation of people with disabilities. While both forms of intervention can help, some of the advantages of structural approaches are laid out. A schema for assigning political responsibilities for addressing this injustice is proposed, with some limits identified to the kinds of state and social responses that are justified. Finally, the status of the merely aesthetically unappealing is considered, with a relational egalitarian approach concluding that they are subject to structurally unjust patterns of sexual desire only when exposed to oppression or second-class citizenship as a result.

Keywords: sexual desire  structural injustice  race  disability  dating  social structure  orectic injustice  sex  online platforms  desire

---

Is it unjust that some people are less sexually desired than others? We might have sympathy for the sexually undesired but supposing they suffer an outright injustice can seem absurd. My view is that this reaction is too hasty, and that sexually desirability can be a matter of political justice. This is a strong claim, which is likely to invite a torrent of objections, whether for confusing misfortune with injustice, licensing unwarranted political meddling, indulging in sexual moralism, or asking the impossible of us. But I shall suggest a compelling social philosophy of sexual attraction can be articulated by considering the scope and character of sexual desires through the lens of structural injustice, while looking to collective and political rather than primarily individual and ethical remedies to the problem of unjust desire.

Sexual desirability is not a resource which can or should be doled out to the needy; nor is there a duty to desire, or a right to be so desired. Yet, sexual attractiveness matters in many of our lives – potentially influencing not only our opportunities for sexual intimacy, but our self-respect, social standing, and access to romantic relationships. Going sexually undesired or under-desired can compound disadvantage in these respects. Mere disadvantage, however, is not sufficient for political injustice. Instead, I shall argue there can be grounds of justice for holding people responsible for transforming the socio-structural processes which shape the distribution and character of sexual desires when these processes underpin domination and deprivation.

Touch is perceived as more pleasant when caressing touch is paired with attractive, compared to unattractive, faces; attractive faces particularly enhance subjective and autonomic responses to slow caresses

Hedonic responses to touch are modulated by the perceived attractiveness of the caresser. Giovanni Novembre, Roberta Etzi, India Morrison. Neuroscience, October 17 2020. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neuroscience.2020.10.007

Highlights:

• Touch is perceived as more pleasant when caressing touch is paired with attractive, compared to unattractive, faces.

• Attractive faces particularly enhance subjective and autonomic responses to slow caresses.

• Heart rate variability increases only for slow touch paired with attractive faces.

Abstract: Previous research has shown that a specific type of C fiber, the C tactile afferents, are involved in detecting gentle, dynamic tactile stimuli on the skin, giving rise to affective responses in the central nervous system. Despite building on such bottom-up information flow, the hedonic perception and the physiological consequences of affective touch are influenced by various sources of top-down information. In the present study we investigated how perception of affective touch is influenced by the attractiveness of hypothetical caressers. Participants were stroked on the arm and the palm while looking at photos of high attractive and low attractive opposite-gender faces, and were instructed to imagine those people as the caressers. In a control condition no photo was paired with the touch. The stroking stimulation was delivered with a soft brush either on the forearm or on the palm, and either with a slower or faster speed. Participants rated the pleasantness of each stimulation, while electrocardiographic recordings were made to extract heart rate variability data. Results showed that participants preferred touch stimuli paired with high attractive faces; they also preferred palm stroking and slower stroking speed. Like subjective pleasantness ratings, heart rate variability responses to affective touch (slow) were higher for high attractive than for low attractive caressers, but were not selective for arm or palm stroking. Overall, the present study confirms that contextual social information plays a major role in affective touch experiences, influencing not only the hedonic quality of the experience but also the physiological state of the body.

Keywords: heart rate variabilityaffective touchCT fibers

Discussion

In this study we investigated how a contextual factor, namely attractiveness, shapes hedonic perception in tactile interactions with imagined unfamiliar touchers. We brushed participants’ skin while they viewed opposite gender faces and were instructed to imagine that that person was caressing them. By manipulating face attractiveness level (high vs low), velocity (CT-optimal vs CT-non-optimal) and site (forearm vs palm) of the touch, we were able to show that: 1) touch is most pleasant when it is paired with an attractive face; 2) attractive faces particularly enhance subjective responses to slow caresses; 3) touch delivered to the palm is preferred over touch delivered to the forearm, regardless of the imagined toucher’s attractiveness; 4) heart rate variability increases only for slow touch paired with attractive faces.

Tactile interactions are critical throughout human life and constitute an important platform for establishing social connections. Therefore, it is not surprising that research about touch and social interactions in the recent past has mostly focused on the beneficial effects of interpersonal touch and the detrimental consequences of the lack of it (Field, 2014, Gallace and Spence, 2010, Sailer and Ackerley, 2019). Nevertheless, the context in which social interactions occur may completely alter the valence of the affective experience of the touch from another person from positive to negative. The present study suggests that in tactile interactions with strangers, attractiveness might be an important factor determining the ultimate hedonic perception of the experience. The evidence for such a claim comes from both behavioral and psychophysiological data.

Behavior

On the behavioral level, touch paired with high attractive faces was preferred over touch paired with low attractive faces but was not hedonically discriminated from unpaired touch. This indicates that face information can influence the hedonic perception of touch, with touch experienced as less pleasant unless the face is perceived as attractive. Interestingly, despite slow touch being preferred over fast touch in each condition, the significant interaction between velocity of touch and context of touch (unpaired, high attractive toucher or low attractive toucher) shows that the emotional response to slow touch differentiates the three conditions. Namely, unpaired touch elicited more positive responses than touch paired with high attractive faces, which in turn was preferred over slow touch paired with low attractive faces. In contrast, affective responses to fast touch were significantly lower to touch paired with low attractive faces, but they did not differ between unpaired touch and touch from high attractive faces.

The slow touch used in this study (3 cm/s) is among the most used experimental stimulations in paradigms studying social touch and falls in the range of touch velocities (1-10 cm/s) that correspond to spontaneous affective touch interactions, e.g. caresses (Croy et al., 2016, Hertenstein et al., 2007, Morrison et al., 2010). It should be noticed, however, that a very recent study has shown that when asked to spontaneously stroke other people (e.g., their partner, friend or even a stranger), participants tend to do so with a mean velocity falling between 10 and 20 cm/s (Strauss et al., 2020). Since a consistent investigation on the psychophysical responses to touch within this interval is not currently available, future studies will address whether the slow touch used in this study is physiologically and affectively distinguishable from that delivered in the 10-20 cm/s range. Nevertheless, in the light of current evidence, it is not surprising that responses to the slow touch are well differentiated across conditions, and they indicate that when tactile interactions with imagined touchers occur with a velocity associated with higher affective value, the attractiveness of the toucher plays a major role.

One potential mediator of such effect is believed to be a class of afferent nerves so far found in the hairy skin only, but not on the glabrous skin of the palms and soles. These CT fibers, show greatest increases in firing frequency for stimuli in the aforementioned velocity range (1-10 cm/s), as well triggering the most positive affective responses, compared to very slow (<1 cm/s) or fast velocities (>10 cm/s). Accordingly, we expected to see a general preference for touch on the forearm (hairy skin) over touch on the palm (glabrous skin). This was not the case, and instead we found a preference for touch on the palm. Whereas the initial evidence had suggested a general preference for touch on the hairy skin over glabrous skin (Löken et al., 2009), a growing number of studies employing various paradigms have shown an undifferentiated hedonic response to arm and palm stroking (Ackerley, Carlsson, et al., 2014; Kirsch et al., 2018, Perini et al., 2015).

Furthermore, affective ratings for hairy and glabrous skin stimulation have been shown to heavily depend on the order of stimuli presentation, with preceding hairy skin stimulations positively influencing the perception of pleasantness of following palm stimulations, even in block designs (Löken et al., 2011). In our study there was a significant three-way interaction between the factors “Face”, “Site” and “Randomization” indicating that participants who started with palm touch rated touch on the palm paired with high attractive faces significantly more pleasant than participants who started with touch on the arm. Such an effect was not observed for arm touch. Therefore, if anything, we observed a facilitating effect of initial palm touch on subsequent palm stimulations, specific to high attractive faces and regardless of velocity. A possible explanation for such difference compared to the results of Löken and colleagues (Löken et al., 2011) might lie in the more complex structure of our task, possibly indicating that the presence of other factors like attractiveness, or more generally tactile interactions with unfamiliar touchers, might influence the intrinsic hedonic properties of forearm touch in favor of palm touch. Nonetheless, more controlled experiments which specifically look at how attractiveness and type of skin stimulated interact in affectively rich tactile experiences are needed to cast light on this aspect.

More generally, the crucial conditions of this study (high and low attractive faces) involved the presentation of two types of sensory stimuli (tactile and visual), and required participants to integrate them to produce a hedonic response, whereas another condition (no face) did not require such multisensory integration. This differential recruitment of sensory and attentional resources could explain the pattern of hedonic responses to touch in our study. There is indeed existing research showing that attention and allocation of cognitive resources influence tactile perception (Lier et al., 2018, Schubert et al., 2008), especially when attention must be directed to concomitant stimuli from other sensory modalities (Hanke et al., 2016). If the presentation of an additional stimulus (photo) competing for attention with the brushing stimulus affected behavioral responses, this would equally influence both high attractive and low attractive trials in comparison to unpaired trials. Nevertheless, whereas affective responses to touch paired with low attractive faces were consistently lower than unpaired touch, this was not the case for touch paired high attractive faces, which was rated as pleasant as unpaired touch when the touch was delivered at higher speed. Therefore, even if attention plays a general role in shaping hedonic responses to touch, the interaction between the attractiveness of the paired faces and the velocity of the touch speaks for the intervention an additional factor. Whether this factor is attributable to differential CT response or other mechanisms will require further investigations.

Another interesting behavioral observation comes from the comparison between males’ and females’ affective ratings. Indeed, males showed consistently higher ratings across all touch conditions. On a first glance, this result would seem to contradict the findings of a recent meta-analysis regarding sex differences in response to affective touch (Russo et al., 2020). Across 13 studies it was found that females perceive affective touch as more pleasant than males. Nevertheless, some of the included studies (Ackerley, Carlsson, et al., 2014; Jönsson et al., 2015, Triscoli et al., 2013) did not find such a difference. On the other hand, our result is corroborated from other evidence in the touch literature: for instance, recent work has shown that female touch is generally considered more pleasant than male touch across both genders (Suvilehto et al., 2015). Furthermore, our results can also be interpreted as a more specific gender difference when the considered variable is touch from strangers. Indeed, when Suvilehto et al. computed the ‘touchability index’ for their participants, the only figure whom males would allow to touch more than females were in fact female strangers (Suvilehto, pers comm)1. This applies regardless of all the other factors tested in our experiment, since no interactions between the gender and site, velocity or context of touch were found. Therefore, it appears that males’ and females’ affective responses to touch are differentially modulated by a broad range of contextual factors. In this regard, a potential confound in our experiment might be that the brushing stimuli were delivered by a female experimenter whom participants met before the experimental session started.

Heart Rate Variability

On the psychophysiological level, heart rate variability (HRV) results confirm that the attractiveness of the toucher plays a major role in the hedonic perception of tactile interactions. Slow touch was associated with higher HRV than fast touch only during trials with high attractive faces. Specifically, slow touch significantly increased HRV compared to faster touch, but only when the imagined toucher was perceived as attractive. This occurred regardless of the site of the stimulation (hairy or glabrous skin).

According to several theories (Porges, 1995, Thayer and Lane, 2000) heart rate variability is a reliable index of the capacity of the central nervous system to control cardiac activity through parasympathetic influence and in turn adjust metabolic strategies to adapt to constantly changing environmental demands (Thayer et al., 2010). Both resting and task related higher HRV values are generally associated with better performances across many domains, like emotion and cognitive regulation, possibly reflecting higher flexibility. For instance, psychological stressors often cause decreases in heart rate variability (Chandola et al., 2008, Dimitriev and Saperova, 2015). Accordingly, higher values of heart rate variability are thought to reflect better adaption to stressors (Kim et al., 2018). Hence, the observation of higher HRV values during slow touch received by an attractive person may indicate a more favorable reaction to a potentially stressful and affective meaningful interaction with a stranger, which is not observed for the touch of a low attractive person.

An alternative interpretation is related to the suggested link between HRV and social cognition. For instance, it has been shown that HRV is positively related to performances in social tasks (Quintana et al., 2012), whereas many psychiatric disorders that show impairment of social cognition skills are associated with reduced HRV (Chalmers et al., 2014, Kemp and Quintana, 2013). In this framework, the affective touch of an attractive person might have represented a highly salient stimulus which needed increased social attention compared to the other stimuli.

Furthermore, it should be noted that our data also showed a significant interaction between context of the touch and participants’ gender, which hinted at higher HRV values for females compared to males, especially for touch paired with low attractive faces. Heart rate variability has been shown to vary quite consistently between males and females across many experimental settings (Koenig & Thayer, 2016). Females are usually reported as having greater vagal tone, hence higher values of HRV, which is in keeping with what we observed in our data. In our sample females showed higher HRV values than males in a consistent manner across all conditions, though it did not reach significance probably due to high variability in the sample. Therefore, rather than a specific effect of our task, we interpret this result as reflecting a general tendency for female to have greater basal levels of vagal activity.

Although our results show a striking correspondence between pleasantness ratings and HRV values, the complex relationship between subjective affective touch and physiological responses remained to be clarified. To date, research investigating this relationship has produced inconclusive and contradicting results. For instance, studies investigating facial muscles reactivity to slow touch have either found an increased zygomatic response (associated with positive affect) unlinked to emotional ratings (Pawling et al., 2017), or relaxation in the corrugator muscles (activation of which is associated with negative affect) without effects on zygomatic activity (Mayo et al., 2018, Ree et al., 2019).

This uncertainty also applies to research investigating the relationship between subjective reports to touch and HRV response. On the one hand, prolonged slow touch has already been shown to decrease heart rate (Triscoli, Croy, Olausson, et al., 2017) and enhance HRV (Triscoli, Croy, Steudte-Schmiedgen, et al., 2017), thus providing evidence for a significant influence of slow touch on the autonomic nervous system. In the latter study, slow brushing delivered with a robot was compared to a vibratory stimulus and HRV was measured as SDNN (standard deviation of normal to normal R-R intervals). Unlike Triscoli and colleagues, we measured HRV as RMSSD, another time-domain measurement, that (compared to SDNN) is more influenced by the parasympathetic nervous system and is more adapted for measuring HRV in shorter intervals (Shaffer & Ginsberg, 2017). On the other hand, another study (Ree et al., 2020) in which healthy participants repeatedly received short skin-to-skin slow touch stimulations on their forearm for about 60 minutes did not find an increase of RMSSD values compared to a rest period.

Compared to both these studies, a chief novelty of our work lies in the evidence of how the manipulation in a variable which is “external” to the touch per se (attractiveness of the toucher) can modulate slow touch effects on a psychophysiological index like HRV. Altogether, this evidence points to the importance of the measures used for quantifying HRV and to the contextual manipulations occurring meanwhile touch is delivered. In fact, in line with the findings of Ree and colleagues (Ree et al., 2020), in the present study slow touch did not result in a general HRV increase, at least compared to fast touch. We found instead a specific interaction with the attractiveness factor, indicating that HRV might increase following slow touch only in specific circumstances. It must be also noted that unlike Ree and colleagues’ study, we did not measure baseline HRV. Therefore, our design is not suitable for detecting specific changes in HRV following slow touch. Interestingly, whereas we stimulated both forearm and palm in our study, the forearm was the only skin site stimulated with slow touch in both Triscoli and colleagues’ and Ree and colleagues’ works, but with two different modalities: in the former brushing was used, similar to the present study; in the latter instead, skin-to-skin touch was delivered by an experimenter. Despite hand and brush touch are rated similarly by healthy participants (Strauss et al., 2019), future studies will be needed to investigate whether touch modality plays a role in modulating HRV responses.

Finally, contrary to our hypothesis, arm touch did not elicit significantly higher HRV than palm touch. This is in keeping with the behavioral data, in which palm touch was preferred over arm touch. This result suggests that unlike touch velocity, skin type (hairy or glabrous) might not be a factor in the physiological response to touch. This lends support to the proposition that activation of CT-fibers is not a necessary component of affective touch responses (Ackerley, Carlsson, et al., 2014), with many cognitive factors like learning, motivation and expectation playing an important role (Ellingsen et al., 2016). Nevertheless, in our knowledge this is the first study collecting HRV responses while touch is delivered to both hairy and glabrous skin, therefore further studies focusing on this aspect will be needed to clarify this question.

Limitations

Overall, the present study provides a further evidence of how contextual factors, specifically attractiveness, change the pleasantness of social tactile interactions. However, it is limited by several considerations. First, we cannot rule out that participants’ knowledge of the identity of the brusher could have influenced their behavioral and psychophysiological responses. Though these touch interactions were mediated by a brush, males’ more than females’ responses might have been highly influenced by their impression of the experimenter. Furthermore, this may have represented an uncontrolled source of heterogeneity external to the task which could have overshadowed the real effects of the independent variables.

Secondly, knowing the identity of the brusher might have dampened the participants’ engagement in the imagination task, making more difficult for them to think that the touch they were receiving was in fact delivered by the person they saw on the screen. Future studies will implement real touch from strangers with different grades of attractiveness to refine our answer to the question of how much attractiveness of a person affects emotional and physiological responses to tactile interactions.

Finally, we should consider that some important confounding variables for measuring HRV were not considered in this study. For instance, Laborde and colleagues list a series of different stable (e.g., smoking, alcohol consumption, weight and height) and transient (e.g., normal sleep routine and no caffeine consumption prior to the experiment) variables which should be investigated in the sample (Laborde et al., 2017). Nevertheless, we believe that these confounds only apply to the group comparisons, since the male and female subgroups might differ significantly in some of those parameters. Otherwise, in our experimental design, the crucial comparisons are protected from the within-subjects design. Related to this last aspect, our study did not include a baseline measurement. Despite collecting a baseline measurement is encouraged to allow detection of changes in HRV after intervention (Shaffer & Ginsberg, 2017), our main goal was the comparison between conditions, rather than measuring changes from rest.

Whereas people with low self-esteem display insight into people with high self-esteem, people with high self-esteem fail to reciprocate

Asymmetries in Mutual Understanding: People With Low Status, Power, and Self-Esteem Understand Better Than They Are Understood. Sanaz Talaifar et al. Perspectives on Psychological Science, October 19, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1177/1745691620958003

Abstract: All too often, people who develop exceptionally astute insights into others remain mysterious to these others. Evidence for such asymmetric understanding comes from several independent domains. Striking asymmetries occur among those who differ in status and power, such that individuals with low status and power understand more than they are understood. We show that this effect extends to people who merely perceive that they have low status: individuals with low self-esteem. Whereas people with low self-esteem display insight into people with high self-esteem, people with high self-esteem fail to reciprocate. Conceptual analysis suggests that asymmetries in mutual understanding may be reduced by addressing deficits in information and motivation among perceivers. Nevertheless, several interventions have been unsuccessful, indicating that the path to symmetric understanding is a steep and thorny one. Further research is needed to develop strategies for fostering understanding of those who are most misunderstood: people with low self-esteem, low status, and low power.

Keywords: interpersonal perception, perceiver effects, target effects, self-esteem, accuracy, status, power, self-verification, self-enhancement, false consensus

Childhood Abuse Classes for Incarcerated Men and Women: Are There Unique Gender Patterns in Abuse Classes?

Childhood Abuse Classes for Incarcerated Men and Women: Are There Unique Gender Patterns in Abuse Classes? Nancy Wolff et al. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, Oct 18, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1177/0886260520965974

Abstract: Childhood adversity is predictive of poorer health and behavioral health outcomes in adulthood. Males and females are known to experience different types of childhood adversity, with females experiencing more sexual and emotional harm in childhood. Latent class analysis (LCA) has been used to identify patterns among types of childhood adversity. These studies have constructed class structures using single gender or blended gender samples. Class structures based on blended gender samples, however, may misrepresent the nuances of gender-specific adversity histories through averaging, potentially distorting the relative need for gender-specific types of intervention. This study investigated whether latent class structures of childhood abuse are equivalent for incarcerated males and females. Our sample included 4,204 residents (3,986 males, 218 females) drawn from a single prison system. Residents completed an hour-long audio computer-assisted self-interview that included questions on 10 types of childhood abuse, depression, and anxiety symptoms, the Beck Hopelessness Scale (BHS), Buss-Perry Aggression Questionnaire, and Criminal Sentiments Scale-Modified (CSS-M). Overall, female residents were both more likely to experience childhood abuse and have more extensive victimization experiences. Small subgroups of males, however, had even more extensive victimization experiences. Abuse patterns for males and females, while optimally clustering in four classes, are rather unique, especially for higher abuse classes, in terms of distribution of membership and types of abuse. These differences may matter in terms of identifying the relative need for therapeutic intervention among incarcerated males and females and targeting those interventions in ways that reflect the gradient and density of therapeutic need. The next step is to test whether using blended or gendered latent class structures matters in terms of predicting outcomes, such as prison-based behavioral health problems, suicidality, and victimization.

Keywords: physical abuse, child abuse, female offenders, sexual assault, male victims, offenders, violence exposure

Cross–cultural Validity of the Reactive–Proactive Aggression Questionnaire Among Adults Across Five Countries

Cross–cultural Validity of the Reactive–Proactive Aggression Questionnaire Among Adults Across Five Countries. Bojana M. Dinić et al. Journal of Interpersonal Violence, October 16, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1177/0886260520966672

Abstract: This study aims to test psychometric properties and factor invariance of the Reactive–Proactive Aggression Questionnaire (RPQ) for adults across five countries: Serbia (N = 409), Mauritius (N = 400), the United States (N = 389), the Netherlands (N = 372), and China (N = 325). The results supported the two–factor structure across country samples, with a marginal model fit in Mauritius. Results also supported the congruent factor structure of Reactive Aggression scale across countries, while the Proactive Aggression scale can be considered as equal across samples from Serbia, the United States, and China, but not from Mauritius and the Netherland. Among items from the Proactive Aggression scale, those referring to open aggression aimed at obtaining social status and dominance, frightening or harming others, obtained the highest loadings across all samples and could be considered as the good representatives of adult proactive aggression. This is the first study in which cross-cultural validation of the RPQ among adults has been tested and results suggested that there are some cultural differences in expression of proactive aggression.

Keywords: Reactive–Proactive Aggression Questionnaire, open aggression, adults, cross–cultural study, factor congruence

PISA stats: An Examination of Different Scale Usage Correction Procedures to Enhance Cross-Cultural Data Comparability

An Examination of Different Scale Usage Correction Procedures to Enhance Cross-Cultural Data Comparability. Jia He, Joanne M. Chung, Fons J. R. van de Vijver. Journal of Cross-Cultural Psychology, October 13, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1177/0022022120960815

Abstract: This study aims to examine different scale usage correction procedures that are meant to enhance the cross-cultural comparability of Likert scale data. Specifically, we examined a priori study design (i.e., anchoring vignettes and overclaiming) and post hoc statistical procedures (i.e., ipsatization and extreme response style correction) in data from the 2012 Programme for International Student Assessment across 64 countries. We analyzed both original item responses and corrected item scores from two targeted scales in an integrative fashion by using multilevel confirmatory factor analysis and multilevel regressions. Results indicate that mean levels and structural relations varied across the correction procedures, although the psychological meaning of the constructs examined did not change. Furthermore, scores were least affected by these procedures for females who did not repeat a grade and students with higher math achievement. We discuss the implications of our findings and offer recommendations for researchers who are considering scale usage correction procedures.

Keywords: anchoring vignettes, overclaiming, response styles, score standardization, cross-cultural comparisons

An evolutionary account for why men have to wait between orgasms

Why Women Can Have Multiple Orgasms and Men Cannot. Glenn Geher. Psychology Today, Oct 18, 2020. https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/darwins-subterranean-world/202010/why-women-can-have-multiple-orgasms-and-men-cannot

Excerpts:

I will never forget Gordon Gallup's invited presentation at the 2007 meeting of the NorthEastern Evolutionary Psychology Society. 

This research essentially answers the question as to why the human erection is shaped with the unique characteristics that it has. From an evolutionary perspective, any adaptation that increases the likelihood of an individual being able to achieve reproductive success at a cost of the reproductive success of competitors will be naturally selected. And this explanation accounts for the unique nature of the human erection in a way that matches the data, along with the accompanying evolutionary framework, quite well.  

During the question and answer session, a young male student asked an interesting question. He essentially asked about the possibility of a male pulling out his own seminal fluid. And, in addition, he asked if this clear possibility posed something of a problem for Dr. Gallup's framework.

Dr. Gallup, a seasoned academic, did not hesitate in his response. He first acknowledged that it was a good question. He then paused, looking for the right words, and said essentially this: You may have noticed that after an ejaculation, an erection dissipates quickly. And it becomes uncomfortable for the penis to be touched at that state. I hypothesize that this is an adaptation to reduce the likelihood of the male pulling out any seminal fluid that he, himself, has just released into a female's reproductive tract. 

Highly convincing evidence that mental health factors are associated with obesity; suggestive evidence that a range of cognitive and psychosocial factors are also; associations tend to be small in statistical size

The psychology of obesity: An umbrella review and evidence-based map of the psychological correlates of heavier body weight. Eric Robinson et al. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, October 18 2020. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2020.10.009

Rolf Degen's take: 

Highlights

• We reviewed meta-analyses of psychological individual differences and body weight.

• Highly convincing evidence that mental health factors are associated with obesity.

• Suggestive evidence that a range of cognitive and psychosocial factors are also.

• However, associations with obesity tend to be small in statistical size.

• People with obesity vs normal weight are psychologically more similar vs different.

Abstract: Psychological factors may explain why some people develop obesity and others remain a normal weight during their life course. We use an umbrella review approach to build an evidence-based map of the psychological correlates of heavier body weight. Synthesising findings from 42 meta-analyses that have examined associations between psychological factors and heavier body weight, we assessed level of evidence for a range of cognitive, psychosocial and mental health individual difference factors. There is convincing evidence that impaired mental health is associated with heavier body weight and highly suggestive evidence that numerous cognitive factors are associated with heavier body weight. However, the relatively low methodological quality of meta-analyses resulted in lower evidential certainty for most psychosocial factors. Psychological correlates of heavier body weight tended to be small in statistical size and on average, people with obesity were likely to be more psychologically similar than different to people with normal weight. We consider implications for understanding the development of heavier body weight and identifying effective public health interventions to reduce obesity.

Keywords: ObesityBMIindividual differencescognitivemental healthpsychosocialpersonalitydepressionanxietyexecutive functionimpulsivity

Monopoly Myths: Is Concentration Eroding Labor’s Share of National Income?

Monopoly Myths: Is Concentration Eroding Labor’s Share of National Income? Joe Kennedy. ITIF, October 13, 2020. https://itif.org/publications/2020/10/13/monopoly-myths-concentration-eroding-labors-share-national-income

Pundits and activists have looked at the reduced share of U.S. national income going to workers and have simply asserted that the cause is increased market concentration. This assessment is misplaced.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

*  Despite the persistent claims that increased market power has hurt workers, the scholarly evidence is weak, while the macroeconomic data is strong and clear in showing that this is not the principal cause.

*  Labor’s share of income has declined slightly over the past two decades, but not principally because capital’s share of income has increased.

*  Most of the decline is offset by an increase in rental income—what renters pay and what the imputed rent homeowners pay for their house. This increase is due to restricted housing markets, not growing employer power in product or labor markets.

*  Antitrust policy is not causing the drop in labor share, so changing it is not the solution. For issues such as employer collusion over wages or excessive use of noncompete agreements, antitrust authorities already have power to act.

*  Stringent antitrust policy would do little to raise the labor share of income, but it could very well reduce investment and productivity growth. The better way to help workers is with pro-growth, pro-innovation policies that boost productivity.

On Bari Weiss comments about the current situation (Stop Being Shocked, Oct 15 2020)

On Bari Weiss comments about the current situation (Stop Being Shocked, Oct 15 2020, https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/stop-being-shocked)

A friend requests some comments about B W's piece.

---

I understand this is a call to inaction... And you must think what to vote, and send your vote. Sorry for not being helpful here, I am paralyzed.

Some thoughts, as requested:

1  I'm afraid that Alexandria Ocasio is, I am sorry to be so Manichean and categorical, a bad person... Hates too much, too much of an activist. It is my belief that, if in power, she would have fewer limits than mainstream politicians. That's why this all happens (her pulling out of a Y Rabin event, other things she says, the way she shows support for bad guys).

2 Lots of people lie, not only Alexandria, and this harms Bari Weiss piece.... We are not sure that the Iranian mullahs, murderous and crazy as they are, are genocidal. When we re-ask, they consistently say that what they want is to erase the Zionist entity, the Republic, not the persons. So why Bari Weiss repeatedly claims (& many others do the same too) that the Tehran's mad mullahs wish to kill unarmed civilians en masse?

That said, if the day comes when Israel is successfully invaded and defeated, I have no doubts that there would be mass displacements of population, very similar to what we saw with Germans after WWII (the Czechs, the Poles, etc., sent Germans packing to Germany after the National Socialists lost the war). But we cannot say so easily that the victors would kill the population à la Rwandan. I may be afraid of that, but cannot write so with such carelessness.

All the other is ok to me. Ignorant, hater-in-chief de Blasio; the KIPP charter schools's stupid, cowardly change in their motto, the allusion to "the illusion of meritocracy" (pardon the alliteration). And the first main thesis, stop being shocked, and accept that what it seems strange is clearly wrong (like Alexandria's views), is ok to me.

3  The second main thesis, that we should have friendships with political opponents, is something I ardently support too. But at times this is not generally possible, it is not so widespread. And we are in such a time.

Let me add and example here I lived a few years ago: A girl in the dating forums asked for an Anarchist boyfriend. And she also said that Communists are acceptable too. Well... When the Communists were in power, they exiled, imprisoned and killed mercilessly the Anarchists. But that was decades ago, I didn't live it, and my enemies' enemies are my friends. Then, I can date a Communist.

4  B Weiss piece will change nothing. My sad note is not about that, it is that the author publishes this because she needs money to pay the rent. She knows this has a negligible effect in the opposing side. That's the (falsely) cynical view.

Being positive about the author, her comments of being horrorized by Trump and simultaneously by the "others" remind me of those I love and who opposed at the same time the Nazis and the Communists (my dear gurus Popper, Hayek, many others). They had to emigrate to England, etc., and of course had no influence at all in the big confrontation that ended in conflagration.

Which is my view... I cannot support Alexandria O (or J Biden) and cannot support Trump. I am living in a permanent toothache, and are paralyzed, as I said at the beginning.

5  My summary is: let's love the others, even if we cannot understand why they vote as they do; and be realistic, which now, at this time in history, means  let's be pessimistic.

A smaller proportion of males reported having a best friend (85% vs 98% of females); the quality of these relationships seemed to be a great deal less intimate than was the case for females

Sex Differences in Intimacy Levels in Best Friendships and Romantic Partnerships. Eiluned Pearce, Anna Machin & Robin I. M. Dunbar. Adaptive Human Behavior and Physiology, Oct 18 2020. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40750-020-00155-z

Rolf Degen's take: https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/1317701988830924801

Abstract

Objectives Close romantic and friendship relationships are crucial for successful survival and reproduction. Both provide emotional support that can have significant effects on an individual’s health and wellbeing, and through this their longer term survival and fitness. Nonetheless, the factors that create and maintain intimacy in close relationships remain unclear. Nor is it entirely clear what differentiates romantic relationships from friendships in these terms. In this paper, we explore which factors most strongly predict intimacy in these two kinds of relationship, and how these differ between the two sexes.

Results Aside from best friendships being highly gendered in both sexes, the dynamics of these two types of relationships differ between the sexes. The intimacy of female relationships was influenced by similarity (homophily) in many more factors (notably dependability, kindness, mutual support, sense of humour) than was the case for men. Some factors had opposite effects in the two sexes: gift-giving had a negative effect on women’s friendships and a positive effect on men’s, whereas shared histories had the opposite effect.

Conclusion These results confirm and extend previous findings that the dynamics of male and female relationships are very different in ways that may reflect differences in their functions.

Discussion

Taken together, these results confirm previous findings that homophily is an important criterion for close relationships (Curry and Dunbar 2013; Launay and Dunbar 2015). In particular, similarity in dependability was consistently found to be strongly predictive of higher levels of intimacy. For women, this was the case in both best friendships and romantic partnerships, but for men dependability was included in the best-fit model only for intimacy in best friendships. For romantic partnerships, none of the variables measured showed significant partial relationships in men. Aside from these similarities, however, the results suggest that intimacy in males' friendships is underpinned by very different dynamics than intimacy in females' friendships.

Mirroring previous findings with respect to romantic partners (Buss 1989; Pawlowski and Dunbar 1999, 2001), we found that women seemed to be much more demanding in their selection of romantic partners than men were. The intimacy of women’s relationships were homophilous for at least four traits (financial prospects, outgoingness, dependability and kindness), whereas no traits predicted intimacy for males. Similarly, longterm maintenance of women’s romantic relationships were predicted by relationship duration, gift-giving and supportiveness, but for males there was only one significant predictor (the frequency of face-to-face contact). In contrast, best friend relationships exhibited a very different pattern: their intimacy is predicted by similarity on four traits for both women and men, but the traits are very different (education, humour, dependability and happiness for women versus relationship duration, financial prospects, outgoingness and dependability in men).

Longevity in both women’s and men’s friendships was best predicted by provision of mutual support, but differed in the influence of shared histories (negative in the case of women, positive in the case of men). The traits characterizing women’s friendships seem to have more to do with the closeness of the relationship itself, whereas those characterizing men’s friendships seem to have more to do with engaging in social activities. Interestingly, none of the best-fit models included physical attractiveness or athleticism, indicating that personality and resource factors (such as education and financial potential) may be more important for intimacy levels in these close non-kin relationships than traits that might be assumed to correlate more directly with genetic fitness. This likely reflects the fact that relationships are indirect, rather than direct, means of enhancing fitness. In other words, this is a two-step process: we form close relationships not simply to access a direct fitness reward but in order to create coalitions or alliances that in turn allow us to maximise fitness. One possibility, for example, might be to mitigate the fertility costs of group-living (Mesnick 1997; Wilson and Mesnick 1997; Dunbar 2018a, 2019; Dunbar and MacCarron 2019).

The fact that outgoingness was a predictor for the intimacy of men’s friendships might be linked to the fact that males tend to prefer social interaction in groups whereas females have a strong preference for one-to-one interactions (Baumeister and Sommer 1997; Benenson & Heath, 2006; Dávid-Barrett et al. 2015; Gabriel and Gardner 1999; Rustin and Foels 2014). In addition to these homophily effects, we also found that mutual support and shared history are important for intimacy, and are therefore key factors underpinning the successful maintenance of close personal relationships. Mutual support had a much stronger influence on intimacy in female participants for both romantic partners and best friends, but only in respect of best friends for men (Fig. 2). In relation to their romantic partners, the degree to which men considered in-person contact an important mechanism for relationship maintenance was the strongest predictor of intimacy, at least when the sample was considered as a whole, irrespective of the sex of the best friend.

Interestingly, the extent to which shared history were considered an important mechanism of relationship maintenance in best friendships had opposite effects on intimacy in men and women. Whereas this relationship was positive in men, in women it was negative (the greater the emphasis on shared history, the lower the level of intimacy). This might, again, reflect the difference between men’s preference for group-based activities (for which shared history is usually an important component) and women’s preference for more intimate dyadic ones (for which shared history might be less important than, for example, conversation and levels of mutual disclosure).

In women, both the importance placed on gift-giving and mutual support as ways of sustaining romantic partnerships were included in the best-fit model, but these variables had opposite effects on intimacy. The greater the importance placed on gift-giving, the lower the intimacy; in contrast, the greater the importance given to mutual support as a mechanism of relationship maintenance, the greater the reported intimacy. Whereas gift-giving is observed cross-culturally as a means of creating and maintaining social network ties (e.g. Wiessner 1983), it may be that this strategy is only appropriate in the more distal layers of the social network where tokens of affiliation are required; in the inner layers, intimacy and emotional closeness may be more important (see Sutcliffe et al. 2012). It is possible that gift-giving is associated with forms of strict reciprocity in relationships that block the development of deeper emotional ties.

The importance of intimacy in same-sex female friendships may explain why similar humour profiles were found to be important for female but not male best friendships: laughter is thought to be important in the creation of social bonds (Dunbar 2017; Dunbar et al. 2012; Manninen et al. 2017). In contrast, similarity in social characteristics (outgoingness and social connections) were deemed more important for intimacy in male best friendships, perhaps reflecting the fact that men tend to prefer interacting in groups rather than one-to-one (Dávid-Barrett et al. 2015). Why this might be so evolutionarily remains to be answered, but one obvious suggestion relates to men’s near-universal role in communal defence in small scale societies and the demand this imposes for being able to cooperate in groups.

These behavioural differences suggest that best friend relationships are viewed very differently by the two sexes, corroborating and extending previous studies which suggest that the two sexes have very different expectations as regards friendships (Hall 2011, 2012; Machin and Dunbar 2013) and very different social styles (Roberts and Dunbar 2015). This strongly suggests that friendships serve rather different functional roles in the two sexes arising from different evolutionary selection pressures. While romantic relationships are, inevitably, equally common in the two sexes (in both cases, 86% of respondents reported having a romantic partner), a smaller proportion of males reported having a best friend (85%, compared to 98% of females). Moreover, whereas only 2% of females had a romantic partner but no best friend, 15% of males were in this situation suggesting that males, but not females, are more likely to have one or the other but not both. Although a significant proportion of males reported having a best friend, the quality of these relationships seemed to be a great deal less intimate than was the case for females (Fig. 2). This reflects earlier findings suggesting that the male social world is built around half a dozen relatively casual relationships, whereas the female social world is built around one or two much more intimate, and hence more fragile, dyadic relationships (Benenson and Christakos 2003; Roberts and Dunbar 2015; Dávid-Barrett et al. 2015).

In both sexes, only a minority of best friends were opposite-sex (15% for females; 22% in males). The gender homophily is itself striking, and probably reflects the fact that social networks are highly assortative for sex (Block and Grund 2014; Mehta and Strough 2009; Roberts et al. 2008; Rose 1985; Dunbar 2021). Even conversations readily segregate by sex once they contain more than four individuals (Dunbar 2016b; Dahmardeh and Dunbar 2017). Although having male best friends may be advantageous to females in terms of protection against the unwanted attentions of other males (Mesnick’s bodyguard hypothesis: Mesnick 1997; Wilson and Mesnick 1997; Dunbar 2010; see also Snyder et al. 2011; Ryder et al. 2016), it may be that male partners are likely to become jealous if their romantic partners show too much interest in male best friends, fearing either mate theft or cuckoldry. This might make cross-sex best friends less functional for paired females. Alternatively, intimate friendships between women may be more beneficial or easier to maintain (if only because of similar conversational styles: Coates 1996; Grainger and Dunbar 2009), while common interests make cooperation more straightforward (de Waal and Luttrell 1986).

These data are, of course, self-report data and represent the views of only one party in a relationship, and so are inevitably subject to the usual distortions this can involve. Nonetheless, in that respect, they do represent the aspirations and expectations of the person concerned, and it is these as much as anything that we are here interested in. While relationships are necessarily two-way processes, it is nonetheless failure of one individual’s expectations to be met in a relationship that is the usual cause of relationship breakdown (Dunbar and Machin 2014). Relationships break down because one party is dissatisfied with the deal they are getting, not because both parties “agree to disagree”. In this sense, these results provide us with direct insights into how individuals view their relationships, irrespective of whether they are right in their views.

Why do animals sometimes kill each other's offspring? Among hyenas, infanticide is a leading source of juvenile mortality; in all observed cases, killers were adult females, frequently higher-ranking than the mothers

Infanticide by females is a leading source of juvenile mortality in a large social carnivore. Ally Kelsey Brown et al. , Oct 17 2020. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.05.02.074237

Rolf Degen's take: https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/1317687883348795392

Abstract: Social animals benefit from their group-mates, so why do they sometimes kill each other's offspring? A major barrier to understanding the evolution of infanticide is a lack of data from natural populations. Especially when perpetrated by females, infanticide remains poorly understood, because the increased mating opportunities that explain infanticide by males do not apply in females. Using 30 years of data from several spotted hyena groups, we show that infanticide is a leading source of juvenile mortality, and we describe the circumstances under which it occurs. In all observed cases, killers were adult females, but victims could be of both sexes. Killers only sometimes consumed the victims. Mothers sometimes cared for their deceased offspring, and sometimes consumed the body. Killers tended to be higher-ranking than the mothers of victims, and killers were sometimes aided by kin. Our results are consistent with theory that infanticide by females reflects competition among matrilines.

Key words: infanticide by females, matrilineal society, thanatology, female-female competition, nepotism 

We attribute our own phone use to positive social motives & overestimate our ability to multitask compared to others; we may fail to recognize the negative consequences of phone use

Barrick, Elyssa M., Diana Tamir, and Alixandra Barasch. 2020. “The Unexpected Social Consequences of Diverting Attention to Our Phones.” PsyArXiv. October 18. doi:10.31234/osf.io/7mjax

Rolf Degen's take: https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/1317687883348795392

Abstract: Phone use is everywhere. Previous work has shown that phone use during social experiences has detrimental effects on cognitive processing, well-being, and relationships. In this work, we first replicate this by showing the negative effects of phone use on relationships during both controlled and naturalistic social experiences. In Study 1, participants that were randomly assigned to complete a task with a confederate who used their phone part of the time reported lower feelings of social connection than participants paired with a partner who did not use their phone at all. In Study 2, dyads in a park completed a survey about their experience of the day. Participants reported that increased phone use resulted in lower feelings of social connection, enjoyment, and engagement in the experience. People were keenly aware that phone use in social situations can be harmful. If the negative effects of phone use are so obvious, why do people continue to phub their friends? Studies 3 and 4 demonstrate that people accurately intuit the effects of others’ phone use on experiences, but fail to recognize the effects of their own phone use. Study 4 explains this phubbing blindspot by demonstrating asymmetric positive attributions – people attribute their own phone use to positive social motives, and overestimate their ability to multitask compared to others. These findings suggest that people may fail to recognize the negative consequences of their own phone use by attributing positive motives for phone use to themselves.