Together the studies suggest that men have more perceived power in the public domain, however, this domain has a lower preference weighting than the private domain where women have more power than men

Weighting power by preference eliminates gender differences. Sverker Sikström ,Laura Mai Stoinski,Kristina Karlsson,Lotta Stille,Johan Willander. November 5, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0234961

Abstract: Power can be applied in different domains (e.g., politics, work, romantic relationships, family etc.), however, we do not always reflect on which domains we have power in and how important power in these domains is. A dominant idea is that men have more power than women. This notion may be biased because the concept of power is associated with public life. We introduce the concept of preference-weighted power (PWP), a measure of power that includes different domains in life, weighted by the domains’ subjective importance. Two studies investigated power from this perspective. In Study 1, participants generated words related to power, which were quantified/categorized by latent semantic analysis to develop a semantic measure of the power construct. In Study 2, we computed a PWP index by weighting the participants' self-rated power in different power domains with the importance of having power in that domain. Together the studies suggest that men have more perceived power in the public domain, however, this domain has a lower preference weighting than the private domain where women have more power than men. Finally, when preferences for power in different domains were considered, no gender differences were observed. These results emphasize gender difference in different domains and may change how we perceive men’s and women’s power in our society.

General discussion

As discussed in the introduction, people’s concept of power is often biased towards power in public domains (e.g, [8]), where men earn higher salaries than women and fill the majority of powerful positions in work and politics [13–15, 36]. This suggests that men hold more public power compared to women and supports the idea that men have more power in general. The goal of the present study was to broaden the current view on power and gender, by introducing the concept of preference-weighted power. Looking at people's preferences suggests that private domains, for example family, friends and romantic relationships, are viewed as being more essential in life. However, these domains have often been neglected from a power perspective. Therefore, we applied the concept of preference-weighted power (PWP). The findings from these measures converge on the idea that women have more perceived power, in social relationships which as shown in Study 1, also were the domains that were most commonly generated as the most important are in life. However, when in Study 2, weighing the relative importance of powers across domains, there were no gender differences in domain-independent power, as measured by PWP.

General power, public and male power. In Study 1 a statistical semantic approach to measure and define people's concepts of power was applied. In particular we investigated how the participants associated men and women with the concepts of power, work power and social relationship power. We hypothesized that the participants’ view of power would be biased towards their concept of work power as well as their concept of male power. Consistent with our hypothesis, the words describing the concept of work power were significantly semantically closer to the words describing power in general, compared to the words describing social relationship power. Thus, supports the notion that people’s idea of power is actually biased toward the public domain (e.g., [7]). Furthermore, the results showed a stronger association between power in general and participants' idea of male power, compared to their view of female power. That people perceive power as stereotypically masculine could imply that the participants associate men with more power than women. The data from the present study thereby confirms a socially conditioned power concept. However, the current paper also provides an opportunity to recondition these social constructs by providing empirical data suggesting that women have power in domains perceived as important independently of gender, e.g., family, friends. In addition, we explored the connection of male and female power to work versus social relationship power. The results suggest that the words created by the participants to describe their view on work power were closer related to their concept of male power compared to female power, implying that people view work power as a stereotypically masculine domain. The opposite was true for social relationship power. Here, the words generated to describe social relationship power were closest related to the participants’ view of female power, suggesting that social relationship power is perceived as a predominantly female domain of power. The results are interesting as they reflected typical gender-role stereotypes, picturing women to anticipate communal goals such as family and other social relationships, while men are expected to possess agentic traits and to pursue goals related to career and work. People often associate power with success in work related domains as well as with people who possess agentic traits. These findings are also consistent with previous literature showing that men are stereotypically perceived as more agentic, as such for example competitive, achievement oriented and assertive (e.g., [37]) and associated to executive positions at work and in politics, where people might perceive men as more powerful than women (e.g., [16, 17, 37, 38]). However, these premises might require a revision of how we look at power, as the common held view on power neglects other possible domains where power can be exerted. Thus, the result emphasizes the need to revise the concept of power in the context of gender.

The most important area in life. In study 1, we also investigated the relationship between domains where men and women have power and the domains that people think are important in life. Consistent with our hypothesis, the words female participants used to describe their domains of power were semantically closer to words describing what both genders considered important in life, compared to the words generated by men to describe their domains of power. This suggests that women have more power in domains that are important to people. As the participants primarily described private domains, when asked what is important in life, the findings are well aligned with previous literature [20, 21]. Previous research highlights the subjective as well as objective importance of private domains in life [21]. Social relationships, such as family, partner and friends are more important for people as well as their well-being and health compared to material needs, and these findings seem to be even stronger for men [10, 12, 39]. Even though in the last decades men have become increasingly involved in housework and childcare, alongside to women's larger economic and political representation and contribution [36, 40, 41], women still show a larger involvement in private domains of life (in USA; [42]) where they have power over the majority of decisions associated with family, healthcare, food, daily purchases etc. [43–45].

Preference weighted female power and power in social relationships. As addressed in the introduction, power can be defined in many different ways, and different power concepts stress different decision-making domains, depending on the specific interest of the investigation. Further, as indicated in Study 1, people often relate power with work/public power, without reflecting on other domains of power and their personal preference for these domains (e.g., [8]). Moreover, although previous research has highlighted the subjective and objective significance of private domains in life, very little prior research has been conducted in which personal preferences for these domains have been investigated (e.g., [21]). Therefore, we introduced the concept of preference weighted power in Study 2, and measured it by weighting the participants’ self-rated power with their preferences for specific domains. Consistent with our hypothesis, women had relatively more perceived power in social relationships compared to the work domains. When testing gender differences, women showed significantly higher perceived private power than men. Again, the results reflect the notion of women's larger power in private domains. This is consistent with the concept of women’s larger dyadic power, defined as the power to influence others in close relationships (e.g., [8, 35]). This study did not demonstrate men’s larger PWP power compared to women. However, men had relatively more perceived power in public compared to private domains, which is consistent with the results of Study 1, suggesting that work power is perceived as a male domain of power.

An additional focus of the study was to investigate gender differences in the domain independent PWP scores, including both private and public domains. Previous literature has often neglected private domains of power and hence attributed more power to men [16, 17, 46–48]. In contrast, no significant gender difference became apparent when using PWP as a power measure in this study and the results were consistent, regardless of the applied approach to compute the preference weights. Thus, by extending the concept of power to private domains (e.g, social relationships) and by taking preferences for specific power domains into consideration, we were able to demonstrate the possibility that men and women have similar amounts of power. This shows that, despite the still prevalent inequalities in public power, women are not powerless.

Power was investigated using common self-report measures as well as semantics. Here, including statistical semantics improved the study’s sensitivity beyond mere keyword counting. Further, we used factor analyses to assess the underlying structure of the PWP scores in Study 2. Serving as a manipulation check, the analyses supported the notion that power can be divided into public versus private power, thus enabling us to study the powers separately. In addition, applying different approaches to compute the PWP scores allowed us to control possible artefacts (e.g. response biases).

Methodological considerations. The results of the present study suggest that, despite gender differences in domain specific kinds of power, men and women do not differ in preference weighted power. However, the current project of course also has a number of limitations and shortcomings. First, as the majority of participants resided in the US, generalising the results of the study to other cultural contexts is difficult. For example, traditional gender role stereotypes, reflected by the concepts of male and female power measured in Study 1, could be even stronger pronounced in less gender-equal societies, while being less prominent in high-parity nations that are closer to achieving gender equality than the US (e.g., in the Scandinavian countries, [49]). The traditional division of labor between the genders has undergone great changes over time. As fathers perceive a growing desire to play an active part in childcare [50], the number of stay-home-fathers has increased together with an overall greater involvement in domestic tasks [51, 52]. Simultaneously, a rise in women’s economic contributions has been observed, reducing the likelihood of fathers to be the family’s main or even sole source of income [40, 41]. As men and women’s roles become more similar, people’s gender role stereotypes might change concurrently (see Social Role Theory; [53, 54]). These changes could improve gender parity, as traditional gender role stereotypes play an important part at maintaining inequalities between men and women in society [55, 56]. Additionally, to the extent that observers perceive these social roles and gender stereotypes to develop, they might also perceive power disparity between men and women to diminish (see also; [8]). Thus, prevalent gender differences in public as well as private powers might be less pronounced in future societies. However, many men still fill in the role of the major financial provider, while women adapt the role as the main caretaker in the family [42], earn less than men for comparable work and are underrepresented in high status positions at work and politics [13–15, 36]. Therefore, diminishing inequities in public domains as well as raising awareness of these problems is still of major importance.

Second, internet users are not completely representative of the general population [57, 58]. Since the studies were conducted via Mechanical Turk, the generalizability of our finding to the whole US population might be limited. As we neither included a measure of the participant’s gender role attitudes, nor investigated other potential influences like age, education or social status, the results might look different when comparing people of different age, educational and financial backgrounds. For example, previous research suggests that younger age as well as higher education and income is associated with more egalitarian or critical attitudes towards traditional gender roles [55, 59]. However, despite the generalizability problems of internet-based studies, previous research has shown that internet users are still more representative than the more commonly used convenience samples [57, 58]. Finally, the large sample sizes ensured a sufficiently high statistical power.

Finally, as noticed by the various definitions of general power, the traditional use of the concept as delineated by Townsend et al. [3] refers to different forms of power, in particular ‘power over’ and be ‘powered by’. To elaborate the matter further, power is exercised on many levels, such as between and within areas of life (e.g., [2, 3, 60, 61]). For example, a person might have high power over decisions made in their private life (e.g., parenting), while simultaneously having to obey the orders from their supervisor in a work setting. Furthermore, decision-making can also differ within domains; for example, one member of a romantic dyad could have control over the economy, and the other make decisions on how to manage specific household tasks and children's education. Thus, power is a complex construct. In the present work, forms and levels of power were not explicitly addressed. Participants freely interpreted the concept of power in general and in relation to gender, social relationships, and work. Using the same method, it would be of interest to explicitly investigate different forms and levels of perceived power.

Furthermore, semantic analyses of power could be expanded. In the present study, LSA was used to analyze power associations. LSA also enables analysis of more extensive collections of text then we collected in the present study. In a study by Townsend and colleagues [3], Mexican women’s manifestly described power experiences were analyzed with a qualitative approach. In research by Karlsson et al. [28], two quantitative methods were used to analyze women's and men's memory reports. LSA to measure the latently described (i.e., the underlying meaning in the expressed words) and linguistic inquiry word count (LIWC; e.g. [62]) to measure the manifestly described (i.e., the actual words said). In line with the present work, it was found that the female participants latently were oriented towards social relationships in their memory descriptions than the male participants were. Thus, there are many analytic methodologies that could shed further light on the dimensions of power.

In sum, the results illustrate how people’s definition of power is biased towards public domains, which are further stronger associated with men than women. However, it was also found that women have more perceived power in the private domain. This highlights the need to broaden our perception of power, as power can be exerted in many important domains in life. Because when considering many different domains of power, weighted by their relative importance (PWP), we demonstrated a lack of domain-independent gender differences in preference weighted power. Taken together, the results of this project may significantly change how we perceive power.

Stimulating reflection on organ donation reduces reported registrations as donors; a commitment nudge does not increase the willingness to become an organ donor, & reduces procrastination reasons for not becoming one

Thinking about and deciding to be an organ donor: An experimental analysis. Justin Buffat, Lorenz Goette, Simona Grassi. Social Science & Medicine, November 13 2020, 113504. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socscimed.2020.113504

Rolf Degen's take: https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/1327480200280543233

Highlights

-  Two lab-in-the-field experiments on the decision to become an organ donor

-  Stimulating reflection on organ donation reduces reported registrations as donors

-  A commitment nudge does not increase the willingness to become an organ donor

-  A commitment nudge reduces procrastination reasons for not becoming a donor

The marginalization of children and childhood, it is proposed, has obscured our understanding of how cultural forms emerge and why they are sustained

From 2002... Why Don't Anthropologists Like Children? Lawrence A. Hirschfeld. American Anthropologist, June 2002. https://doi.org/10.1525/aa.2002.104.2.611

Abstract: Few major works in anthropology focus specifically on children, a curious state of affairs given that virtually all contemporary anthropology is based on the premise that culture is learned, not inherited. Although children have a remarkable and undisputed capacity for learning generally, and learning culture in particular, in significant measure anthropology has shown little interest in them and their lives. This article examines the reasons for this lamentable lacunae and offers theoretical and empirical reasons for repudiating it. Resistance to child‐focused scholarship, it is argued, is a byproduct of (1) an impoverished view of cultural learning that overestimates the role adults play and underestimates the contribution that children make to cultural reproduction, and (2) a lack of appreciation of the scope and force of children's culture, particularly in shaping adult culture. The marginalization of children and childhood, it is proposed, has obscured our understanding of how cultural forms emerge and why they are sustained. Two case studies, exploring North American children's beliefs about social contamination, illustrate these points. 

Keywords: anthropology of childhood, children's culture, acquisition of cultural knowledge, race

David Schmitt summarizing... Very skinny men are viewed as a little more likely to be "kinky" or "prudish" (wait, what?)

The Influence of Body Shape on Impressions of Sexual Traits. Flora Oswald, Amanda Champion & Cory L. Pedersen. The Journal of Sex Research, Nov 12 2020. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2020.1841723

David Schmitt's take: https://twitter.com/PsychoSchmitt/status/1327232765935423488

Abstract: The assumptions people make from body shape can have serious implications for the well-being of the individuals inhabiting such bodies. Fat people are subject to pervasive and resilient social stigma and discrimination, leading to negative mental and physical health outcomes, including negative sexuality-related outcomes. Though previous studies have examined the personality traits attributed to, or the sexual attractiveness of, varying body shapes, no research has asked participants to make attributions of sexual traits to varying body shapes. The purpose of this study was thus to examine sexuality-related trait inferences made from body shapes. Participants (N = 891, 70% women, M age = 25.28) were randomly assigned to view 5 computer-generated 3-dimensional body models of varying shapes developed using the skinned multi-person linear model. Participants rated their sexual attraction to each body and the degree to which each of 30 traits (10 personality and 20 sexual) applied. Results demonstrated that larger bodies are generally viewed as less sexually attractive. Further, constellations of sexuality traits were predicted reliably by body shape, demonstrating that people hold sexual stereotypes about a diverse range of body shapes. This study provides an initial comprehensive demonstration of the sexuality-specific traits associated with varying body shapes.

The sexual selection of young American females may have shifted via exposure to media images of extreme male physiques; they seem to prefer mating with better bodies than before, as men already did

Does Exercise Make Me More Attractive? Exploring the Relations Between Exercise and Mate Value. Urska Dobersek, Bridget Stallings, Gabrielle C. Wy, Charleen R. Case & Jon K. Maner. Evolutionary Psychological Science, Nov 13 2020. https://rd.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40806-020-00270-w

Rolf Degen's take: https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/1327212045125693443

Abstract: Sexual selection in human evolution is well-established. Females are relatively more inclined than males to prefer mates that exhibit physical and social dominance (e.g., muscular, financially successful men); whereas males are relatively more inclined than females to seek mates displaying signs of high reproductive potential (e.g., young, attractive women). Given that physical training has the potential to improve traits related to sexual selection in both males and females, we examined if exercise habits altered assessments of mate value in a cross-sectional analysis of 265 undergraduate students. Participants completed a demographic questionnaire, an “Exercise Habits Inventory,” and a “Mate Value Inventory” for the assessment of the characteristics desired in their “ideal” mates and for self-perceptions of intrinsic mate value. Consistent with prior research, females preferred mates who were independent and generous, and both males and females preferred physically attractive mates. Females, independent of exercise frequency, were more selective than males as evidenced by a desire for “ideal” partners with a significantly higher mate value. Moreover, more frequent exercisers, independent of sex, had significantly higher self-perceived mate value than less frequent exercisers. Finally, a pattern consistent with theories of assortative mating was demonstrated via a significant positive relation between self-perceptions and the mate value of “ideal” partners.

Females 

Those who had a therapist discuss the possibility of repressed memory were 28.6 times more likely to report recovered memories; of those who reported recovered memories, 60% cut off contact with some of their family

Reports of Recovered Memories in Therapy in Undergraduate Students. Lawrence Patihis et al. Psychological Reports, November 11, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1177/0033294120971756

Abstract: Psychologists have debated the wisdom of recovering traumatic memories in therapy that were previously unknown to the client, with some concerns over accuracy and memory distortions. The current study surveyed a sample of 576 undergraduates in the south of the United States. Of 188 who reported attending therapy or counselling, 8% reported coming to remember memories of abuse, without any prior recollection of that abuse before therapy. Of those who reported recovered memories, 60% cut off contact with some of their family. Within those who received therapy, those who had a therapist discuss the possibility of repressed memory were 28.6 times more likely to report recovered memories, compared to those who received therapy without such discussion. These findings mirror a previous survey of US adults and suggest attempts to recover repressed memories in therapy may continue in the forthcoming generation of adults.

Keywords: Recovered memory, childhood abuse, psychotherapy, memory wars, repressed memory, dissociative amnesia

Moral Outrage and Punishment in Response to (even Minor) Alterations to Rituals

Stein, Daniel, Juliana Schroeder, Nick Hobson, Francesca Gino, and Michael I. Norton. 2020. “When Alterations Are Violations: Moral Outrage and Punishment in Response to (even Minor) Alterations to Rituals.” PsyArXiv. November 12. doi:10.1037/pspi0000352.supp

Abstract: From Catholics performing the sign of the cross since the fourth century to Americans reciting the Pledge of Allegiance since the 1890s, group rituals (i.e., predefined sequences of symbolic actions) have strikingly consistent features over time. Seven studies (N = 4,213) document the sacrosanct nature of rituals: Because group rituals symbolize sacred group values, even minor alterations to them provoke moral outrage and punishment. In Pilot Studies A and B, fraternity members who failed to complete initiation activities that were more ritualistic elicited relatively greater moral outrage and hazing from their fraternity brothers. Study 1 uses secular holiday rituals to explore the dimensions of ritual alteration—both physical and psychological—that elicit moral outrage. Study 2 demonstrates that altering a ritual elicits outrage even beyond the extent to which the ritual alteration is seen as violating descriptive and injunctive norms. In Study 3, group members who viewed male circumcision as more ritualistic (i.e., Jewish versus Muslim participants) expressed greater moral outrage in response to a proposal to alter circumcision to make it safer. Study 4 uses the Pledge of Allegiance ritual to explore how the intentions of the person altering the ritual influence observers’ moral outrage and punishment. Finally, in Study 5, even minor alterations elicited comparable levels of moral outrage to major alterations of the Jewish Passover ritual. Across both religious and secular rituals, the more ingroup members believed that rituals symbolize sacred group values, the more they protected their rituals—by punishing those who violate them.

Plausible deniability: People often attribute rumours to an individual in a knowledgeable position two steps removed from them (a credible friend of a friend)

It happened to a friend of a friend: inaccurate source reporting in rumour diffusion. Sacha Altay, Nicolas Claidière and Hugo Mercier. Evolutionary Human Sciences, 22020, e49, November 2020. https://doi.org/10.1017/ehs.2020.53

Rolf Degen's take: https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/1326929913572683777

Abstract: People often attribute rumours to an individual in a knowledgeable position two steps removed from them (a credible friend of a friend), such as ‘my friend's father, who's a cop, told me about a serial killer in town’. Little is known about the influence of such attributions on rumour propagation, or how they are maintained when the rumour is transmitted. In four studies (N = 1824) participants exposed to a rumour and asked to transmit it overwhelmingly attributed it either to a credible friend of a friend, or to a generic friend (e.g. ‘a friend told me about a serial killer in town’). In both cases, participants engaged in source shortening: e.g. when told by a friend that ‘a friend told me …’ they shared the rumour as coming from ‘a friend’ instead of ‘a friend of friend’. Source shortening and reliance on credible sources boosted rumour propagation by increasing the rumours’ perceived plausibility and participants’ willingness to share them. Models show that, in linear transmission chains, the generic friend attribution dominates, but that allowing each individual to be exposed to the rumour from several sources enables the maintenance of the credible friend of a friend attribution.

Check also Altay, Sacha, Anne-Sophie Hacquin, and Hugo Mercier. 2019. “Why Do so Few People Share Fake News? It Hurts Their Reputation.” PsyArXiv. October 1. https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2020/04/why-do-so-few-people-share-fake-news-it.html

The evolution of mate choice: A key mechanism may be the sense of beauty—the feeling whose function it is to reward attention to, and engagement with, attractive objects

Back to the Basics of Mate Choice: The Evolutionary Importance of Darwin’s Sense of Beauty. Rafael Lucas Rodríguez. The Quarterly Review of Biology, Volume 95, Number 4, Dec 2020. https://www.journals.uchicago.edu/doi/abs/10.1086/711781

Abstract: There is a simple and general explanation for the evolution of mate choice that does not rely on benefits to be gained from favoring some potential mates over others, nor on ornament-preference genetic correlations (but that can help establish such benefits and correlations). Mate choice necessarily arises from competition to engage the powerful but discriminating reward mechanisms that regulate sexual interactions. Progress in understanding the evolution of mate choice will come from analyzing the subjective nature of the cognitive-emotional mechanisms that regulate its expression. A key mechanism may be the sense of beauty—the feeling whose function it is to reward attention to, and engagement with, attractive objects. Any animal whose behavior and decision-making are regulated by mechanisms of emotion and feeling may possess the sense of beauty. Competition to be perceived as beautiful engages brain-generated, top-down influences on perception and subjective experience, adding manifold ways to improve ornament attractiveness. In this paper, I discuss the evolutionary consequences of mate choice involving the sense of beauty and how to test for it.

Both face and body images were rated as being more attractive when presented in groups than when presented in isolation, demonstrating that the cheerleader effect is not restricted to faces

The ‘cheerleader effect’ in facial and bodily attractiveness: A result of memory bias and not perceptual encoding. Jean Y J Hsieh et al. Quarterly Journal of Experimental Psychology, November 11, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1177/1747021820976087

Rolf Degen's take: https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/1326778715255304192

Abstract: Individual faces are rated as more attractive when presented in a group compared to when presented individually; a finding dubbed the ‘cheerleader effect’. As a relatively recent discovery, the conditions necessary to observe the effect are not clearly understood. We sought to better define these conditions by examining two parameters associated with the effect. Our first aim was to determine whether the effect is specific to faces or occurs also for human bodies. Both face and body images were rated as being more attractive when presented in groups than when presented in isolation, demonstrating that the cheerleader effect is not restricted to faces. Further, the effect was significantly larger for bodies than faces. Our second aim was to determine whether the cheerleader effect originates from a bias in memory or occurs during perceptual encoding. Participants in the ‘memory’ condition provided attractiveness ratings after images had been removed from the testing screen, whereas participants in the ‘perceptual’ condition provided ratings while the images remained visible, thereby eliminating the memory components of the paradigm. Significant cheerleader effects were only observed in the memory condition. We conclude that the cheerleader effect for faces and bodies is due to a bias in memory and does not occur at an initial stage of perceptual encoding.

Keywords: body perception, cheerleader effect, memory bias, attractiveness, perceptual encoding

Not only is there a smell of fear, but this also renders fear “contagious”: People who smelled armpit fear became physiologically aroused (increased galvanic skin response)

A Path to Identifying the Smell of Fear. Shiri Karagach et al. Chemical Senses, 2020, Vol 45, 699–804, The Eighteenth International Symposium on Olfaction and Taste (ISOT XVIII) and the Fifty-First Association for Chemoreception Sciences Annual Meeting (AChemS LI), Aug 2020, doi:10.1093/chemse/bjaa061

Rolf Degen's take: https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/1326592651186085889

Abstract: Several studies found that body odor collected from human participants in a state of fear has pronounced behavioral and physiological effects on conspecifics. Body-odor can arise from sweat emitted primarily from two types of glands: eccrine and apocrine. The relative contribution of these sources to human social chemosignaling remains unclear. The importance of understanding this is not only the basic building blocks of social chemosignaling behavior, but it is a critical methodological step towards the holy grail of social chemosignaling research, namely identifying the molecules at play. To identify social chemosignals, from where should we collect emissions? From eccrine or apocrine regions? To address these questions, we collected eccrine (lower back)and apocrine (armpit) sweat from ~750 individuals in two states: Fear - first-time military parachuting, and Control - physical exercise. We then exposed ~25 experimental participants to these sources. We found that relative to control, fear sweat was perceived as more intense, less pleasant and rated as more fearful. Measurement of the galvanic skin response (GSR), a robust measure of autonomic arousal, implied pronounced GSR responses to armpit but not lower-back fearsweat. In other words, not only is there a smell of fear, but this also renders fear “contagious”: People who smelled armpit fear became physiologically aroused. Given that armpit sweat is a potential meaningful source for chemosignaling, further chemical analysis was facilitated with gas-chromatography mass-spectrometry (GC-MS). Principal-component analysis (PCA) uncovered clear separation between armpit fear and control sweat. This allowed us to identify a limited bouquet of chemicals evident in fear but not control sweat.

Paternity uncertainty profoundly shapes human relationships, reducing not only the investment contributed by paternal versus maternal kin, but also forms of prosocial behavior between individuals

Bressan, Paola, and Peter Kramer. 2020. “Human Kin Detection.” PsyArXiv. November 11. doi:10.1002/wcs.1347

Rolf Degen's take: https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/1326494109268373504

Abstract: Natural selection has favored the evolution of behaviors that benefit not only one's genes, but also their copies in genetically related individuals. These behaviors include optimal outbreeding (choosing a mate that is neither too closely related, nor too distant), nepotism (helping kin), and spite (hurting non-kin at a personal cost), and all require some form of kin detection or kin recognition. Yet, kinship cannot be assessed directly; human kin detection relies on heuristic cues that take into account individuals' context (whether they were reared by our mother, or grew up in our home, or were given birth by our spouse), appearance (whether they smell or look like us), and ability to arouse certain feelings (whether we feel emotionally close to them). The uncertainties of kin detection, along with its dependence on social information, create ample opportunities for the evolution of deception and self-deception. For example, babies carry no unequivocal stamp of their biological father, but across cultures they are passionately claimed to resemble their mother's spouse; to the same effect, 'neutral' observers are greatly influenced by belief in relatedness when judging resemblance between strangers. Still, paternity uncertainty profoundly shapes human relationships, reducing not only the investment contributed by paternal versus maternal kin, but also prosocial behavior between individuals who are related through one or more males rather than females alone. Because of its relevance to racial discrimination and political preferences, the evolutionary pressure to prefer kin to non-kin has a manifold influence on society at large.

No mechanism known to explain positive observed effect of 2.45 GHz Wi‐Fi exposure on sleep‐dependent memory consolidation

Effects of 2.45 GHz Wi‐Fi exposure on sleep‐dependent memory consolidation. Ana Bueno‐Lopez  Torsten Eggert  Hans Dorn  Gernot Schmid  Rene Hirtl  Heidi Danker‐Hopfe. Journal of Sleep Research, November 9 2020. https://doi.org/10.1111/jsr.13224

Rolf Degen's take: https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/1326395159362342913

Abstract: Studies have reported that exposure to radiofrequency electromagnetic fields (RF‐EMF) emitted by mobile telephony might affect specific sleep features. Possible effects of RF‐EMF emitted by Wi‐Fi networks on sleep‐dependent memory consolidation processes have not been investigated so far. The present study explored the impact of an all‐night Wi‐Fi (2.45 GHz) exposure on sleep‐dependent memory consolidation and its associated physiological correlates. Thirty young males (mean ± standard deviation [SD]: 24.1 ± 2.9 years) participated in this double‐blind, randomized, sham‐controlled crossover study. Participants spent five nights in the laboratory. The first night was an adaptation/screening night. The second and fourth nights were baseline nights, each followed consecutively by an experimental night with either Wi‐Fi (maximum: psSAR10g = <25 mW/kg; 6 min average: <6.4 mW/kg) or sham exposure. Declarative, emotional and procedural memory performances were measured using a word pair, a sequential finger tapping and a face recognition task, respectively. Furthermore, learning‐associated brain activity parameters (power spectra for slow oscillations and in the spindle frequency range) were analysed. Although emotional and procedural memory were not affected by RF‐EMF exposure, overnight improvement in the declarative task was significantly better in the Wi‐Fi condition. However, none of the post‐learning sleep‐specific parameters was affected by exposure. Thus, the significant effect of Wi‐Fi exposure on declarative memory observed at the behavioural level was not supported by results at the physiological level. Due to these inconsistencies, this result could also be a random finding.

4 DISCUSSION

The present provocation study, which can only address acute effects, analysed whether a Wi‐Fi exposure during TIB (8 h) might affect sleep‐dependent memory consolidation processes (declarative, procedural and emotional memory) and their learning‐associated brain activity during sleep in young healthy male volunteers.

4.1 Sleep‐dependent memory consolidation: Behavioural level

Results show that although Wi‐Fi did not affect retention in the procedural and emotional memory tasks, the data reveal that retention in the declarative memory was increased after Wi‐Fi as compared to sham exposure.

In the WPT, overnight performance gain was higher after Wi‐Fi exposure compared to sham (see Figure 3a.i), with an effect size of 0.40. According to Cohen (1988) this is a small effect, which, however, has a large uncertainty (95% CI [0.11; 0.70]). This observed difference in overnight retention of correctly recalled word pairs between sham and Wi‐Fi exposure conditions represented moderate evidence for the alternative hypothesis when evaluated based on the corresponding Bayes factor (BF01 = 0.254) (see Table 2). However, the interaction of several factors needs to be taken into account in order to interpret this result accurately. Small differences in the number of correctly recalled word pairs during immediate recall might have affected performance gains in the WPT. That is, the number of correctly recalled word pairs in the evening was slightly, but not significantly, higher in the sham nights as compared to Wi‐Fi, whereas the opposite was observed in the morning (see Table 2). The lower “reference level” in the evening preceding the Wi‐Fi condition might explain why overnight change was significantly higher under Wi‐Fi compared to sham. On the other hand, as both versions of the WPT had the same level of difficulty, it is unlikely that encoding difficulties could explain this finding. Regardless of the exposure condition, the performance on the evening of the two experimental nights did not differ, which supports the absence of a learning effect between experimental nights (see Table S5). Moreover, the data did not reflect the presence of floor or ceiling effects.

Wi‐Fi exposure did not affect performance in the FRT. Overnight retention was similar between Wi‐Fi and sham exposure. Bayes factors showed that overnight retention in all categories presented moderate evidence for the absence of a decline or improvement after exposure (all faces: BF01 = 3.931; neutral faces: BF01 = 4.538; positive faces: BF01 = 3.155; negative faces: BF01 = 5.527) with effect sizes (Cohen's d) that vary from no (negative faces) to small effects (all, neutral and positive faces; see Table 2). Thus, recognition memory in the emotional task did not differ between exposure conditions.

Performance improvements in the SFTT after sleep were not affected by Wi‐Fi exposure. The results for the overnight retention in this memory task did not differ between exposure conditions. Moreover, retention in this task showed moderate evidence for the null hypothesis (BF01 = 4.539), which is supported by a small effect size (see Table 2). In contrast, Lustenberger et al. (2013) reported a reduction of the performance improvement, measured as the variance of the reaction time, in a similar SFTT under RF‐EMF exposure compared to sham (with an effect size of |d| = 0.57 representing a medium effect; effect size calculated from data presented in Lustenberger et al., 2013). This effect could not be confirmed by our results. The variance in reaction time performance in the present study did not differ significantly between the exposure conditions, the effect size indicates no effect (|d| = 0.13) and the Bayes factor indicates moderate evidence for the null hypotheses (BF01 = 6.355) (see Table S4, and Figure S2). However, beside different signal characteristics, Lustenberger et al. (2013) used substantially higher intensities of RF‐EMF exposure, whereas in the present study the applied RF‐EMF intensities represent realistic worst‐case exposure from real Wi‐Fi installations.

Irrespective of exposure, the present results confirmed the beneficial role of sleep for memory consolidation. Performance in the three memory tasks improved after a night of sleep, reflecting small (FRT, 0.014) to medium effect sizes (WPT, 0.069; SFTT, 0.116) as indicated by generalized η2 values. Sleep‐dependent improvements in memory consolidation have been extensively discussed using different declarative and non‐declarative memory tasks showing that post‐sleep memory retention is better than retention after a wake period (Rasch & Born, 2013). This sleep‐specific beneficial effect is assumed to be reflected in the present results. In particular, in the WPT, declarative memory enhancements after a night of sleep under both experimental conditions are in line with multiple other studies (for reviews, see Diekelmann et al., 2009; Rasch & Born, 2013). Regarding the FRT, recognition memory performance for all faces, regardless of their emotional valence, improved after a night of sleep, which is in agreement with previous findings (Solomonova et al., 2017; Wagner et al., 2007). Additionally, memory performance was better after sleep for neutral and positive facial expressions. These findings are consistent with the results of a recent meta‐analysis (Schäfer et al., 2020), which revealed an enhancement of recognition memory for both emotional and neutral stimuli. In contrast, recognition for negative stimuli did not improve after sleep in the present study. In this respect, only the neutral faces were recognized during the evening recall phase more effectively on the second experimental night when compared with the first night, regardless of the exposure condition (see Table S5). Finally, results of the SFTT are in line with the evidence of the contribution of sleep to procedural memory consolidation (for review, see King et al., 2017).

4.2 Sleep‐specific features related to memory consolidation: Physiological level

There is compelling evidence that depending on the type of memory, certain sleep stages and sleep EEG characteristics are related to the previously mentioned memory consolidation processes. With regard to the macrostructure of sleep, overnight improvements in declarative memory have been related to slow‐wave sleep (N3) (e.g., Diekelmann et al., 2012), whereas overnight improvements in procedural memory have been proposed to be related to time spent in stage N2 sleep (e.g., Walker et al., 2002). Additionally, REM sleep has been associated with both procedural and declarative memory consolidation (Fogel et al., 2007). Finally, the consolidation of emotional memory has been proposed to be dependent on both REM sleep and NREM sleep (Tempesta et al., 2018).

The present analysis revealed that Wi‐Fi exposure had no effect on time spent in sleep stages N2, N3 (slow‐wave sleep), NREM or REM sleep. Bayes factors for N2 and N3 sleep supported this interpretation by providing moderate evidence for the absence of an exposure effect on these two sleep stages (N2, BF01 = 6.672; N3, BF01 = 5.379). The corresponding Cohens' d values indicated also no effect. However, Bayes factors for NREM and REM sleep indicated only anecdotal evidence for the H0 (NREM, BF01 = 2.414; REM, BF01 = 2.266), with Cohens' d values representing small effects (see Table 3). In other words, these results pointed out that N2 and N3 sleep were rather unlikely to be affected by Wi‐Fi exposure, but that an exposure effect on NREM and REM sleep cannot be excluded. It could be speculated that the evaluation of these two effects, whether they are supportive of the null or alternative hypothesis, would have been more convincing if the sample size had been larger. Then, if this supported the tendency observed in NREM sleep at the descriptive level under Wi‐Fi exposure compared to sham (see Table 3), this possible change in NREM could explain at least partially the improvement of declarative memory consolidation.

The literature shows that RF‐EMF effects on sleep architecture are quite heterogeneous. Although some studies found effects in the discussed sleep parameters, others did not (for detailed overview, see Danker‐Hopfe et al., 2016). Therefore, the present results can be assigned to the group of studies that reported null findings with regard to effects of exposure on sleep macrostructure. The same applies to the study by Danker‐Hopfe et al. (2020), which examined the impact of Wi‐Fi exposure on a large number of objective sleep parameters in addition to some subjective sleep variables. This previous study, however, considered sleep data from all 34 recruited participants and disregarded deliberately some of the sleep‐specific variables that are thought to be associated with memory consolidation processes. Thus, the present study fills this gap and complements this previous publication, but with results restricted to a subsample of 30 subjects for whom behavioural data were available.

With regard to sleep microstructure, sleep spindle frequency ranges, as well as slow‐wave activity (0.1–3.5 Hz), have been associated with both declarative and procedural memory improvements (Fogel et al., 2007; Holz et al., 2012). However, other studies did not find a clear association between performance improvements and related sleep stages or EEG power in declarative (Gais et al., 2002) or procedural memory (Rångtell et al., 2017). Sleep spindle density has been proposed to be involved in declarative (e.g., Gais et al., 2002) and in procedural (e.g., Barakat et al., 2011) memory consolidation. Additionally, emotional memory has been positively correlated with fast spindle densities (13–16 Hz) and negatively with slow spindle (10–13 Hz) densities (Solomonova et al., 2017).

The present results did not reveal any Wi‐Fi exposure effect on the EEG power in the ranges of slow oscillations (0.5–0.1 Hz) and narrow (12–14 Hz) and wide (12–16 Hz) sleep spindles. Nor was the sleep spindle density in stages N2 and N3 sleep affected by exposure (see Table 4). This is supported by Cohen's d values, which indicate small or no effects (see Table S2). Bayes factors revealed moderate evidence for the absence of a Wi‐Fi effect on the narrow sleep spindle frequency range at all regions in N2 and N3. Similarly, Bayes factors indicated moderate evidence for the absence of a Wi‐Fi effect on the EEG power in the wide spindle frequency range and in the range of slow oscillations in all cortical regions in both sleep stages, except for the occipital region in N2 and N3. In these cases, Bayes factors revealed only anecdotal evidence for the absence of Wi‐Fi effects. As mentioned above, a larger sample size could have provided stronger evidence for the presence or absence of the reduced EEG power under Wi‐Fi exposure that can be observed at the descriptive level (see Table S2). Furthermore, Bayes factors revealed moderate evidence for an absence of an exposure effect on sleep spindle densities in both sleep stages, with Cohen's d values indicating no effects (see Table S3).

In this respect, Lustenberger et al. (2013) reported that pulsed RF‐EMF induced an increase of slow‐wave activity at the end of the sleep period, whereas spindle activity remained unchanged and sleep‐dependent procedural memory gains were downscaled. Similarly, other RF‐EMF studies did not report effects on the EEG in the spindle frequency range (Fritzer et al., 2007; Hinrichs et al., 2005; Nakatani‐Enomoto et al., 2013; Wagner et al., 1998, 2000) or for spindle density (Lustenberger et al., 2015), in line with the present results. However, as pointed out previously, RF‐EMF effects on the sleep EEG power show mixed results.

In summary, the results at the physiological level did not reveal an impact of Wi‐Fi exposure on any of the sleep parameters that are generally associated with sleep‐dependent memory consolidation processing, such as NREM sleep, specifically slow‐wave sleep, as well as EEG power values in the SO and spindle frequency ranges, and sleep spindle densities. Accordingly, the positive effects that Wi‐Fi exposure had on memory retention in the declarative task were not supported by physiological changes associated with memory consolidation processes during sleep. Thus, the present behavioural and neurophysiological findings did not provide evidence that night‐time Wi‐Fi exposure affects sleep‐dependent memory consolidation, so the positive exposure effect on declarative memory should be classified as inconclusive.

Self‐directed sexist humor was seen as more affiliative (only women), less aggressive, & more self‐defeating than other‐directed sexist humor; women romantically preferred men who used self‐ rather than other‐directed sexist humor

Is it sexy to be sexist? How stereotyped humor affects romantic attraction. Diana E. Betz  Theresa E. DiDonato. Personal Relationships, November 9 2020. https://doi.org/10.1111/pere.12346

Abstract: Sexist humor is a common form of disparagement humor that is nonetheless understudied in romantic attraction contexts. Three experiments investigated how sexist humor is perceived and received during relationship initiation. In Study 1 (n = 262) participants rated self‐directed sexist humor as more affiliative (only women), less aggressive, and more self‐defeating than other‐directed sexist humor. Study 2 (n = 209) replicated these findings and found that women romantically preferred men who used self‐ rather than other‐directed sexist humor, an effect mediated by perceived warmth. Self‐directed sexist humor's attractiveness advantage persisted in Study 3 (n = 667), which also included manipulations of self‐disparaging, group‐disparaging, and benign humor. Results suggest a romantic cost for men telling sexist jokes that disparage women.

Social Media and Well-Being: Small negative effects on average, with both positive & negative sides... Alarm seems exaggerated by the media due to our focus on the negative

Social Media and Well-Being: Pitfalls, Progress, and Next Steps. Ethan Kross et al. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, November 10 2020. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2020.10.005

Rolf Degen's take: https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/1326180998074273797

Highlights

-  Social media has revolutionized how humans interact, providing them with unprecedented opportunities to satisfy their social needs.

-  An explosion of research has examined whether social media impacts well-being. First- and second-generation studies examining this issue yielded inconsistent results.

-  An emerging set of third-generation experiments has begun to reveal small but significant negative effects of overall social media use on well-being.

-  The results of these experiments mask the complexities characterizing the relationship between social media and well-being. Whether it enhances or diminishes well-being depends on how and why people use it, as well as who uses it.

-  People use social media for different reasons (e.g., to manage impressions, to share emotions), which influence how it impacts their own and other people’s well-being.

Abstract: Within a relatively short time span, social media have transformed the way humans interact, leading many to wonder what, if any, implications this interactive revolution has had for people’s emotional lives. Over the past 15 years, an explosion of research has examined this issue, generating countless studies and heated debate. Although early research generated inconclusive findings, several experiments have revealed small negative effects of social media use on well-being. These results mask, however, a deeper set of complexities. Accumulating evidence indicates that social media can enhance or diminish well-being depending on how people use them. Future research is needed to model these complexities using stronger methods to advance knowledge in this domain.

Keywords: social mediaFacebookwell-beingonline social networksemotionlife satisfaction

Moving Forward

We have drawn multiple parallels between the printing press and social media in this review, but there is one notable difference. Whereas the printing press took decades to revolutionize the way society functioned, social media have had a transformational impact in a tiny window of time. Nevertheless, scientists have been remarkably nimble in their ability to reroute their research programs to respond to the challenge of making sense of how this technology impacts people’s emotional lives. Indeed, we view the past 15 years of research on social media and well-being as a testament to scientists doing what they do best: focusing on important phenomena, critically evaluating current knowledge in light of new results, and bringing to bear increasingly sophisticated methods and conceptual frameworks to generate novel solutions that have important basic science and practical implications. But where does all of this work leave us in terms of the question on so many people’s minds: how do social media influence well-being?

Converging reviews of the literature suggest that a small but significant negative relationship characterizes the effect of social media on well-being (Box 3). If this is all that one cares about, that is the bird’s eye view. It would be a mistake, however, to conclude from these findings that social media have little potential to influence people’s emotional lives. Our survey suggests that the situation concerning social media’s impact on well-being is considerably more nuanced than aggregate usage studies suggest. The effects of social media on well-being are not uniform. Social media present people with a new ecosystem for engaging in social interactions, and converging evidence indicates that how this ecosystem affects our well-being, and the well-being of others, depends on how we navigate it.

Box 3

Beyond ‘Active’ versus ‘Passive’ Usage

In an attempt to integrate research showing that different ways of using social media differentially impact well-being, several groups have distinguished between two general categories of social media usage: ‘active’ and ‘passive’ social media usage. According to this framework, the passive consumption of information on social media undermines well-being by increasing upward social comparisons. Conversely, the active use of social media to exchange information and to connect with others enhances well-being by enhancing social capital and support.

This framework has proved useful in pushing the field to think more mechanistically and has revealed differential negative effects of passive (vs active) use (Box 2). Nevertheless, further refinement of this framework is necessary; current research suggests that it is too coarse. As we discuss in the main text, although passively viewing other people’s social media profiles reliably undermines well-being, passively viewing one’s own profile has the opposite effect. Likewise, although actively using social media to garner support improves well-being, actively using it to cyberbully or spread moral outrage undermines well-being for others. Thus, a key challenge is to move beyond this nominal distinction to examine subtypes of active and passive social media use. In particular, two questions are pressing.

First, we need to understand how different motivations for using social media interact to influence well-being. Extant research has primarily focused on how different social media motivations operate in isolation. However, human behavior is multiply determined; multiple goals drive people’s behavior, which are activated to various degrees depending on individual differences and the circumstances people find themselves in [113,114]. And in some cases, motivations conflict. For example, a person may be driven to abstain from viewing others’ profiles to avoid feeling envy, but simultaneously motivated to share their emotions with others. Which of these motivations is stronger may influence whether and how people interact with social media and the implications that doing so has for their well-being.

Second, research is needed to examine whether people are aware of the implications that their social media behavior has for themselves and others. Our review suggests that an asymmetry characterizes how several social media behaviors impact the self versus others. For example, curating one’s profile improves how one feels, but promotes envy among others; cyberbullying disproportionately impacts the targets (vs perpetrators) of such behavior. Whether people are aware of these asymmetries is unknown, as are the consequences of informing them about them for regulating their social media behavior.

If social media have both positive and negative implications for well-being, one question concerns why the dominant narrative in the media has disproportionately focused on its dire consequences [6]. The newsworthiness of such headlines is likely to play some role in explaining this phenomenon, but we suspect it is not the only factor. In this vein, it is worth highlighting the fact that one of psychology’s most foundational findings concerns our tendency to overweight negative (vs positive) information [72,73]. Thus, it is possible that people form generalizations about social media’s overall well-being impact based on the negative effects they have in some situations (e.g., upward social comparisons, cyberbullying). A key challenge moving forward is to identify how to disseminate information about social media’s positive and negative implications without having the latter obscure the former.

From a basic science perspective, future research is needed to move beyond asking broad questions about the overall effects of social media on well-being (see Outstanding Questions). Rather, the strategy now should be to study the different psychological processes that explain how and why social media impact well-being differently, whether different social media behaviors have downstream effects that extend beyond well-being (e.g., to impact family and school life), and why these effects may vary for different people in different cultures guided by distinct social norms. Although we focused on two candidate processes in this review that have been the focus of extensive research, many other processes are waiting to be examined. Work should continue to profile how target processes operate in isolation but also explore how they interact (Box 3).

Studies that seek to address the latter issue should also consider the unique information-processing dynamics that may underlie different types of social media behaviors. Managing one’s online persona would seem, for example, to be a reflective act that requires time and deliberation to implement. Sharing emotions with others, by contrast, may be a more reflexively driven behavior. Understanding the degree to which different social media behaviors are reflexively versus reflectively driven has the potential to both illuminate the processes that underlie them and inform the development of interventions designed to enhance social media’s impact on well-being [102].

Focusing more on psychological processes also has the potential to provide insight into the question of how different social media platforms uniquely impact well-being. By focusing on the processes that different platforms activate, as opposed to simply comparing Platform A (e.g., Facebook) versus Platform B (e.g., Instagram), we can move beyond the nominal distinctions that distinguish platforms, to the more meaningful psychological variables that influence users’ experience (Figure 1).

This issue is also relevant to the emerging experimental literature examining the impact of manipulating aggregate social media use on well-being. Extant research manipulates social media usage in a variety of ways. Some work contrasts experimentally induced abstention against regular usage (e.g., [33]) while others contrast induced usage against an active or non-active control (e.g., [32]), and there is further heterogeneity within these broad approaches (e.g., in the length of abstention/usage, simple abstention vs deactivation of accounts). Each of these different manipulations may activate a different set of underlying processes that have implications for people’s well-being.

Studying psychological processes requires, however, that we utilize strong methods. The field’s overreliance on cross-sectional designs is a major weakness [35,36], yet cross-sectional research continues to proliferate. We urge researchers interested in exploring the social media–well-being relationship to incorporate experimental and longitudinal designs into their work to strengthen their ability to draw inferences about causality.

More work is also needed to validate the methodologies we use to study the impact of social media on well-being. We have already discussed the validity concerns associated with commonly used self-report Facebook usage variables. However, similar issues apply to other measures used in this area. For example, one prominent study counted the number of emotion words contained in people’s Facebook posts to draw inferences about how they felt although no validation data supported the use of such methods to track people’s emotions on social media [103]. As later research pointed out, counting emotion words does not track how people feel on Facebook [104]. The take-home point is simple: psychometrically sound measures are not a luxury: they are instrumental for valid inferences.

From a translational standpoint, there is a need to identify science-based interventions that enhance the positive and minimize the negative consequences of social media. There are at least three paths to studying these interventions (Figure 2). One involves directing people to use social media in particular ways, and then gauging the implications of such person-focused interventions. Much of the existing experimental work in this area takes this form. A second path involves examining how modifying the social media platforms that people use (with their informed consent) impacts the way they use them and how they affect well-being. For example, a platform could be augmented to promote the sharing of information that research suggests should enhance well-being. Finally, a third method involves a combination of the previous two approaches; that is, simultaneously educating people about how to navigate social media optimally and tweaking social media platforms to maximize their positive impact.

[Figure 2. Social Media Intervention Research.]

At least three pathways exist for process-focused social media intervention research. Person-centered interventions focus on changing how people use social media to enhance well-being. Potential ways of communicating this information include instructing individuals directly, relaying information through parents, teachers, or supervisors, and the creation of institutional policies. Platform-centered interventions involve changing the way that social media platforms function (with user consent) to enhance their likelihood of promoting well-being. Finally, the person + platform intervention pathway involves the examination of the effects of both kinds of intervention simultaneously.

Concluding Remarks

Social media, like the printing press, represent a kind of disruptive technology that appears once in a generation. Over the past 15 years science has done an admirable job advancing our understanding of the impact these media have on our well-being, but the work is by no means complete. Numerous questions remain. Given the energy and enthusiasm characterizing work in this area, and the enormous level of talent working on solving these questions, we suspect that the next 15 years will be ripe with discoveries that advance our understanding of how this ubiquitous technology influences our emotional lives.

Outstanding Questions

Can we find a common lexicon to conceptualize the social media landscape? Addressing this issue is vital to solving social media’s jingle-jangle problem (Box 1).

Can we develop theory-driven frameworks to identify candidate processes that explain how social media impacts well-being and generate predictions about how they operate in isolation and interactively? Can such frameworks be used to distinguish between different social media platforms?

Can we make further distinctions within active and passive social media usage? Do different active and passive behaviors relate to different psychological processes? Are some behaviors more impulsive versus deliberate? How might these different behaviors impact well-being?

Do asymmetries in the way certain social media behaviors impact the self versus others help to explain why some harmful practices persist? If so, how can such information be utilized to inform interventions?

Can we systematize the way we perform experiments on social media? Some experiments direct people to abstain from using social media while others direct them to use it more compared with baseline. Heterogeneity also characterizes the time course of different manipulations, the measures used to document their effects, and the frequency of their administration. All of these factors could differentially impact study results depending on the nature of the process being manipulated.

How can we balance the need to perform studies quickly on an evolving technology without compromising the need to use valid measures and methods?

Can we design person- and platform-centered interventions that amplify the positive and diminish the negative implications of social media use on well-being?

How can we disseminate information about social media’s positive and negative impacts without having the latter obscure the former, given the documented tendency for people to overweight negative (vs positive) information?

Women’s Hunting in Two Contemporary Forager-Horticulturalist Societies

“Hunting Otherwise.” Women’s Hunting in Two Contemporary Forager-Horticulturalist Societies. Victoria Reyes-García, Isabel Díaz-Reviriego, Romain Duda, Álvaro Fernández-Llamazares & Sandrine Gallois. Human Nature volume 31, pages203–221. Sep 11 2020. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12110-020-09375-4

Abstract: Although subsistence hunting is cross-culturally an activity led and practiced mostly by men, a rich body of literature shows that in many small-scale societies women also engage in hunting in varied and often inconspicuous ways. Using data collected among two contemporary forager-horticulturalist societies facing rapid change (the Tsimane’ of Bolivia and the Baka of Cameroon), we compare the technological and social characteristics of hunting trips led by women and men and analyze the specific socioeconomic characteristics that facilitate or constrain women’s engagement in hunting. Results from interviews on daily activities with 121 Tsimane’ (63 women and 58 men) and 159 Baka (83 women and 76 men) show that Tsimane’ and Baka women participate in subsistence hunting, albeit using different techniques and in different social contexts than men. We also found differences in the individual and household socioeconomic profiles of Tsimane’ and Baka women who hunt and those who do not hunt. Moreover, the characteristics that differentiate hunter and non-hunter women vary from one society to the other, suggesting that gender roles in relation to hunting are fluid and likely to change, not only across societies, but also as societies change.

Los Angeles’ Zones of Choice: The ZOC program boosted test scores & college enrollment markedly, closing achievement & college enrollment gaps between ZOC neighborhoods & the rest of the district

The Impact of Neighborhood School Choice: Evidence from Los Angeles’ Zones of Choice. Christopher Campos and Caitlin Kearns. Job Market Paper, November 8, 2020. https://www.cqcampos.com/research

Abstract: This paper evaluates the Zones of Choice (ZOC) program in Los Angeles, a school choice initiative that created small high school markets in some neighborhoods but left traditional attendance zone boundaries in place throughout the rest of the district. We leverage the design of the program to study the impact of neighborhood school choice on student achievement, college enrollment, and other outcomes using a matched difference-in-differences design. Our findings reveal that the ZOC program boosted test scores and college enrollment markedly, closing achievement and college enrollment gaps between ZOC neighborhoods and the rest of the district. These gains are explained by general improvements in school effectiveness rather than changes in student match quality, and school-specific gains are concentrated among the lowest-performing schools. We interpret these findings through the lens of a model of school demand in which schools exert costly effort to improve quality. The model allows us to measure the increase in competition facing each ZOC school based on household preferences and the spatial distribution of schools. We demonstrate that the effects of ZOC were larger for schools exposed to more competition, supporting the notion that competition is a key channel driving the impacts of ZOC. In addition, demand estimates suggest families place a larger weight on school quality compared to peer quality, providing schools the right competitive incentives. An analysis using randomized admission lotteries shows that the treatment effects of admission to preferred schools declined after the introduction of ZOC, a pattern that is explained by the relative improvements of less-preferred schools. Our findings demonstrate the potential for public school choice to improve student outcomes while also underscoring the importance of studying market-level impacts when evaluating school choice programs.

It seems we can use smart-phones to increase physical affection, intimacy and security in couples

Can we use smart-phones to increase physical affection, intimacy and security in couples? Preliminary support from an attachment perspective. Kerem Besim Durbin et al. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships, November 3, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1177/0265407520970278

Abstract: This study investigated whether physical affection is causally associated with momentary intimacy and security by manipulating physical affection. We used a GPS-based smart-phone application as ecological momentary intervention that prompted participants to show physical affection to their partner when they were in the same location. We also investigated whether attachment style and attachment functioning moderated the effects of the manipulation. Thirty-nine couples were assigned to experimental (N = 20) and control (N = 19) groups for 2 weeks. Multilevel dyadic data analysis revealed significantly higher momentary intimacy in the experimental group, even when spontaneous physical affection was controlled; there was no significant change for momentary security. While attachment style did not moderate the effect of manipulation for either outcome, attachment functioning significantly moderated the effect on security. This is the first study to show evidence that physical affection, when instructed by a device, is causally linked to increased momentary intimacy in daily life.

Keywords: Attachment, ecological momentary intervention, intimacy, physical affection, romantic relationships, security, touch

Letters to Our Future Selves? Failed High-Powered Replication Attempts Question Effects on Future Orientation, Delinquent Decisions, and Risky Investments

Letters to Our Future Selves? High-Powered Replication Attempts Question Effects on Future Orientation, Delinquent Decisions, and Risky Investments. Laura Quinten, Anja Murmann, Hanna Genau, Rafaela Warkentin, Rainer Banse. Social Cognition, July 2020. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/343188765

Abstract: Enhancing people’s future orientation, in particular continuity with their future selves, has been proposed as promising to mitigate self-control-related problem behavior. In two pre-registered, direct replication studies, we tested a subtle manipulation, i.e., writing a letter to one’s future self, in order to reduce delinquent decisions (van Gelder et al., 2013, Study 1) and risky investments (Monroe et al., 2017, Study 1). With samples of N = 314 and N = 463, i.e., 2.5 times the original studies’ sample sizes, the results suggested that the expected effects are either non-existent or smaller than originally reported, and/or dependent on factors not examined. Vividness of the future self was successfully manipulated in Study 2, but manipulation checks overall indicated that the letter task is rather not reliable to alter future orientation. We discuss ideas to integrate self-affirmation approaches, and to test less subtle manipulations in samples with substantial, myopia-related self-control deficits.

Rearming after Jim Crow: We find that lynchings decrease with greater Black firearm access; also, there was a frequent misclassification of homicides as accidents, which diminish after Blacks rearm

Firearms and Violence Under Jim Crow. Michael D. Makowsky, Patrick L. Warren. November 9, 2020. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5329e895e4b09fd4786211a3/t/5fa9630d4e5ce030c7d36d79/1604936463367/Guns_under_Jim_Crow_Nov2020_circ.pdf

Abstract: We assess firearm access in the U.S. South by measuring the fraction of suicides committed with firearms. Black residents of the Jim Crow South were disarmed, before re-arming themselves during the Civil-Rights Era. We find that lynchings decrease with greater Black firearm access. During the Civil-Rights Movement, both the relative Black homicide and Black “accidental death by firearm” rates decrease with Black firearm access, indicating frequent misclassification of homicides as accidents. In the contemporary era, greater firearm access correlates with higher Black death rates. We find that firearms offered an effective means of Black self-defense in the Jim Crow South.

Counterfactual thinking and facial expressions among Olympic medalists: A conceptual replication of Medvec, Madey, and Gilovich’s (1995) findings

Hedgcock, W. M., Luangrath, A. W., & Webster, R. (2020). Counterfactual thinking and facial expressions among Olympic medalists: A conceptual replication of Medvec, Madey, and Gilovich’s (1995) findings. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Nov 2020. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000992

Rolf Degen's take: https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/1326175281221165056

Abstract: Counterfactual thinking, or contemplation of “what could have been,” influences facial expressions of Olympic medalists. Medvec, Madey, and Gilovich (1995) revealed that bronze medalists appeared happier than silver medalists after competition in Olympic events. Two prominent explanations for this phenomenon exist: the formation of (a) category-based counterfactuals and (b) expectation-based counterfactuals. First, Medvec et al. (1995) demonstrated that silver medalists formed an upward comparison to the gold medalist with thoughts of “I almost won Gold” while bronze medalists formed a downward comparison to a fourth place finisher with thoughts of “at least I won a medal.” A second explanation suggests that medalists form expectation-based counterfactuals in which silver medalists are more disappointed since their prior expectations for performance were higher than bronze medalists (McGraw, Mellers, & Tetlock, 2005). To test these 2 explanations, we compiled a large dataset of medal stand photographs from the Olympic Multimedia Library and Getty Images for the 2000–2016 Olympic games as well as Sports Illustrated’s predictions. Using automated facial expression encoding, we conducted a conceptual replication of prior work and found evidence supporting both category-based and expectation-based counterfactual accounts of Olympic medalists’ expressions.