Rolf Degen summarizing... Across countries, men tend to exhibit lower total fertility rates than women

Male–Female Fertility Differentials Across 17 High-Income Countries: Insights From A New Data Resource. Christian Dudel & Sebastian Klüsener. European Journal of Population, Jan 20 2021. https://rd.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10680-020-09575-9

Rolf Degen's take: https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/1351884721870041088

Abstract: Obtaining cross-country comparative perspectives on male fertility has long been difficult, as male fertility is usually less well registered than female fertility. Recent methodological advancements in imputing missing paternal ages at childbirth enable us to provide a new database on male fertility. This new resource covers more than 330 million live births and is based on a consistent and well-tested set of methods. These methods allow us to handle missing information on the paternal age, which is missing for roughly 10% of births. The data resource is made available in the Human Fertility Collection and allows for the first time a comparative perspective on male fertility in high-income countries using high-quality birth register data. We analyze trends in male–female fertility quantum and tempo differentials across 17 high-income countries, dating as back as far as the late 1960s for some countries, and with data available for the majority of countries from the 1980s onward. Using descriptive and counterfactual analysis methods, we find substantial variation both across countries and over time. Related to the quantum we demonstrate that disparities between male and female period fertility rates are driven to a large degree by the interplay of parental age and cohort size differences. For parental age differences at childbirth, we observe a development toward smaller disparities, except in Eastern Europe. This observation fits with expectations based on gender theories. However, variation across countries also seems to be driven by factors other than gender equality.

Conclusions and Perspectives

Based on a new, extensive database on male fertility in 17 high-income countries, we explore trends in the differences in the quantum and timing of male and female fertility. We find that, first, the level of male fertility relative to the level of female fertility can vary considerably across countries and over time. Male fertility, as measured by the total fertility rate (TFR), can be both higher and lower than female fertility; although in recent years it has generally been lower rather than higher. This observation is consistent with the results of Schoumaker (2019) based on survey and census data, and our further analysis for a subset of six countries shows that it also holds for cohort fertility rates (CFRs).

Our counterfactual calculations provide evidence for the claim that temporal fluctuations in the ratio between male and female TFR are often driven by age differences between partners and differences in postponement behavior, and our analysis of CFRs also supports this conclusion. Our second main finding is that age differences between fathers and mothers stayed constant or decreased in most of the countries in our study, except in the Eastern European countries and eastern Germany. While this general tendency is in line with expectations based on gender theories, the differences that currently exist across countries seem to be affected by more factors than just differences in gender equality levels.

While our findings indicate that male fertility has generally been lower than female fertility in recent years, this trend does not seem to hold globally. Schoumaker (2017, 2019) showed that in contexts in which polygyny is practiced and populations are rapidly growing, male fertility levels can sometimes be twice as high as female fertility levels. His results suggest that this pattern is driven to a large extent by age differences between couples. This finding is in line with the results of our counterfactual analysis, which indicate that extreme cases tend to disappear when the fathers are assigned to the same cohort as the mothers, and that large gender differentials in fertility levels are often driven by differences in fertility timing. At the other extreme, the lowest TFR ratio reported in the literature is for England and Wales in 1973, at around 0.89 (Schoen 1985). The value we have found for eastern Germany, 0.84, is below this level, and might indicate that eastern German males have been experiencing what Schoen (1985) called a “birth squeeze”: i.e., in eastern Germany, the unequal number of men and women in the reproductive age range is having an impact on the fertility of men. Generally, the variation in TFR ratios we observe across countries and over time is not negligible. Country groups with cultural and/or political similarities seem to have more similar trend patterns. This finding requires further investigation.

The mean age differences between men and women we have detected in our data are close to the orders of magnitude found in other studies (e.g., Kolk 2015). They are, however, lower than the high values observed in some African countries, where mean differences of more than 10 years have been estimated (Schoumaker 2017). Nevertheless, the variation across countries and over time in our 17 high-income countries is substantial. This heterogeneity of age differences is somewhat puzzling. In particular, our findings suggest that while European countries that score high on the gender equality index have smaller age differences, Japan does not seem to fit this picture. Even though Japan scores low on gender inequality indices (World Economic Forum 2017), the age differences among parents in this country are the lowest we have found in our study. This finding requires further investigation. Another factor that might be important is the cross-country variation in the share of migrants and the parental age differences that prevail in their countries of origin. We are, however, unable to study this potential factor, given that for most of the countries and years in our sample, we are unable to separate births by nationality or migration background status. We thus leave the exploration of this question to future research.

Looking at gender differences in fertility postponement, we find that gender differences tend to decrease over time, except in Eastern Europe, where age differences have been increasing. In Eastern Europe, this process has been accompanied by a process of societal restoration (Fodor and Balogh 2010). We also find that in some countries (e.g., Finland and France), the mean age difference has been stable over the period for which we have data. Our comparison of countries suggests that the Danish case, described by Nordfalk et al. (2015), is among those with rather large gender differences in fertility postponement. More research is needed to explain this variation across countries.

It is difficult to assess to what degree the observed patterns reflect gender differences in fertility preferences with respect to both the quantum and the timing of fertility. Surveys in low-income countries designed to assess the ideal number of children tend to report that the ideal number is usually much higher than the number of children actually born (Esteve et al. 2020). Longitudinal research has also shown that individuals tend to adapt their family size ideals to the number of children they were able to have (e.g., Kuhnt et al. 2017). This implies that the ideal number of children is not only a reflection of people’s preferences, but is also moderated by triggers and constraints that affect their fertility biographies. For Europe, data from the Eurobarometer survey 2011 indicate that in most countries, men tend to report lower ideal family sizes than women (Testa 2012). These results are generally consistent with our findings, which show that men have lower fertility than women. In addition, our TFR estimates for 2011 are highly correlated across countries with the Eurobarometer results on ideal family size for both men and women (> 0.9). However, the Eurobarometer results also show that in most countries, the gaps between the ideal and the actual number of children are larger for men than for women (Testa 2012). This observation could be interpreted as providing support for the view that men might be less able than women to realize their fertility desires, which could, in turn, be a result of the sex ratio imbalances.

Regarding preferences on the timing of births, the Eurobarometer survey data show that across member states of the European Union (EU25), both the ideal age to become parent and the latest age at which a person should have children are higher for men than for women (Testa 2006). The ideal age to become a parent is on average around 2 years higher for men than it is for women (Testa 2006), with women setting the ideal age for men higher (about 27.5 years) than men themselves (around 27 years). For the latest age at which a person should have children, the gaps between women and men are even larger. Both women and men set the age deadline for women on average at around 41 years, while both men and women set the age deadline for men at around 46 years (Testa 2006). Billari et al. (2011) used data from the European Social Survey and found slightly higher mean numbers both for women (41.7 years) and men (47.3 years), with some variance across countries. These survey results are generally in line with the gaps we identified. They are also in line with our finding that fertility decreases for men as well after age 45, even though many men are biologically able to have children at ages above 45.

The main outcomes we study in this paper—the TFR and the mean age at childbirth—are not the only measures of the quantum and the tempo of fertility. For instance, the proportion of childless individuals and the age at first birth have also received considerable interest in the literature. While this research has mostly focused on women, a small number of studies have also included men (Paavilainen et al. 2016). However, one of the limitations of the register data we employ is that we cannot use them to calculate the number of childless individuals. In addition, analyses by parity, such as by first birth, are only possible for women, if at all, as none of the birth registers records the parity of the father. Moreover, the mean parental age difference is not the only measure of the extent to which the paternal and the maternal age differ (e.g., Kolk 2015). However, using other measures, such as the variance or the standard deviation of the age difference, requires information on the joint age distribution of mothers and fathers, which cannot be derived from the ASFRs we provide as part of the HFC.

The new database we created to study male fertility is not limited to the questions we have investigated in this paper. It can, for example, be used in macro-level investigations of associations between male fertility levels and important economic and social indicators, including gender equality measures. There are many influential publications that have studied these relationships among women (e.g., Brewster and Rindfuss 2000; Myrskylä et al. 2009), and comparing the outcomes for female fertility with the results for male fertility might provide important insights. Such analyses will likely further improve our understanding of the role of gender in current fertility trends. The database can also be used in comparative analyses of trends in the paternal age at childbirth. Advanced paternal age is an important predictor of health outcomes of children, and has been attracting increasing attention in recent years (e.g., Khandwala et al. 2017). Thus, the database offers many promising avenues for future research, and we invite other researchers to make use of this new data resource available as part of the Human Fertility Collection (2019).

Experiencing and receiving expressions of gratitude were associated with greater sexual communal strength (the extent to which people are motivated to be responsive to their partner’s sexual needs)

Gratitude Increases the Motivation to Fulfill a Partner’s Sexual Needs. Ashlyn Brady et al. Social Psychological and Personality Science, April 4, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550619898971

h/t David Schmitt: https://twitter.com/PsychoSchmitt/status/1351811984254246914

Abstract: Maintaining sexual satisfaction is a critical, yet challenging, aspect of most romantic relationships. Although prior research has established that sexual communal strength (SCS)—i.e., the extent to which people are motivated to be responsive to their partner’s sexual needs—benefits romantic relationships, research has yet to identify factors that promote SCS. We predicted that gratitude would increase SCS because gratitude motivates partners to maintain close relationships. These predictions were supported in three studies with cross-sectional, longitudinal, and experimental methods. Specifically, experiencing and receiving expressions of gratitude were associated with greater SCS. These studies are the first to investigate the benefits of gratitude in the sexual domain and identify factors that promote SCS. Together, these results have important implications for relationship and sexual satisfaction in romantic relationships.

Keywords: sexual communal strength, gratitude, romantic relationships, sexuality

Those who engaged in consensual nonmonogamy experienced significant increases in sexual satisfaction, particularly if they did so with the explicit goal of addressing sexual incompatibilities within their relationships

A Prospective Investigation of the Decision to Open Up a Romantic Relationship. Annelise Parkes Murphy, Samantha Joel, Amy Muise. Social Psychological and Personality Science, April 8, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1177/1948550619897157

Abstract: Consensual nonmonogamy (CNM) is an increasingly popular relationship option and a burgeoning topic within relationship science. However, retrospective designs have limited our ability to draw conclusions about the consequences of opening up a romantic relationship to other partners. In a longitudinal study, 233 individuals who were planning to engage in CNM, but who had not done so yet, were tracked over 2 months. We compared participants’ relational, sexual, and personal well-being before versus after opening up and between participants who did (n = 155) versus did not (n = 78) open up their relationships over the course of the study. Those who engaged in CNM experienced significant increases in sexual satisfaction, particularly if they did so with the explicit goal of addressing sexual incompatibilities within their relationships. We found no evidence that engaging in CNM impacted either life satisfaction or relationship quality with the primary partner.

Keywords: romantic relationships, decision-making, consensual nonmonogamy, sexuality

American men (but not women) who reported engaging in same-sex sex in the previous year were more likely than other men to say they were unhappy, but only if they viewed homosexuality as “always wrong”

Sex and Its Discontents: How Moral Incongruence Connects Same-Sex and Non-Marital Sexual Activity with Unhappiness. Samuel L. Perry, Joshua B. Grubbs & Elizabeth E. McElroy . Archives of Sexual Behavior, Jan 19 2021. https://rd.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-020-01860-2

Rolf Degen's take: https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/1351791871782219777

Abstract: A growing body of research has demonstrated how the link between pornography use and various manifestations of psychological distress and dissatisfaction is explained by moral incongruence—the experience of violating one’s deeply held moral values. The predictive power of moral incongruence, however, has yet to be applied to other sexual activities. Drawing on data from available waves of the General Social Surveys (1988–2018: nmen = 6590, nwomen = 7047; 1989–2018: nmen = 3558, nwomen = 4841), this study extended moral incongruence theory by testing whether engaging in same-sex or non-marital sexual activity when one rejects either as morally wrong is associated with a greater likelihood of reporting unhappiness. Analyses demonstrated that American men (but not women) who reported engaging in same-sex sex in the previous year were more likely than other men to say they were unhappy, but only if they viewed homosexuality as “always wrong.” Analyses also showed that American women (not men) who reported higher frequencies of non-marital sex in the previous year were more likely than other women to report being unhappy, but only if they viewed non-marital sex as “always wrong.” Though nuanced by gender, findings affirmed expectations from moral incongruence research: Sexual behavior per se is not associated with unhappiness, but moral inconsistency or conflict regarding one’s sexual behavior is.

Rolf Degen summarizing... The expression of moral outrage on Twitter is at least partly maintained by reinforcement learning, the reaping of social rewards

Brady, William J., Killian L. McLoughlin, Tuan N. Doan, and Molly Crockett. 2021. “How Social Learning Amplifies Moral Outrage Expression in Online Social Networks.” PsyArXiv. January 19. doi:10.31234/osf.io/gf7t5

Rolf Degen's take: https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/1351585180880941059

Abstract: Moral outrage shapes fundamental aspects of human social life and is now widespread in online social networks. Here, we show how social learning processes amplify online moral outrage expressions over time. In two pre-registered observational studies of Twitter (7,331 users and 12.7 million total tweets) and two pre-registered behavioral experiments (N = 240), we find that positive social feedback for outrage expressions increases the likelihood of future outrage expressions, consistent with principles of reinforcement learning. We also find that outrage expressions are sensitive to expressive norms in users’ social networks, over and above users’ own preferences, suggesting that norm learning processes guide online outrage expressions. Moreover, expressive norms moderate social reinforcement of outrage: in ideologically extreme networks, where outrage expression is more common, users are less sensitive to social feedback when deciding whether to express outrage. Our findings highlight how platform design interacts with human learning mechanisms to impact moral discourse in digital public spaces.

If platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, & Twitter are the engines of social media use, what is the gasoline? The answer can be found in the psychological dynamics behind consumer habit formation & performance

Habits and the electronic herd: The psychology behind social media’s successes and failures. Ian A. Anderson  Wendy Wood. Consumer Psychology Review, November 22 2020. https://doi.org/10.1002/arcp.1063

Abstract: If platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter are the engines of social media use, what is the gasoline? The answer can be found in the psychological dynamics behind consumer habit formation and performance. In fact, the financial success of different social media sites is closely tied to the daily‐use habits they create among users. We explain how the rewards of social media sites motivate user habit formation, how social media design provides cues that automatically activate habits and nudge continued use, and how strong habits hinder quitting social media. Demonstrating that use habits are tied to cues, we report a novel test of a 2008 change in Facebook design, showing that it impeded posting only of frequent, habitual users, suggesting that the change disrupted habit automaticity. Finally, we offer predictions about the future of social media sites, highlighting the features most likely to promote user habits.

People sometimes treat the moral value of a belief as an independent justification for belief, and on that basis, sometimes prescribe evidentially poor beliefs to others

Morality justifies motivated reasoning in the folk ethics of belief. Corey Cusimano, Tania Lombrozo. Cognition, January 19 2021, 104513. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cognition.2020.104513

Abstract: When faced with a dilemma between believing what is supported by an impartial assessment of the evidence (e.g., that one's friend is guilty of a crime) and believing what would better fulfill a moral obligation (e.g., that the friend is innocent), people often believe in line with the latter. But is this how people think beliefs ought to be formed? We addressed this question across three studies and found that, across a diverse set of everyday situations, people treat moral considerations as legitimate grounds for believing propositions that are unsupported by objective, evidence-based reasoning. We further document two ways in which moral considerations affect how people evaluate others' beliefs. First, the moral value of a belief affects the evidential threshold required to believe, such that morally beneficial beliefs demand less evidence than morally risky beliefs. Second, people sometimes treat the moral value of a belief as an independent justification for belief, and on that basis, sometimes prescribe evidentially poor beliefs to others. Together these results show that, in the folk ethics of belief, morality can justify and demand motivated reasoning.

Keywords: BeliefMoral judgmentLay epistemicsOptimismMotivated reasoning

A previous version... Morality justifies motivated reasoning. Corey Cusimano, Tania Lombrozo. Princeton Univ 2020. https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2020/07/moral-values-occupy-cardinal-position.html

5. General discussion

Dilemmas about what to believe based on the evidence and based on morality are commonplace. However, we know little about how people evaluate beliefs in these contexts. One line of reasoning, consistent with past work documenting both an objectivity bias (Ross & Ward, 1996), and an aversion to discrepant and inaccurate beliefs in others (Golman et al., 2016), predicts that people will demand that others set aside moral concerns to form beliefs impartially and solely on the basis of the evidence. However, we hypothesized that people will sometimes reject a normative commitment to evidence-based reasoning and treat moral considerations as legitimate influences on belief. This would entail that people sometimes prescribe motivated reasoning to others. We then articulated two ways that people could integrate moral and evidential value into their evaluations of belief. First, they could treat moral considerations as shifting the evidential decision criterion for a belief, which we called the “evidence criterion shifting hypothesis.” Or, they could treat a belief's moral quality as an alternative justification for belief that they weigh against its evidential quality, the “alternative justification” hypothesis. Our studies were capable of detecting whether people prescribe motivated reasoning to others, and further whether they do so in line with the evidence criterion shifting hypothesis or the alternative justification hypothesis.

Across all studies, participants routinely indicated that what a believer ought to believe, or was justified in believing, should be affected by what would be morally beneficial to believe. In Study 1, participants on average reported that what someone ought to believe should be more optimistic (in favor of what is morally beneficial to believe) than what is objectively most accurate for that person to believe based on their evidence. The extent to which participants prescribed these optimistic beliefs was strongly associated with the amount of moral benefit they thought an optimistic belief would confer, as measured by abstract statements such as, “All else being equal, it is morally good to give your friend the benefit of the doubt.” In Studies 2 and 3, participants reported that someone who would gain a moral benefit by being optimistic was more justified in adopting an overly-optimistic belief compared to someone else with the same information but who lacked a moral justification (and so adopted the overly-optimistic belief on the basis of a strong preference). Moreover, when both people adopted an evidence-based belief, the believer who disregarded a moral benefit to do so was judged to be less justified than someone who merely gave up a preference to do so. And finally, in Study 3, participants reported that, even though a spouse and a friend held the same evidence about the objective chances of the spouse's divorce, the spouse had a stronger obligation to remain optimistic about the marriage than the friend did. Taken together, these results provide strong evidence against the idea that people always demand that others form beliefs based on an impartial and objective evaluation of the evidence.

Consistent with the evidence criterion shifting hypothesis, participants also evaluated others' beliefs by applying evidential double-standards to them. In Study 1, participants reported that, relative to an impartial observer with the same information, someone with a moral reason to be optimistic had a wider range of beliefs that could be considered “consistent with” and “based on” the evidence. Critically however, the broader range of beliefs that were consistent with the same evidence were only beliefs that were more morally desirable. Morally undesirable beliefs were not similarly rated more consistent with the evidence for the main character compared to the impartial observer. Studies 2 and 3 provided converging evidence using different measures of perceived evidential quality. In these studies, participants judged that overly-optimistic beliefs were more likely to pass the threshold of “sufficient evidence” when the believer had a good moral reason to adopt those beliefs, compared to a believer who adopted the same beliefs based on a mere preference. Likewise, participants judged that beliefs that disregarded a good moral reason were less likely to have sufficient evidence compared to beliefs that disregarded a preference. Importantly, these differences in evidentiary quality arose even though the two beliefs were backed by the same objective information. Finally, Study 2 (though not Study 3), documented evidence criterion shifting using an indirect measure of evidence quality, namely, attributions of knowledge. In sum, these findings document that one reason why an observer may prescribe a biased belief is because moral considerations change how much evidence they deem necessary to hold the belief in an evidentially satisfactory way.

Finally, these studies were capable of detecting whether or not people thought that moral considerations could justify holding a belief beyond what is supported by the evidence – that is, whether moral reasons constitute an “alternative justification” for belief. Study 1 documented morality playing this role in two out of the six vignettes that we examined. When prescribing beliefs to a newlywed who is trying to judge his chance of divorce, about half of participants who prescribed a motivated belief reported that the newlywed should believe something that was, by their own lights, inconsistent with his evidence. Studies 2 and 3 revealed a more subtle way in which moral considerations directly affect belief evaluation. Across all the vignettes, the moral quality of the belief – such as how helpful or loyal the belief was – predicted participants' evaluations of how justified and permissible the belief was to hold even after accounting for the evidential quality of the belief. Thus, people will sometimes prescribe a belief to someone knowing that the belief is unsupported by that person's evidence because the belief confers a moral benefit.

Though the focus of the current investigation was to determine whether people prescribed motivated reasoning in certain common situations, it is important to note that these studies documented substantial evidence that people think beliefs ought to be constrained by the evidence. In Study 1, participants prescribed beliefs that were close to what they thought was best supported by the evidence (Table 3). Indeed, on average, participants prescribed beliefs that were pessimistic (i.e., closer to the evidence) rather than optimistic (i.e., morally preferable) (Fig. 3). Additionally, Studies 2 and 3 documented a strong association between the perceived evidentiary quality of the belief and judgments of the belief's permissibility and justifiability. Specifically, the less sufficient the believer's evidence, the less justifiable and permissible it was for them to hold the belief. Thus, while these findings show that people will integrate moral considerations into their belief evaluations, they also show that people think others should balance these considerations with the evidence that they have.

5.1. Alternative explanations

Two alternative explanations for our findings stem from the observation that we manipulated moral obligation by changing the social distance between two believers. Rather than social distance affecting the moral norms that apply to one's belief, as we hypothesize, it could instead be the case that being close to the person that one is forming a belief about either (1) makes one's belief more likely to be self-fulfilling, or (2), creates a reason to be more diligent and therefore more withholding of belief in general. We address each of these two concerns below.

5.1.1. Self-fulfilling beliefs

Adopting a belief can make certain outcomes more likely. For instance, adopting an optimistic belief could cause one to feel happier, try harder at some task, or bring about a beneficial outcome. We hypothesized that, sometimes, people treat these effects as constituting moral reasons to adopt a specific belief. For instance, if adopting an optimistic belief about a spouse's prognosis could improve their prognosis, then this benefit may constitute a morally good reason to adopt the optimistic belief. However, when the outcome in question is also what the belief is about, as it is in this example, then the belief is potentially a “self-fulfilling” belief. Self-fulfilling beliefs could confound moral reasons to adopt a belief with evidential reasons to adopt the belief. This can happen if participants attribute to the believer of a self-fulfilling belief the additional belief that their belief is self-fulfilling, which would then entail that this person has more evidence (in the form of the belief that they hold) in favor of the outcome that they have formed a belief about. For instance, participants may infer that, if the newlywed husband in Study 3 makes it more likely that he will not get divorced by adopting the belief that he has a 0% chance of divorce, then the observation that he has formed this belief may constitute additional evidence that he has a 0% chance of divorce. His friend who adopts the same belief would not have access to this additional evidence because the friend's belief does not affect the husband's outcome. If participants reason about beliefs in this way, then it is possible that the cases in which people seem to be endorsing non-evidential grounds for belief are really cases in which participants are inferring the presence of new evidence stemming from the self-fulfilling belief.

Several findings from the studies above speak against this skeptical proposal. First, if the socially close character's beliefs are treated as self-fulfilling, and therefore as evidentially self-supporting, then this feature of their beliefs ought to apply to pessimistic beliefs just as it does to optimistic ones. However, as we observed in Studies 2 and 3, when the husband adopts the pessimistic belief, participants judge his belief as worse than the friend who adopts the same pessimistic belief, directly contradicting this prediction. Put another way, a self-fulfilling account predicts that close others will always be judged as better evidentially situated than distant others. Thus, the statistical interaction between believer and belief, documented in Studies 2 and 3, rules out this interpretation. And second, in Studies 1 and 2, prescribed motivated reasoning, evidence criterion shifting, and alternative justification were all supported in the Friend scenario. In this scenario, the relevant belief concerned something that occurred in the past, namely, whether the cocaine that had been discovered belonged to the friend or not. Because the belief concerns something in the past, neither an optimistic nor pessimistic belief could affect its likelihood of being true. Thus, while it is possible that, in some vignettes, participants could treat self-fulfilling beliefs as evidentially self-supporting, this potential confound cannot fully explain our results.

5.1.2. Norms of due diligence

Norms of “due diligence” could explain, in principle, why two people with the same evidence should hold different beliefs. For example, if there is nothing in your car, then you may be justified to assume that you left the windows down based on your knowledge that you usually do. But if you left a child in the car, then you have a reason to double check before deciding whether you did or did not – even if you otherwise have similar reasons to think that you usually leave them down. Prior work shows that people believe one's diligence in belief formation should vary according to the risk imposed by a false belief (McAllister et al., 1979; Pinillos, 2012), and people in these situations actually do engage in more thorough reasoning when the risks are high (Fiske & Neuberg, 1990; Kunda, 1990; Mayseless & Kruglanski, 1987; Newell & Bröder, 2008; Payne, Bettman, & Johnson, 1993). Thus, perhaps the main characters in Study 1 have a wider range of beliefs consistent with the evidence than the AI because they need to be more diligent in their reasoning than the AI does, and therefore require more evidence before becoming too confident. Likewise, in Studies 2 and 3, perhaps participants think that people should reason more diligently about those to whom they are close compared to those to whom they are distant, and this norm explains why believers were evaluated negatively for adopting pessimistic beliefs. In sum, perhaps changes in social distance affect how diligent one must be when reasoning, rather than affecting whether one ought to reason in a motivated or biased way.

However, norms of diligence also fail to fully explain results from these studies. In Study 1, a due diligence explanation would predict that a wider range of beliefs would be consistent with the evidence, such that a wider range of morally-undesirable beliefs would also be permitted for the characters but not the AI. However, we observed evidence criterion shifting only for more morally-desirable beliefs, not for more morally-undesirable beliefs, inconsistent with predictions based on due diligence. Similarly, in Studies 2 and 3, a due diligence explanation would predict that, based on the same amount of information, the socially close character would be less justified to adopt any belief, whether optimistic or pessimistic. Yet, the statistical interaction we observe rules this out: Whereas socially close observers were judged poorly for adopting the morally-undesirable (but evidentially-better) belief, these differences were either attenuated or reversed for the morally-desirable, optimistic belief. Thus, our data suggest that being a person rather than an AI, or having a close relationship as opposed to having a distal one, does not impose a demand to be careful in your beliefs, but instead imposes a demand to be partial.

5.2. Implications for motivated reasoning

Psychologists have long speculated that commonplace deviations from rational judgments and decisions could reflect commitments to different normative standards for decision making rather than merely cognitive limitations or unintentional errors (Cohen, 1981; Koehler, 1996; Tribe, 1971). This speculation has been largely confirmed in the domain of decision making, where work has documented that people will refuse to make certain decisions because of a normative commitment to not rely on certain kinds of evidence (Nesson, 1985; Wells, 1992), or because of a normative commitment to prioritize deontological concerns over utility-maximizing concerns (Baron & Spranca, 1997; Tetlock et al., 2000). And yet, there has been comparatively little investigation in the domain of belief formation. While some work has suggested that people evaluate beliefs in ways that favor non-objective, or non-evidential criteria (e.g., Armor et al., 2008; Cao et al., 2019; Metz, Weisberg, & Weisberg, 2018; Tenney et al., 2015), this work has failed to demonstrate that people prescribe beliefs that violate what objective, evidence-based reasoning would warrant. To our knowledge, our results are the first to demonstrate that people will knowingly endorse non-evidential norms for belief, and specifically, prescribe motivated reasoning to others.

Our results therefore warrant a fresh look at old explanations for irrationality. Most relevant are overconfidence or optimism biases documented in the domain of close relationships (e.g., Baker & Emery, 1993; Srivastava, McGonigal, Richards, Butler, & Gross, 2006) and health (e.g., Thompson, Sobolew-Shubin, Galbraith, Schwankovsky, & Cruzen, 1993). Past work has suggested that the ultimate explanation for motivated reasoning could derive from the downstream benefits for the believers (Baumeister, 1989; Murray & Holmes, 1997; Taylor & Brown, 1988; Srivastava et al., 2006; but see Neff & Geers, 2013, and Tenney et al., 2015). Our findings suggest more proximate explanations for these biases: That lay people see these beliefs as morally beneficial and treat these moral benefits as legitimate grounds for motivated reasoning. Thus, overconfidence or over-optimism may persist in communities because people hold others to lower standards of evidence for adopting morally-beneficial optimistic beliefs than they do for pessimistic beliefs, or otherwise treat these benefits as legitimate reasons to ignore the evidence that one has.

Beyond this general observation about why motivated reasoning may come about or persist, our results also hint at a possible mechanism for how moral norms for belief facilitate motivated reasoning. Specifically, people could acknowledge that one of their beliefs is supported by less total evidence compared to their other beliefs, but judge that the belief nevertheless satisfies the demand for sufficient evidence because the standards for evidence are lower in light of the belief's moral quality. As a result, they may not judge it necessary to pursue further evidence, or to revise their belief in light of modest counter-evidence. As an example, people could recognize that a belief in God, or a belief in Karma, is supported by little objective evidence, but at the same time believe that the little evidence they have nevertheless constitutes sufficient evidence in light of the moral benefit that the belief confers (see McPhetres & Zuckerman, 2017, and Lobato, Tabatabaeian, Fleming, Sulzmann, & Holbrook, 2019, for some preliminary findings consistent with this proposal; see James, 1937, and Pace, 2011, for fuller discussion of how to evaluate evidence for morally beneficial beliefs). Although this is speculative, it naturally follows from the findings presented here and presents a valuable direction for future research.

5.3. Moderating prescribed motivated reasoning

Though we have demonstrated that people prescribe motivated reasoning to others under some conditions, we have not offered a comprehensive treatment of the conditions under which this occurs. Indeed, we did not observe prescribed motivated reasoning in the Bully vignette in Study 2, or the Sex vignette in Study 1, despite their similarity to the other vignettes. One straightforward explanation is that the relevant moral norms in those vignettes did not outweigh demands to be accurate. Indeed, participants reported on average the least moral concern for the Sex vignette, raising the possibility that a putative demand to favor a particular belief in that scenario was not strong enough to override the norm to be objective.9 Likewise, in the Bully vignette, there could have been strong reasons to be diligent and accurate that directly competed with reasons to be partial, but which we had not foreseen when constructing our materials. For instance, participants may have believed that the teacher had a moral responsibility to be clear-eyed about the bully in order to protect the other students. This explanation is speculative, but it is consistent with prior work documenting that people temper their recommendations for over-optimism when the risks outweigh the potential benefits. For instance, Tenney et al. (2015) found that people were less likely to prescribe optimism to others when those others were in the process of making a decision compared to when a decision had already been made. This was presumably because making a decision on wrong information is unnecessarily risky in a way that over-optimism after a decision is not. In general, these considerations suggest that, just as people are sensitive to the benefits of accuracy and bias when setting their own reasoning goals (c.f. Kruglanski, 2004), it is likely that they incorporate the comparative advantages of accuracy and bias when prescribing beliefs to others.

Though we tested a wide range of scenarios in the current studies, the range of morally beneficial beliefs was still relatively limited. Specifically, many of the scenarios we tested invoked moral obligations that stem from one's close personal relationships. However, it is possible that people will sometimes endorse moral demands that extend to distant others and that outweigh the normal demands to be partial towards one's friends and family. For instance, if someone's friend has been accused of sexual assault, it is possible that observers will no longer prescribe giving that friend the benefit of the doubt. Instead, one's moral obligations to the potential victims may demand either being perfectly objective or perhaps even weighing the alleged victim's testimony more heavily than the friend's. As this example highlights, the moral reasons that sometimes justify motivated beliefs in our studies may be outweighed by reasons that confer different kinds of moral benefits (beyond the possible benefit of accurate reasoning discussed above).

Importantly, which moral norms are salient to observers, and indeed whether observers moralize mental states at all, differs across individuals, religious communities, and cultures (Graham et al., 2013). For instance, it may be that Christians are more likely to demand of others that they form respectful beliefs about parents (irrespective of the evidence) compared to Jews, because Christians (relative to Jews) are more likely to judge disrespectful attitudes as morally wrong and under the believer's control (Cohen & Rozin, 2001). Likewise, conservatives may be more likely to demand partial beliefs about friends or authority figures in light of their tendency to attach greater value to these moral norms (Graham, Haidt, & Nosek, 2009). Future work would benefit from rigorously documenting what beliefs people moralize, and in what situations people believe motivated reasoning will be beneficial.

A final moderating factor that we did not explore in our studies concerns the extent to which epistemic rationality may be valued differently across individuals. Some prior work has suggested that people vary in their intuitive commitment to objective, logical, and evidence-based reasoning (Pennycook et al., 2020; Ståhl et al., 2016). If these individual differences reflect the degree to which individuals intrinsically value epistemic rationality, then on average these individuals should be less sensitive to changes in the moral benefits of motivated reasoning. However, prior work measuring commitment to rationality has not investigated why certain individuals tend to value epistemic rationality more than others. This omission is important because there are potentially many reasons why someone may categorically reject bias – morally motivated or otherwise (Chignell, 2018). In our view, this remains an underexplored, but valuable, domain of research.

To summarize, it is likely the case that whether people prescribe motivated reasoning to others reflects a complex integration of (i) situational demands to be accurate, (ii) situational demands to adopt a morally beneficial belief (where more than one moral norm may come into play, and where such norms are likely to vary across culture), and (iii) individual differences in the extent to which people value accuracy and objectivity over other qualities of belief. Our results suggest that a large proportion of people feel the tug of moral benefits of belief in at least some common social scenarios, but much work remains to be done.

5.4. Prescribing motivated reasoning for moral or non-moral reasons

The studies above provide strong support for the claim that, in the lay ethics of belief, morality can justify motivated reasoning, therein raising the question of whether moral value is the only kind of non-evidential consideration that people explicitly endorse in belief formation. Specifically, it raises the question of whether people think others should adopt beliefs that are merely useful (but not morally beneficial). We found that moral considerations were treated as a better justification for motivated reasoning compared to mere preferences (Studies 2–3), but these studies do not definitively rule out the possibility that a large personal benefit could also justify motivated reasoning in the eyes of observers. Some philosophers have famously argued in favor of this possibility, as when Pascal (1852) concluded that, despite a paucity of evidence, he ought to believe that God exists or else risk incalculable suffering after death. Whether people judge that these kinds of benefits can justify motivated belief warrants further investigation.

Are big and small lies complementary or supplementary? The participants who lie more in the big lie, also do so in the small lie and vice versa

Big and Small Lies. Diogo Geraldes, Franziska Heinicke, Duk Gyoo Kim. Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics, January 18 2021, 101666. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.socec.2021.101666

Highlights

• We study how big and small lies are interconnected.

• Lies are complementary, which rejects the moral capacity of lying.

• A streak of good lucks on a high-stakes prize decreases small-stakes lying.

Abstract: Lying involves many decisions yielding big or small benefits. Are big and small lies complementary or supplementary? In a laboratory experiment where the participants could simultaneously tell a big and a small lie, our study finds that lies are complementary. The participants who lie more in the big lie, also do so in the small lie and vice versa. Our study also finds that although replacing one dimension of the lying opportunities with a randomly determined prize does not affect the overall lying behavior, repeatedly being lucky on a high-stakes prize leads to less lying on the report of a low-stakes outcome.

Inequity aversion and fairness sensitivity in rats suggest that rudiments for such social motives can be found in evolutionary distant relatives to humans, implying conserved origins

From 2019... Inequity aversion in social species. Lina Oberliessen. PhD Thesis, Mathematisch Naturwissenschaftlichen Fakultät der Heinrich-Heine-Universität, Düsseldorf, Sep 2019. https://d-nb.info/1202363857/34

Rolf Degen's take: https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/1351172810119512067

Abstract: Research over the last decades has shown that humans and other animals reveal behavioral and emotional responses to unequal reward distributions between themselves and other conspecifics. However, cross-species findings about the mechanisms underlying such inequity aversion are heterogeneous, and there is an ongoing discussion if inequity aversion represents a truly social phenomenon or if it is driven by non-social aspects of the task. There is not even general consensus whether inequity aversion exists in non-human animals at all. In this review article, we discuss variables that were found to affect inequity averse behavior in animals and examine mechanistic and evolutionary theories of inequity aversion. We review a range of moderator variables and focus especially on the comparison of social vs. non-social explanations of inequity aversion. Particular emphasis is placed on the importance of considering the experimental design when interpreting behavior in inequity aversion tasks: the tasks used to probe inequity aversion are often based on impunity-game-like designs in which animals are faced with unfair reward distributions, and they can choose to accept the unfair offer, or reject it, leaving them with no reward. We compare inequity-averse behavior in such impunity-game-like designs with behavior in less common choice-based designs in which animals actively choose between fair and unfair rewards distributions. This review concludes with a discussion of the different mechanistic explanations of inequity aversion, especially in light of the particular features of the different task designs, and we give suggestions on experimental requirements to understand the “true nature” of inequity aversion.

Disclosure of sexual secrets almost never resulted in relationship dissolution & over 1/3 of the sample said they appreciated the honest disclosure; plus, keeping sex secrets was related to lower relationship satisfaction

“Thanks for Telling Me”: The Impact of Disclosing Sex Secrets on Romantic Relationships. Lacey J. Ritter, Tara Martin, Keely Fox, David Knox & Susan Milstein. Sexuality & Culture, Jan 18 2021. https://rd.springer.com/article/10.1007/s12119-020-09812-7

Abstract: This research investigated the relationship consequences of disclosing sexual secrets to a romantic partner. Analyses of data from a 39-item Internet questionnaire completed by 195 undergraduate students showed that revealing sex secrets to a romantic partner was associated with either neutral or positive relationship outcomes. Disclosure of sexual secrets almost never (< 5%) resulted in relationship dissolution and over a third of the sample reported that they appreciated the honest disclosure. In addition, keeping sex secrets was related to lower relationship satisfaction such that each additional sex secret being kept from a romantic partner was associated with a one-half point loss of satisfaction (on a 5-point relationship satisfaction scale). This decrease persisted when controlling for sex and race. Mediation analyses found support for the notion that the type of romantic relationship an individual is in explains part of the association between keeping secrets and relationship satisfaction. Implications and future research considerations are suggested.

Discussion

Results revealed that, for respondents keeping one or more sexual secrets from a current or previous romantic partner (a little over 1/3 of the sample), outcomes for secret disclosure were overwhelmingly positive. Indeed, relationship satisfaction was not significantly altered by disclosure, supporting previous research emphasizing how disclosure can actually strengthen relationships (Sharff 1978) or, at the least, remove some of the negative stressors associated with secret-keeping (Cowan 2014). This was true for both the respondent and their partner, as secret disclosures toward either partner were overwhelmingly positive (47.98% and 38.89% appreciating the disclosure, respectively).

Keeping secrets from a romantic partner, whether due to college hookup expectations (Bogle 2008; Klinger 2016); fear of stigma (Brannon and Rauscher 2019; Piazza and Bering 2010); even boundary maintenance (Petronio and Child 2020) does have a significant impact on romantic relationships, however. Analyses found that the more secrets being kept by a respondent, the more likely they were to be less satisfied in their relationship, with non-secret-keepers reporting the most relationship satisfaction, similar to research on the “chilling effect” and the difficulty in creating and maintaining successful relationships when secrets remain (Aldeis and Afifi 2015; Petronio and Child 2020). The type of relationship also matters, with respondents in more casual, short-term relationships keeping more sexual secrets from partners, illustrating the concept of boundary permeability in particular (Petronio and Child 2020) in the need to restrict private information from casual linkages compared to longer term relationships.

Overall, even in a life course period that allows for more permissive sexual activity, college students still report keeping sexual secrets, even when they know divulging often ends positively. By maintaining these secrets, students are risking the quality of their relationships, as well as contributing to their own—and their partner’s—stress and mental health risks (Aldeis and Afifi 2015; Easterling et al. 2012). Though society promotes openness and honesty, there is still a gap between expectation and reality for emerging adults—those very individuals who are of age to create—and maintain—the very relationships they are keeping secrets about. Whether or not to keep a sex secret from a partner may seem like an individual concern, but the social implications of doing so are best shared with others.

Limitations

The data should be interpreted cautiously. Regarding the undergraduate sample, the data were skewed toward Whites (68%) and females (81%) and are hardly representative of the 17 million college and university undergraduates throughout the United States (National Center for Education Statistics 2020). Another limitation of the study is that it was cross-sectional. Respondents were asked to report on sex secret disclosure in a current or previous relationship at the time they took the survey, so we were unable to track fluctuations in their experiencing or revealing sex secrets over time. Finally, the survey only asked respondents about their partners’ having disclosed secrets to them, but did not survey the partner in question. Future research on sex secrets would ideally include both members of the romantic relationship to determine true mutual impact and reactions to the disclosure of sexual secrets.

In conclusion, among undergraduate college students, keeping sex secrets was associated with lower relationship satisfaction than revealing those secrets to a romantic partner. This difference was partly accounted for by the type of romantic relationship the respondent was in; however, the vast majority of disclosing experiences were met with either acceptance, relief, or neutrality. Future studies should use larger, more representative samples of adults and track satisfaction and secret disclosure over time.

Exposure to high testosterone levels in the womb led girls to exhibit more male gender-typed behavior and to show increased interest in boys as playmates

Prenatal androgen exposure and children's gender-typed behavior and toy and playmate preferences. Debra Spencer et al. Hormones and Behavior, Volume 127, January 2021, 104889. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.yhbeh.2020.104889

Highlights

• Prenatal androgen exposure linked to gender-typed play behavior in girls with CAH.

• Girls with CAH showed increased preference for boys as playmates.

• Children without CAH showed large sex differences in gender-typed play behavior.

• Amniotic fluid testosterone did not relate to gender-typed play behavior.

• Amniotic fluid testosterone may not be a reliable measure of prenatal androgen.

Abstract: We report findings from two studies investigating possible relations of prenatal androgen exposure to a broad measure of children's gender-typed behavior, as well as specifically to children's toy and playmate preferences. Study 1 investigated these outcomes for 43 girls and 38 boys, aged 4 to 11 years, with congenital adrenal hyperplasia (CAH, a genetic condition causing increased adrenal androgen production beginning prenatally) compared to similarly-aged, unaffected relatives (41 girls, 31 boys). The predicted sex differences were found for all of the outcome measures. Furthermore, girls with CAH showed increased male-typical and decreased female-typical behavior and toy and playmate preferences compared to unaffected girls. Study 2 investigated the relationship of amniotic fluid testosterone to gender-typed behavior and toy and playmate preferences in typically developing children (48 girls, 44 boys) aged 3 to 5 years. Although the predicted sex differences were found for all of the outcome measures, amniotic fluid testosterone was not a significant correlate, in the predicted direction, of any outcome measure for either sex. The results of study 1 provide additional support for an influence of prenatal androgen exposure on children's gender-typed behavior, including toy and playmate preferences. The results of study 2 do not, but amniotic fluid testosterone may be an insufficiently sensitive measure of early androgen exposure. A more sensitive and reliable measure of prenatal androgen exposure may be needed to consistently detect relations to later gender typed behavior in non-clinical populations.

Keywords: Congenital adrenal hyperplasiaAmniotic fluid testosteronePrenatal testosterone exposureAndrogenSex differencesGender-typed play behaviorToy preferencesPlaymate preferences

Placebo makeup: Women in the simulation phase considered themselves more feminine, healthier, and with higher self-esteem than without makeup

Valentova, Jaroslava V., Anthonieta L. Mafra, Natália Machado, and Marco Antonio C. Varella. 2021. “Makeup and Its Application Simulation Affect Women’s Self-perceptions.” PsyArXiv. January 17. doi:10.31234/osf.io/nuvk5

Abstract: Appearance modification is ancient, universal, and influences other- and self-perceptions. The role of expectation of appearance modification has never been investigated. We analyzed self-assessments of women without makeup and after having makeup professionally applied at four increasing levels. In the simulation phase, women were treated with colorless cosmetics. Fifty Brazilian women (Mage = 24.26) rated themselves on attractiveness, health, self-esteem, femininity, satisfaction with appearance, age, dominance, confidence, and competence in all experimental conditions. Women in the simulation phase considered themselves more feminine, healthier, and with higher self-esteem than without makeup. In the real makeup phases, these ratings were higher than in simulation phase. Appearance satisfaction and attractiveness did not differ between simulation and the real makeup phases, both being higher than without makeup. Confidence increased only in real makeup phases, and there was no effect on competence. Thus, real appearance modification and/or an expectation thereof can differently affect specific domains of self-evaluation.