Swedish Twin Pairs: A common argument is that the wealthy practice patrimonial voting, i.e. voting for right-wing parties to maximize returns on their assets; these authors say this is a non-causal correlation

Uncovering the Source of Patrimonial Voting: Evidence from Swedish Twin Pairs. Rafael Ahlskog & Anton Brännlund . Political Behavior, Jan 30 2021. https://rd.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11109-020-09669-4

Rolf Degen's take: The belief that wealth generates a political shift to the right, which serves to protect the wealth, fails the critical test. https://t.co/c8wicIvEOW https://t.co/r9j8TLePcN

Abstract: The boom in wealth inequality seen in recent decades has generated a steep rise in scholarly interest in both the drivers and the consequences of the wealth gap. In political science, a pertinent question regards the political behavior across the wealth spectrum. A common argument is that the wealthy practice patrimonial voting, i.e. voting for right-wing parties to maximize returns on their assets. While this pattern is descriptively well documented, it is less certain to what extent this reflects an actual causal relationship between wealth and political preferences. In this study, we provide new evidence by exploiting wealth variation within identical twin pairs. Our findings suggest that while more wealth is descriptively connected to more support for right-wing parties, the causal impact of wealth on policy preferences is likely highly overstated. For several relevant policy areas these effects may not exist at all. Furthermore, the bias in naive observational estimates seems to be mainly driven by environmental familial confounders shared within twin pairs, rather than genetic confounding.

Discussion

A popular argument in political science is that the wealthy practice patrimonial voting in that they vote for right-wing parties to increase their fortunes. While this pattern is well documented, the underlying mechanism (if causal or not) is not fully understood. Descriptively speaking, wealthier people in this sample of Swedish middle-aged twin pairs are more supportive of free market policies, less supportive of redistribution and real-estate taxes, and more likely to identify as right-wing and vote for right-wing parties. Causally speaking, however, the effect of wealth (all or financial) on domain specific policy preferences about taxes and market regulations on the one hand, or questions about economic redistribution on the other, appear to be much more modest than ordinarily assumed, and are not statistically significant.

When moving to within-twin pair analyses it is revealed that naive correlations, rather than reflecting a true causal signal, are likely severely biased by unobservable familial characteristics. This bias is largely left unchecked by conventional statistical controls such as income, education, family size or occupational category, which underscores the importance of taking familial confounders into account. Bivariate variance decomposition models further showed that the sources of this confounding are more likely shared family environment than genetic overlap.

While previous studies using lottery-winnings have shown some effects on political preferences, it should be noted that these studies concern a fairly dramatic relative increase in net wealth. Most voters are unlikely to experience a wealth shock comparable to the magnitude of a large lottery prize sum, not even under extraordinary circumstances such as financial crises or recessions. If our results are quantitatively transferable, we should expect few individuals to significantly alter their views on most economic and social policy issues in response to a realistic change in individual net wealth. However—we do find remaining effects for a few outcomes even after taking familial confounders into account, although these findings are mostly weak in both a substantive and statistical sense. Most notably, the highly specific issue of property taxation appears to be an exception to the pattern above.

This finding falls in line with studies that find a general link between property ownership and resistance against property taxation (Brunner et al. 2015). As argued in the theory section, we think that the case of property taxes and real wealth, in this particular setting, should be seen as a type of most likely case for finding an effect. People can fail to precisely compute the general costs and benefits of government policy (as would often be required for the free-market and redistribution dimensions), and yet find this specific form of taxation of their property obtrusive. The connection between the value of ones’ house rising, and paying larger amounts in property taxes, is hard to miss.

We do find some remaining effects, although statistically weak, on self-reported left–right placement and party choice. These effect sizes are similarly highly attenuated when controlling for familial confounders. It is possible that these two indicators are picking up the effect from other pocketbook type mechanisms than those captured by the survey items included in our issue dimensions. For instance, the right-wing coalition abolished the wealth tax at the time of the survey and Swedish property owners were saved from collapsing house prices as the conservative administration was able to mitigate much of the impact of the financial crisis. Unfortunately, no survey items regarding these policy preferences were available.

There are, as always, a few concerns about the interpretation of the lack of results when using a discordant twin design. First, if twins tend to exert a marked influence on each other (as adults) in a way that is relevant to the variables of interest, this will violate independence assumptions and introduce bias. The bias can go in either direction depending on whether this effect makes the twins more or less similar (i.e. if they come to diverge into different behavioral niches as a consequence). One particular way in which this could function in the present case is if the type of self-interest mechanisms we’re interested in testing extends within the family—specifically to the other twin. If so, this may dampen within-pair effects if one twin adapts, for example, to prefer less taxation as his or her cotwin gets richer. Robustness checks using self-reported contact rates between the twins in Appendix A give no indication that this is a problem for our results, but these tests do not completely rule out this potential design weakness.

Another remaining possible limitation is concerns about reverse causality or collider bias: values might affect wealth acquisition, and may also affect some of the controls. Collider effects would bias the estimates downward, but do not appear to be an issue since the introduction of controls has only minor consequences for the estimates. Reverse causality on the other hand would not lead to any of the estimates being biased up or down, but would obviously render moot any causal conclusions for the results that remain. In the absence of fine-grained longitudinal data for political attitudes, we will have to rely on plausibility: it appears dramatically less likely, for example, that having a particular opinion about real-estate taxes causes the value of one’s house to change, rather than the other way around.

Something should be said about the implications of the bivariate ACE models for future observational research. As mentioned in the methods section, these results indicate, at least in the current setting, where to look for confounding factors to include in the models. The absence of any substantial genetic confounding in these relationships indicate that we can conceivably get by without genetically informed data—provided that the sources of the environmental confounding can be identified and controlled for. The largest part of this confounding appears to stem from shared environmental factors—possibly family environment or shared networks. If these are accurately captured, observational models may be able to avoid a large amount of the endogeneity problem that we document here.

Finally, it is difficult to conceive of reasons why the external validity of these findings should be confined specifically to twins, since it would require that having a twin in itself nullifies most of the causal relationship between wealth and preferences over government policy. The results are therefore likely generalizable to a wider Swedish context, at the very least for the cohorts included in the study. Another question is how far these results can travel in an international context given that the universal welfare system in Sweden reduces the need for private savings in times of financial distress. However, recent research suggests that this context likely constitutes a tough test for the patrimonial voting hypothesis in that a larger effect of asset wealth on voting is found in more liberal welfare systems like the UK (Quinlan and Okolikj 2019). Thus, we think it is reasonable to assume that our results are generalizable to most other OECD-nations.

Our results should encourage scholars to investigate the relationship between economic resources and political preferences further. We find, as others have before us, that there is a descriptive link between wealth and political attitudes and behavior. However, it seems that these naive comparisons—even when using a rich set of statistical controls—overestimate the causal effect of wealth quite substantially, if there is one at all. We suggest that future research should aim at finding situations where the economic stakes are clear and unobtrusive to voters, and where there is an unambiguous connection between the policy issue at hand and the immediate self-interest of asset holders. Further research may provide important new knowledge about the effects of increasing wealth inequality, as well as insights into processes of political preference formation.

Recordings of our voice: We can hear with pitiless objectivity all aspects of how we speak, including the unconscious ways we manipulate prosody, pace, and pronunciation to create the voice we wish we had

John Colapinto: This Is the Voice.  Simon & Schuster (January 26, 2021). https://www.amazon.com/This-Voice-John-Colapinto/dp/1982128747/

Indeed, it is a philosophical irony of cosmic proportions that the only voice on earth that we do not know is our own. This is because it reaches us, not solely through the air, but in vibrations that pass through the hard and soft tissues of our head and neck, and which create, in our auditory cortex, a sound completely different to what everyone else hears when we talk. The stark difference is clear the first time we listen to a recording of own voice. (“Is that really what I sound like? Turn it off!”) The distaste with which so many of us greet the sound of our actual voice is not purely a matter of acoustics, I suspect. A recording disembodies the voice, holds it at a distance from us, so that we can hear with pitiless objectivity all aspects of how we speak, including the unconscious ways we manipulate prosody, pace, and pronunciation to create the voice we wish we had. When I mentioned this to a friend, he grimaced at the memory of hearing his recorded voice for the first time. “God!” he cried. “The insincerity!” He was reacting to the mismatch between who he knows himself (privately and inwardly) to be, and the person that he seeks to project into the world.

The researchers perceived a high prevalence of duplicate publication (66.5%) & self-plagiarism (59.0%), use of personal influence (57.5%) & citation manipulation (44.0%); low perceived incidence of data falsification (10.0%)

Research Misconduct in the Fields of Ethics and Philosophy: Researchers’ Perceptions in Spain. Ramón A. Feenstra, Emilio Delgado López-Cózar & Daniel Pallarés-Domínguez. Science and Engineering Ethics volume 27, Article number: 1. Jan 25 2021. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs11948-021-00278-w

Abstract: Empirical studies have revealed a disturbing prevalence of research misconduct in a wide variety of disciplines, although not, to date, in the areas of ethics and philosophy. This study aims to provide empirical evidence on perceptions of how serious a problem research misconduct is in these two disciplines in Spain, particularly regarding the effects that the model used to evaluate academics’ research performance may have on their ethical behaviour. The methodological triangulation applied in the study combines a questionnaire, a debate at the annual meeting of scientific association, and in-depth interviews. Of the 541 questionnaires sent out, 201 responses were obtained (37.1% of the total sample), with a significant difference in the participation of researchers in philosophy (30.5%) and in ethics (52.8%); 26 researchers took part in the debate and 14 interviews were conducted. The questionnaire results reveal that 91.5% of the respondents considered research misconduct to be on the rise; 63.2% considered at least three of the fraudulent practices referred to in the study to be commonplace, and 84.1% identified two or more such practices. The researchers perceived a high prevalence of duplicate publication (66.5%) and self-plagiarism (59.0%), use of personal influence (57.5%) and citation manipulation (44.0%), in contrast to a low perceived incidence of data falsification or fabrication (10.0%). The debate and the interviews corroborated these data. Researchers associated the spread of these misconducts with the research evaluation model applied in Spain.

Despite the prominence of feminist anti-porn groups & arguments in past decades, it is not true that support for anti-porn legislation has been discernibly driven by egalitarianism, but for patriarchal beliefs & values

Protection or Patriarchy? Gender Ideology and Support for Anti-pornography Legislation, 1988–2018. Samuel L. Perry & Elizabeth E. McElroy. Sexuality Research and Social Policy, Jan 30 2021. https://rd.springer.com/article/10.1007/s13178-021-00537-2

Abstract

Introduction: Though religious conservatives espousing patriarchal views have historically been on the forefront of anti-pornography efforts in the USA, the past few decades have witnessed an increasing secularization of the anti-pornography movement. This shift is characterized by greater rhetorical dependence on scientific studies, secular anti-pornography activist groups, and arguments surrounding the protection of women from exploitation or abuse.

Methods: Using both aggregated and disaggregated data from the 1988–2018 General Social Surveys, we estimate a series of binary logistic regression models in order to examine the potentially changing connection between espousing a more patriarchal ideology and support for anti-pornography legislation, net of relevant correlates.

Results: Among Americans in general, embracing a more patriarchal ideology is positively associated with support for anti-pornography legislation across all survey years. Moreover, interactions indicate that Americans who adhere to a more egalitarian ideology, and particularly women, show a decline in their support for anti-pornography legislation over time.

Conclusions: Despite the prominence of feminist anti-porn groups and arguments in past decades, findings contradict the idea that support for strict anti-pornography legislation among the general public has ever been discernibly driven by egalitarianism. Rather, it has been and remains robustly connected to patriarchal beliefs and values prescribing traditionalist gender roles.

Policy Implications: Findings elucidate the dominant underlying gender ideology present in both historic and contemporary attitudes toward sweeping anti-pornography legislation and demand scholars and policy-makers disentangle rhetoric (of protection) from reality (patriarchy).

Girls have worse average mental health than boys across 4 measures of mental health; this sex gap is largely ubiquitous cross-culturally; more gender equal countries have larger gender gaps in mental health

The gender gap in adolescent mental health: a cross-national investigation of 566,829 adolescents across 73 countries. O.L.K. Campbell, David Bann, Praveetha Patalay. SSM - Population Health, January 26 2021, 100742. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ssmph.2021.100742

h/t David Schmitt https://t.co/KwrxHghoSv https://t.co/GBqRca2YL1itter

Highlights

• Girls have worse average mental health than boys across 4 measures of mental health.

• The gender gap in mental health is largely ubiquitous cross-culturally.

• The gap is most pronounced for psychological distress and life satisfaction.

• More gender equal countries have larger gender gaps in mental health.

• Gender equality correlates with less psychological distress in boys but more in girls.

Abstract: Mental ill-health is a leading cause of disease burden worldwide. While women suffer from greater levels of mental health disorders, it remains unclear whether this gender gap differs systematically across regions and/or countries, or across the different dimensions of mental health. We analysed 2018 data from 566,827 adolescents across 73 countries for 4 mental health outcomes: psychological distress, life satisfaction, eudaemonia, and hedonia. We examine average gender differences and distributions for each of these outcomes as well as country-level associations between each outcome and purported determinants at the country level: wealth (GDP per capita), inequality (Gini index), and societal indicators of gender inequality (GII, GGGI, and GSNI). We report four main results: 1) The gender gap in mental health in adolescence is largely ubiquitous cross-culturally, with girls having worse average mental health; 2) There is considerable cross-national heterogeneity in the size of the gender gap, with the direction reversed in a minority of countries; 3) Higher GDP per capita is associated with worse average mental health and a larger gender gap across all mental health outcomes; and 4) more gender equal countries have larger gender gaps across all mental health outcomes. Taken together, our findings suggest that while the gender gap appears largely ubiquitous, its size differs considerably by region, country, and dimension of mental health. Findings point to the hitherto unrealised complex nature of gender disparities in mental health and possible incongruence between expectations and reality in high gender equal countries.

Discussion

Across four mental health outcomes - life satisfaction, psychological distress, hedonia, and eudaemonia - we find that girls typically had worse mental health than boys. Whilst there is considerable cross-cultural variation in the size of this average difference, it appears largely ubiquitous in this global sample - particularly for life satisfaction and psychological distress. Perhaps counterintuitively, richer European countries including the Scandinavian nations, such as Sweden and Finland, have some of the largest gender gaps in mental health. By contrast, countries with worse society gender equality scores – such as Jordan, Saudi Arabia, and Lebanon - have some of the smallest gender gaps and the direction of the gap is sometimes reversed (with boys having worse mental health). The outcomes vary in their distributions and where in the distribution the gender gap appears, indicating that mean differences are driven by different parts of the mental health distribution for the different outcomes. This highlights the importance of considering the underlying distributions of any mean differences observed. An identical mean difference may be driven by different parts of the population distribution, and this may have public health consequences. For example, we found that girls were less likely than boys to report the highest life satisfaction score, rather than having particularly higher counts in the lower part of the life satisfaction distribution. Previous research typically only focuses on mean differences – future research to understand cross-national differences in mental health may benefit from such analyses.

Higher GDP per capita was associated with a larger gender gap, albeit the magnitude of effect was small. This contrasts with other findings where a positive relationship between GDP and adolescent wellbeing has been found (Torsheim et al., 2006), and this may be due to our inclusion of a wider range of countries beyond rich Western economies. The Easterlin paradox of increasing per capita wealth not associating with increasing wellbeing is well known (Easterlin, 2003) — once basic requirements are met, material desires often increase with increasing incomes so that one is never completely satisfied (Carol Graham et al., 2010). This however does not completely explain the negative association with mental health we found in both genders, or the larger mental health gender gap in richer countries. In line with previous literature we find an inconsistent and weak relationship between income inequality and mental health outcomes (Ngamaba et al., 2018), although it is associated with a wider gender gap in all cases. It could be the case that income inequality and GDP per capita are not particularly important amongst adolescents, and a more specific measure such as the purchasing power of adolescents might be more relevant. Or, for income inequality, the association may be dependent on a country’s level of development, with higher income inequality associating with better mental health in developing nations and worse mental health in developed nations (Ngamaba et al., 2018).

More gender equal countries had larger gender gaps across all outcomes examined, consistent with previous literature in adults (Zuckerman et al., 2017). While the gender equality measures used are not specifically designed to capture exposures directly experienced by adolescents, they reflect multiple dimensions of gender equality which influence experiences through all live stages in these countries and hence provide relevant information about the societal experiences for each gender. Whilst the nature of the associations between gender equality and adolescent mental health were inconsistent across outcomes it was striking that where the association was positive, it was particularly strong for males. This is in contrast to previous findings that show an equivalent positive relationship between gender equality and life satisfaction in boys and girls (Looze et al., 2018). Whilst previous work has shown that social norms of gender equality may be particularly important for mental health outcomes (Tesch-Römer et al., 2008) it is unclear if the multiple available gender equality indicators we used fully capture this. The newly created gender social norms index (GSNI), despite attempting to capture the distinct attitudinal aspects of gender equality, does not appear to measure gender equality in a qualitatively different way than the GII as they are highly correlated. By contrast, the GGGI captures a greater detail of gender equality by including more and more diverse indicators (Table S3), making it more granular, whilst also separating itself from a country’s level of development. For example, the GGGI includes five indicators for economic participation, such as ratio of female earned income to male, and ratio of female professional and technical workers to males, compared to the GII’s one measure of female and male labour force participation rates.

Our results present a complex picture for the relationship between gender equality and the adolescent gender mental health gap. While the feminist movement is itself old, extensive judicial and social change towards gender equality is a fairly recent development, with the UN Convention on the Elimination of all Forms of Discrimination Against Women (CEDAW) only being instituted in 1981.

Graham and Pettinato (C. Graham & Pettinato, 2002) coined the term ‘frustrated achievers’ to describe individuals that experience improvements in wealth but report negative perceived past mobility and lower happiness, as a result of still facing discriminatory practices and barriers to their continued ascent. In terms of women, whilst gains have been made, there remain many barriers to full equality that may explain part of our association between gender equality and worse female mental health, or only very slightly better female mental health in the case of life satisfaction. Similarly, expectations of equality may rise faster than actual experience of equality and this may result in worse mental health as women are not able to realise their goals. Another characteristic of upwardly mobile groups is that their reference categories for social comparison are usually beyond their original cohort (Easterlin, 2003). Thus, women or girls attempting to achieve the same successes as men and boys will look to them as their reference group and this may highlight the inequalities between them, producing lower life satisfaction and mental health, while in less gender equal countries reference groups might be limited to their own sex (Costa et al., 2001). Furthermore, in a number of more gender unequal countries, boys and girls might be more socially segregated at adolescence (Talbani & Hasanali, 2000) which reduce between gender comparisons.

In more gender equal countries girls and women are now faced with a double burden of balancing both increased economic and political participation as well as the traditional female responsibilities and norms. While in more gender equal countries women have entered traditionally male dominated areas of employment, men have not entered female dominated areas of employment to the same extent, nor do they do equal amounts of domestic work (England & Folbre, 2005; Garcia & Tomlinson, 2020). In countries with lower gender equality women’s roles are more fixed, whereas in more gender equal countries they are less prescribed, leading to potential conflict between roles, which may affect mental health (Hopcroft & Bradley, 2007).

Adolescence and puberty marks a particular period of changing identity (Blakemore & Mills, 2014) including developing conceptions of what it means to be a man or a woman (Greene & Patton, 2020), and while there are cross-cultural differences in experience of adolescence, identity development is common (Gibbons & Poelker, 2019). Adolescence can be particularly stressful when the norms of femininity potentially contradict with the norms of gender equality and attempting to balance the two may be additionally difficult. Previous research indicates that stress and educational pressure is particularly correlated with worse mental health in adolescent girls (M.a, Gotlib, & Hayward, 1999; Wiklund et al., 2012). Indeed, changing norms of female education and economic participation can increase educational stress and psychological distress for girls whilst they are still burdened with traditional anxieties related to maintaining a female identity and appearance (West & Sweeting, 2003) - and adolescent girls experience many more anxieties related to their appearance than boys (Smolak, 2004). Additionally, evidence suggests that individuals who violate gender stereotypes may receive backlash (Rudman et al., 2012), which may have negative consequences for mental health. Overall, adolescence marks a period of emerging new stressors which may negatively affect girl’s mental health to a greater degree than boys, and in more gender equal countries there may be more of these stressors. For example, having to balance multiple gender norms, or the stress related to the mismatch between expected and experienced gender equality and opportunities, which is potentially greater in countries perceived to have higher gender equality.

Future research should examine some of the theories we have highlighted above to better understand the individual level mechanisms. For example, to examine whether girls who attempt to satisfy multiple gender norms, such as being - femininely attractive, high achieving, and ‘one of the boys’ - have worse mental health. Additionally, examination of other country-level indicators may yield further results to help explain country-level differences in the gender gap, such as, availability and access to mental health support (Saraceno et al., 2007), levels of stigma and literacy around mental health (Corrigan & Watson, 2002), and broader factors such as estimates of environmental degradation, which may have gendered impacts (Patel et al., 2020).

Limitations

Firstly, our study relies exclusively on cross-sectional cross-country correlations; thus, we cannot make any strong conclusions regarding the causal pathways involved. However, cross-country comparisons are necessary to elucidate risk factors that operate at the population level (Pearce, 2000), such as indicators of gender and income inequality. Secondly, whilst we cannot exclude cultural differences on likert scale responses, such as positivity biases, that may confound cross-country differences (Oishi, 2010) invariance testing of the measures indicated that the measures behaved similarly across gender and region. Thirdly, the gender gap itself may partly be a product of reporting bias – with boys being less willing to report negative mental health than girls. However, self-reports are necessary to measure mental health and wellbeing, and the extent and distributions of the gender gap being different across mental health outcomes suggests reporting biases might not be the only explanation. Fourthly, there could be systematic differences across genders in school attendance amongst the countries in our sample that could potentially bias comparison of gender gaps across countries. However, investigation of the gender ratio in secondary enrolment (obtained from the GGGI) suggests that there are not large differences in our sample. The female to male ratio in secondary enrolment ranges from 0.9 to 1.1 for our whole sample, apart from Germany (0.89), the Philippines (1.19) and Qatar (1.25). Lastly, our measure of gender was binary in nature and does not allow investigation of non-binary gender identities on mental health.

People have a more positive relationship with action than with inaction, expect more favorable outcomes from it, and would rather act than refrain from acting when in doubt

Are actions better than inactions? Positivity, outcome, and intentionality biases in judgments of action and inaction. Aashna Sunderrajan, Dolores Albarracín. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Volume 94, May 2021, 104105. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2021.104105

Rolf Degen's take: People have a more positive relationship with action than with inaction, expect more favorable outcomes from it, and would rather act than refrain from acting when in doubt. https://t.co/OeZT2EY1yN https://t.co/f33Fv4F7lv

Highlights

• Despite the adaptive value of both action and inaction, people not only evaluate actions more favorably than inactions but also prefer to engage in them as well (action positivity bias)

• Preferences for action over inaction tend to be driven by biases of outcome positivity (action outcome bias) and intentionality (action intentionality bias), however, assumed outcome positivity is most influential than assumed intentionality

• An overall preference for action could become detrimental to health, therefore, understanding the magnitude of this bias in everyday life is vital

Abstract: Behavior varies along a continuum of activity, with effortful behaviors characterizing actions and restful states characterizing inactions. Despite the adaptive value of both action and inaction, we propose three biases that, in the absence of other information, increase the probability that people like, and want to pursue, action more than inaction: An action positivity bias, an action outcome bias, and an action intentionality bias. Across four experiments, participants not only evaluated actions more favorably than inactions (Experiment 1–3) but also chose to engage in actions more than inactions (Experiment 4). This action positivity bias was driven by the two interrelated biases of outcome positivity and intentionality (Experiments 1–3), such that actions (versus inactions) were spontaneously thought of as having more positive outcomes and as being more intentional. Moreover, these outcome differences played a stronger role in the action positivity bias than did the intentionality differences (Experiment 3). As balancing action and inaction is important for healthy human functioning, it is important to understand evaluative biases in this domain. All experiments were preregistered, and one involved a nationally representative sample.

Keywords: ActionInactionBiasEvaluationOutcomeIntentionality

Individual variation in religiosity is well explained by the interaction of increased levels of social mistrust and increased needs to moralize other people’s sexual behaviors

Predictive modeling of religiosity, prosociality, and moralizing in 295,000 individuals from European and non-European populations. Pierre O. Jacquet, Farid Pazhoohi, Charles Findling, Hugo Mell, Coralie Chevallier & Nicolas Baumard. Humanities and Social Sciences Communications volume 8, Article number: 9. Jan 21 2021. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41599-020-00691-9

Abstract: Why do moral religions exist? An influential psychological explanation is that religious beliefs in supernatural punishment is cultural group adaptation enhancing prosocial attitudes and thereby large-scale cooperation. An alternative explanation is that religiosity is an individual strategy that results from high level of mistrust and the need for individuals to control others’ behaviors through moralizing. Existing evidence is mixed but most works are limited by sample size and generalizability issues. The present study overcomes these limitations by applying k-fold cross-validation on multivariate modeling of data from >295,000 individuals in 108 countries of the World Values Surveys and the European Value Study. First, this methodology reveals no evidence that European and non-European religious people invest more in collective actions and are more trustful of unrelated conspecifics. Instead, the individuals’ level of religiosity is found to be weakly but positively associated with social mistrust and negatively associated with the production of behaviors, which benefit unrelated members of the large-scale community. Second, our models show that individual variation in religiosity is well explained by the interaction of increased levels of social mistrust and increased needs to moralize other people’s sexual behaviors. Finally, stratified k-fold cross-validation demonstrates that the structures of these association patterns are robust to sampling variability and reliable enough to generalize to out-of-sample data.

Towards a neuropsychology of political orientation: exploring ideology in patients with frontal and midbrain lesions

Hannah Nam H, Jost JT, Meager MR, Van Bavel JJ. Towards a neuropsychology of political orientation: exploring ideology in patients with frontal and midbrain lesions. Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B 20200137, Jan 20201. https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2020.0137

How do people form their political beliefs? In an effort to address this question, we adopt a neuropsychological approach. In a natural experiment, we explored links between neuroanatomy and ideological preferences in two samples of brain lesion patients in New York City. Specifically, we compared the political orientations of patients with frontal lobe lesions, amygdala lesions and healthy control subjects. Lesion type classification analyses revealed that people with frontal lesions held more conservative (or less liberal) beliefs than those with anterior temporal lobe lesions or no lesions. Additional analyses predicting ideology by extent of damage provided convergent evidence that greater damage in the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (dlPFC)—but not the amygdala—was associated with greater conservatism. These findings were robust to model specifications that adjusted for demographic, mood, and affect-related variables. Although measures of executive function failed to mediate the relationship between frontal lesions and ideology, our findings suggest that the prefrontal cortex may play a role in promoting liberalism. It is possible that the dlPFC is a critical region for the development of liberal ideology. Our approach suggests useful directions for future work to address the issue of whether biological developments precede political attitudes or vice versa—or both.

4. Discussion

We found that frontal lobe lesion patients reported more conservative (or less liberal) political orientation than patients with damage to their anterior temporal lobe and healthy control participants with no history of brain damage. ATL lesion patients were as liberal as healthy control participants. These findings were robust to various model specifications, including those that adjusted for demographic, mood and affect-related variables. Moreover, the extent of damage in the dlPFC was positively associated with self-reported conservatism, whereas the extent of damage in the amygdala attributable to ideological extremity, which was unrelated to brain damage. The results of our study suggest that the prefrontal cortex may be a region that is integral to the expression of liberal political attitudes, insofar as damage to this brain region was associated with a more conservative orientation. The results are also suggestive of the possibility that the amygdala is an important structure for the development of conservative attitudes, given that ATL lesion patients were less conservative than frontal lobe lesion patients. This would be consistent with prior work linking greater amygdala volume to conservatism [16] and system justification [46]. At the same time, ATL lesion patients were no more liberal than healthy control participants, and the degree of amygdala damage was not associated with ideology, so at least in this context, it appears that the amygdala per se is not a necessary structure for conservatism. We hope that future work will be able to assess causal pathways more directly, perhaps by obtaining information about political attitudes before and after a planned surgical resection of brain tissue. Based on research linking (a) political liberalism to cognitive flexibility and control and (b) executive functioning to frontal lobe activity, we explored the possibility that patients with frontal lobe lesions were more conservative due in part to diminished executive functioning. However, this possibility was not borne out in this study. We examined performance on three established tests of executive function; the differences we observed were in the expected direction, but they were not statistically significant, possibly because our sample was too small to provide sufficient statistical power. It is possible that specific cognition type could be useful to consider. For instance, it may be that social or identity-related cognitive functions are especially pertinent when it comes to linking frontal cortex function to political ideology (see [9]). Future research would do well to investigate these possibilities in larger samples, possibly by combining several small samples of patients with different types of lesions. Some have argued that the study of political ideology requires the measurement of multiple dimensions, such as social and economic attitudes [59]; but see [76]). We had no specific predictions regarding social versus economic dimensions of ideology (as opposed to overall liberalismconservatism), but we did administer individual items to measure them separately. We found no evidence that brain lesions were differentially linked to social versus economic attitudes, nor to ideological extremity on any of these dimensions. Nevertheless, future research based on larger (and more diverse) samples would do well to explore these possibilities. In conclusion, we have undertaken a neuropsychological investigation of political orientation by focusing on patients with different brain lesions. Our findings speak to the question of whether certain brain regions are necessary for the development of specific political beliefs, opinions and values. It may be worth noting that by exploring brain lesions we are not in any way suggesting that holding liberal or conservative attitudes is reflective of neural deficits or damage. Rather, the lesion method illuminates which neuroanatomical regions—and the cognitive functions related to them—may be necessary for understanding the development of political ideology. It is also important to keep in mind that studies of brain structure, including lesion studies, do not rule out effects of neural reorganization and malleability [77]. Accordingly, we strongly caution against deterministic or essentialized interpretations of our research (see [78]). Moreover, we theorize that the relationship between neurobiology and ideology is dynamic and reciprocal (see [4]), bearing in mind Nudo’s [77] observation that ‘behavioral experience is the most potent modulator of brain plasticity’ (p. 1). Along these lines, we look forward to future research that specifies the ways in which ideological experiences may shape the structures and functions of the human brain.

Mental Imagery of Free Fall: We do not see acceleration, but a constant speed

Mental Imagery of Free Fall: Does a Falling Apple Accelerate in Our Minds? Daniel Bratzke and Rolf Ulrich. Timing & Time Perception, Jan 27 2021. https://doi.org/10.1163/22134468-bja10022

Abstract: The present study examined whether people’s mental imagery of falling objects includes the acceleration due to the earth’s gravitational force. To investigate this question, we used two different tasks, a height estimation and a fall-time estimation task. In the height estimation task, participants were presented with different free-fall times and had to indicate the corresponding heights from which the object fell to the ground. In the fall-time estimation task, participants had to produce the fall time associated with free falls from different heights. In contrast to the law of free fall, our results are more consistent with a linear than with an accelerated relationship between height and fall time. Thus, the present results suggest that mental imagery of an object’s free fall does not represent the gravitational acceleration due to gravity.

Keywords: Intuitive physics; mental imagery; time perception

4. Discussion

In the present study, we investigated whether people’s mental imagery of free fall (of an object) represents the acceleration due to gravity. Irrespective of the estimation task (i.e., whether participants estimated heights or fall times), the results were more consistent with a linear than with an accelerated relationship between height and fall time. This suggests that the mental imagery of an object’s free fall does not represent the acceleration due to gravity and thus resembles the Aristotelian rather than the Newtonian model of kinematic phenomena.

The present results are in line with the previous results by Gravano et al. (2017), who showed that the mental imagery of throwing a ball against the ceiling and catching it on the rebound was compatible with microgravity, irrespective of whether participants imagined the ball’s motion under terrestrial or space conditions. They explained their results by assuming that participants used a visual mode of imagery, which does not represent the gravitational acceleration because visual processing of accelerating/decelerating motion is rather poor (e.g., Werkhoven et al., 1992). A related possibility why people do not represent the gravitational acceleration is that the Aristotelian model is an appropriate approximation of the largest parts of many free falls. Namely, under conditions of air resistance, falling objects rapidly attain a constant level of speed. Thus the initial phase of acceleration is too short to be carefully observed without instruments (see e.g., Rovelli, 2015). For example, the terminal velocity of an apple (m =0.15 kg, d =7 cm) would be V∞=35.70 m/s. However, 75% of this terminal velocity is attained already after 3.54 s or 53.70 m. According to this explanation, the mental representation of free fall does not include gravitational acceleration because the change of speed during the acceleration phase cannot be perceived. As a consequence, constant velocity is attributed to all phases of free fall.

As already mentioned in the Introduction, a study by Huber and Krist (2004) reported fall-time estimates that are consistent with an acceleration of imagined free fall. In their study, participants saw a ball rolling off a horizontal surface and had to estimate the time until the ball fell onto a marked landing point. Importantly, the fall of the ball was hidden from the participants’ view by an occluding curtain so that they had to imagine the fall of the ball. In a production task, participants started the motion of the ball and had to indicate the point in time when the ball hit the ground. In a judgment task, participants had to judge the flight time by using a circular rating scale. In both tasks, the height and the distance to the landing point were manipulated. The produced flight times showed a pattern that matched the normative rule very well. In the judgment task, however, the judgments deviated from the predicted pattern. The authors explained this dissociation between produced and judged flight times by arguing that only in the production task (but not in the judgment task) mental imagery was based on a timing-responsive representation (e.g., Schwartz & Black, 1999) of free fall, which helped to predict the point in time when the ball hit the ground.

One could argue that the production tasks used in Huber and Krist (2004) and the present study were comparable so that one should have expected accelerated functions also in the present study. There was, however, one possibly crucial difference between the two tasks. In the production task of Huber and Krist, the participants saw the ball moving on the horizontal surface until it was occluded, which was not the case for the apple in the current study (and also not in the judgment task of Huber and Krist). The perception of this initial movement of the ball might be crucial to activate dynamic mental imagery (see also Huber & Krist, 2004). Thus, it remains unclear whether participants would represent the acceleration in the free-fall scenario of the present study if one provided a similar initial motion cue as in the study of Huber and Krist.

A related issue regarding the present study is whether participants actually imagined the free fall. Although they were instructed to do so, they could have followed the simple rule: the higher the height the longer the fall time and vice versa. Such a strategy would be virtually indistinguishable from mental imagery of a linear relationship between the two variables. Additionally, one could argue that the height estimation task used in the present study was not optimal for inducing mental imagery because participants had to indicate the height from which the apple fell. Possibly, mental imagery would have been easier or more natural in a scenario where the apple falls from a fixed height and participants indicate the height the apple reaches at the end of the free fall (even though this scenario can also be considered somewhat unnatural as the apple would not simply stop falling before it reaches the ground). In fact, two participants were excluded from data analyses because they apparently understood the task in the latter way. We used the former scenario because we wanted to make the height estimation task as similar to the fall-time estimation task as possible. In future studies, the assessment of eye movements could potentially shed some light on the involvement of mental imagery in free-fall scenarios like the present one (for a discussion of the relationship between eye movements and mental imagery, see Huber & Krist, 2004).

In conclusion, the present study suggests that the intuitive physics of free fall as assessed by estimates of height and fall time during mental imagery of an object’s free fall does not represent the gravitational acceleration. A plausible explanation for this result is that the change of speed during the rather short acceleration phase of free fall cannot be visually detected and hence people (incorrectly) attribute constant speed to all phases of free fall. Nevertheless, future studies may provide an answer to the question of whether people are capable of imaging the acceleration of falling objects when initial motion cues are available.

When husbands are somewhat older than wives (but neither much older nor much younger), selective fitness is high, as operationalized by rates of short-term infant survival and neonatal breastfeeding

Pelham, B. W. (2021). The husband-older age gap in marriage is associated with selective fitness. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Jan 20201. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspi0000319

h/t David Schmitt "When husbands somewhat older than wives (but neither much older nor much younger)...8 cross-cultural replications w/ 225,000 mothers in low- to moderate-income nations...revealed husband-older age gap & life history tradeoff in lifetime selective fitness

Abstract: Wives are usually younger than their husbands. Although this has been replicated across time and culture, there is no previous evidence of the likely evolutionary underpinnings of this age gap. Study Set 1 replicated the marriage age gap—and its moderators—in 6.4 million American marriages that led to U.S. births between 2016 and 2018. This effect also replicated in three million unmarried unions. Study 2 directly examined the life history tradeoff that connects the marriage age gap to selective fitness. When husbands are somewhat older than wives (but neither much older nor much younger), selective fitness is high, as operationalized by rates of short-term infant survival and neonatal breastfeeding. This pattern held independent of the robust effects of maternal age. Eight cross-cultural replications involving more than 225,000 mothers in low- to moderate-income nations examined lifetime selective fitness (total number of living children) rather than single birth outcomes. In all eight nations, analyses revealed both a husband-older age gap and a life history tradeoff in lifetime selective fitness. Life history tradeoffs account well for the husband-older age gap in marriage.

Arab Countries: First large-scale multi-national survey to be conducted in Arab countries to investigate pornography viewing

MA Eljawad, H Se'eda, S Ghozy, et al. Pornography Use Prevalence and Associated Factors in Arab Countries: A Multinational Cross-Sectional Study of 15,027 Individuals. J Sex Med 2020;XX:XXX–XXX. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jsxm.2020.12.011

Abstract

Background: There has been a tangible increase in pornography consumption during the past decade, with the absence of a large-scale study of Arab countries.

Aim: The present study aimed to assess the prevalence of pornography viewing and its associated risk factors in Arab countries.

Methods: A large cross-sectional online survey was carried out recruiting participants without restrictions on the age, socioeconomic level, job, or educational level. Multivariable logistic regression analysis was performed to identify possible risk factors for viewing porn and results were expressed as odds ratios (ORs) and 95% confidence interval (95% CI).

Outcomes: Main outcomes were pornography viewing (first exposure and frequency), the perceptions of this act, use of spare time, physical activity (exercising), and frequency of psychiatrist visits.

Results: The final number of participants included in the study was 15027 participants with a mean age ± standard deviation of 23.82 years ± 24.99. Most of the participants were men (84.56%), living with parents (81.71%), and 60.51% university graduates. There were statistically significant differences (P < .001) in the attitude and practice of men compared with women throughout all tested variables. Frequent pornography viewing was associated with male gender (OR [95% CI] = 7.08 [6.43 to 7.81]; P < .001) and age group ≤15 years (OR [95% CI] = 1.33 [1.01 to 1.75]; P = .044). By contrast, higher education was inversely associated with viewing rates reaching the lowest level in PhD awardees (OR [95% CI] = 0.36 [0.26 to 0.51]; P = .003). It was also noted that regular exercising (OR [95% CI] = 0.66 [0.58 to 0.74]; P < .001) was associated with a reduction in pornography viewing rates.

Clinical implications: Young age, male gender, and lower educational level are all predictors for higher pornography viewing and should be considered when designing public health intervention in a related context.

Strengths and limitations: This is the first large-scale multi-national survey to be conducted in Arab countries to investigate pornography viewing. The main limitations were the cross-sectional design (cannot indicate causality) and the self-report nature (liable to social desirability and recall bias).

Conclusion: Pornography viewing is common in Arab countries and associated with some personal and behavioral factors.

Rolf Degen summarizing... Our memory helps preserve a rosy view, wiping out inconvenient truths about ourselves

Optimistic Amnesia: How Online and Offline Processing Shape Belief Updating and Memory Biases in Immediate and Long-Term Optimism Biases. Ziqing Yao, Xuanyi Lin, Xiaoqing Hu. Social Cognitive and Affective Neuroscience, nsab011, January 27 2021. https://doi.org/10.1093/scan/nsab011

Rolf Degen's take: Our memory helps preserve a rosy view, wiping out inconvenient truths about ourselves. https://t.co/Xn0TYMNLZs https://t.co/OqSl8sKCdP

Abstract: When people are confronted with feedback that counters their prior beliefs, they preferentially rely on desirable rather than undesirable feedback in belief updating, i.e., an optimism bias. In two pre-registered EEG studies employing an adverse life event probability estimation task, we investigated the neurocognitive processes that support the formation and the change of optimism biases in immediate and 24-hour delayed tests. We found that optimistic belief updating biases not only emerged immediately, but also became significantly larger after 24 hours, suggesting an active role of valence-dependent offline consolidation processes in the change of optimism biases. Participants also showed optimistic memory biases: they were less accurate in remembering undesirable than desirable feedback probabilities, with inferior memories of undesirable feedback associated with lower belief updating in the delayed test. Examining event-related brain potentials (ERPs) revealed that desirability of feedback biased initial encoding: desirable feedback elicited larger P300s than undesirable feedback, with larger P300 amplitudes predicting both higher belief updating and memory accuracies. These results suggest that desirability of feedback could bias both online and offline memory-related processes such as encoding and consolidation, with both processes contributing to the formation and change of optimism biases.

Keywords: optimism bias, belief updating, offline processing, P300, motivated cognition

Discussion

Encountering feedback that challenges one’s prior beliefs, people preferentially rely on desirable

than undesirable feedback to guide belief updating, i.e., the optimism bias (Dricu et al., 2020;

Sharot & Garrett, 2016; Sharot et al., 2011). Here, we provide novel evidence that optimism

biases are partially driven by shallower encoding and inferior memories of undesirable versus

desirable feedback, i.e., an optimistic amnesia effect. Moreover, we observed that optimistic

updating biases became larger over time, with preferential retention of updating in the desirable

condition and declined updating in the undesirable condition. Desirability of feedback

consistently modulated parietal P300 brain activities that may indicate encoding depth, with

larger P300s for desirable than undesirable probability feedback.

The present research provides the first evidence that optimism biases become larger over

24 hours. This finding is noteworthy because it suggests that the desirability of feedback not only

influences online attention/encoding-related processes but also biases offline consolidation

processes. A closer inspection of our data suggested that over time, belief updating, and

memories of desirable feedback were largely preserved, whereas updating and memories

significantly declined for undesirable feedback. These findings contribute to a growing literature

suggesting that motivation (e.g., valence, reward) could bias offline consolidation processes and

then influence long-term judgments (Payne & Kensinger, 2018; Rasch & Born, 2013; Stickgold

& Walker, 2013).

Our findings that belief updating and memories changed more significantly in the

undesirable but not in the desirable condition provide additional evidence that optimism bias is

primarily driven by insufficient updating when receiving undesirable feedback (Eil & Rao, 2011;

Sharot et al., 2011). Prior research found that self-related undesirable updating was not only

lower than self-related desirable updating but also lower than other-related updating in general

(Kuzmanovic et al., 2016). Moreover, aging participants showed reduced belief updating

following undesirable feedback compared to young adults, leading to larger optimism biases

(Chowdhury et al., 2014). In contrast, patients with major depressive disorder or individuals with

high functioning autism showed enhanced belief updating toward undesirable feedback relative to

healthy controls, leading to smaller optimism biases (Garrett et al., 2014; Korn et al., 2014;

Kuzmanovic et al., 2019). These findings, together with our novel results on delayed belief

updating and memory biases, consistently suggest that insufficient updating in response to

undesirable feedback is a fundamental mechanism that drives immediate and long-term optimism

biases.

Tracking ERPs allows us to investigate how the desirability of feedback biases

information processing along millisecond temporal scale. We found that the desirability of

feedback significantly modulated P300, and to a less extent, the LPP, but not the FRN. As one of

the most investigated ERP components, P300 has been associated with a range of cognitive

processes, including context updating, motivational salience, evaluation and categorization,

encoding depth, etc. (Azizian & Polich, 2007; Polich, 2007, 2012). In the present study, enhanced

parietal P300s to desirable versus undesirable feedback suggested that participants preferentially

encoded desirable feedback, which then exerted a greater impact on subsequent belief updating

and memory performance. Regarding the LPP effect, prior research suggested that LPP may

reflect in-depth elaboration of motivationally salient stimuli (Hajcak & Foti, 2020). Indeed,

multilevel analyses with trial-level data showed that enhanced P300 and LPPs to feedback

predicted larger belief updating and more accurate memories of feedback probabilities,

substantiating the putative role of the P300/LPP in encoding and elaboration processes (Kamp et

al., 2015; Otten & Donchin, 2000; Otten & Rugg, 2001; Rigney et al., 2020). These ERPs results

also suggest that differential processing of desirable and undesirable feedback can occur rapidly

after the initial valence processing.

We hypothesized that the frontocentral FRN would encode the desirability of feedback,

with larger FRNs elicited by undesirable versus desirable feedback (Heydari & Holroyd, 2016;

Yeung & Sanfey, 2004). However, the desirability of feedback was not observed to modulate

FRN. The insensitivity of FRN to feedback valence in the belief updating task raises the

possibility that estimation errors and reward prediction errors could reflect distinctive

computational processes of error tracking (Sharot & Garrett, 2016). Specifically, FRNs are

typically observed in reward processing tasks during which feedback conveys monetary gains and

losses (Hajcak et al., 2006; Heydari & Holroyd, 2016; Proudfit, 2015), whereas feedback in our

task indicated numerical discrepancies between estimations of probabilities. Specifically,

participants in the belief updating task needed to calculate the discrepancies between feedback

probabilities and their initial estimations to guide belief updating. Such high-level inferential and

calculation processes might make FRNs insensitive to the desirability of feedback in the present

context. Moreover, FRNs have been suggested to be involved in both error tracking and

behavioral adjustment. For example, in reward tasks, FRNs elicited by undesirable feedback (e.g.,

a loss) could guide behavioral adjustment to avoid losses (Cohen et al., 2007; Holroyd & Coles,

2002; Hu et al., 2015; Walsh & Anderson, 2012). However, in our belief updating task,

participants preferentially used desirable rather than undesirable feedback to guide belief

updating. The FRNs may reflect complex motivational-cognitive processes including both error

tracking (in response to both desirable and undesirable feedback), and the signaling of behavioral

adjustment (i.e., in response to desirable feedback). A mixture of these motivational-cognitive

processes may thus lead to comparable FRNs in both desirable and undesirable conditions.

Regarding the delayed optimism biases, although our results suggest that time delay and

offline processes contributed to the enhancement of optimism biases, it remains unknown

whether sleep or wakefulness may differentially influence belief updating and memory biases. On

the one hand, enhancement of optimism biases may be time-dependent rather than sleepdependent. Alternatively, given that sleep plays an important role in memory consolidation

(Rasch & Born, 2013), sleep-based consolidation may be necessary for optimism biases to

change. Future studies shall directly link sleep, offline consolidation processes, and optimism

biases to test this novel hypothesis. 

We could thus find no link between handedness and depression

Packheiser, Julian, Judith Schmitz, Gesa Berretz, Lena S. Pfeifer, Clara C. Stein, Marietta Papadatou-Pastou, Jutta Peterburs, et al. 2021. “Handedness and Depression: A Meta-analysis Across 87 Studies.” PsyArXiv. January 28. doi:10.31234/osf.io/2hqd3

Abstract: Alterations in functional brain lateralization, often indicated by an increased prevalence of left- and/or mixed-handedness, have been demonstrated in several psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders like schizophrenia or autism spectrum disorder. For depression, however, this relationship is largely unclear. While a few studies found evidence that handedness and depression are associated, both the effect size and the direction of this association remain elusive. Here, we collected data from 87 studies totaling 35,501 individuals diagnosed with depression disorders to provide a precise estimate of differences in left-, mixed- and non-right-handedness between depressed and healthy samples. We found no differences in left- (OR = 1.04, p = .384), mixed- (OR = 1.64, p = .060) or non-right-handedness (OR = 1.05, p = .309) between the two groups. We could thus find no link between handedness and depression on the meta-analytical level.

To Avoid More Political Violence, Allow Americans To Escape Each Other's Control - Let people join with the like-minded to reject officials and laws that don’t suit them and to construct systems that do

To Avoid More Political Violence, Allow Americans To Escape Each Other's Control. J D Tuccille. Reason, Jan 19 2021. https://reason.com/2021/01/19/to-avoid-more-political-violence-allow-americans-to-escape-each-others-control/

Let people join with the like-minded to reject officials and laws that don’t suit them and to construct systems that do.

Excertps, full text and links in the original URL:

[...]

We've built toward this point for years. While the Trumpists' storming of the Capitol was an unprecedented rejection of the established procedures for transferring power, it built on trends. From the contested, but peaceful, 2000 election, to the boycotting of Trump's 2016 victory by dozens of Democratic members of Congress as other opponents rioted blocks away, Americans have moved toward belief in the legitimacy of elections only if their side wins. At some point, we were going to see an outright refusal to accept a loss, which is what occurred on January 6.

And there's no reason to expect that people will lose their distaste for political defeat in future political contests.

How could Americans be accepting of electoral losses when many view their opponents as immoral and unpatriotic and see them as enemies of the country—to the point that the major factions are defined by their hatreds? "Democrats and Republicans … have grown more contemptuous of opposing partisans for decades, and at similar rates," notes a November 2020 paper on political sectarianism. "Only recently, however, has this aversion exceeded their affection for copartisans."

To a large extent this is because politics has become combat, with election victors using their control of government agencies to torment losers.

"It is more and more dangerous to lose an election," economist John Cochrane, a senior fellow of the Hoover Institution and an adjunct scholar of the Cato Institute, wrote in September. "The vanishing ability to lose an election and not be crushed is the core reason for increased partisan vitriol and astounding violation of basic norms on both sides of our political divide."

No sane people would consent to a political system that works as a weapon against them; they would try to escape its power. One of the virtues of the original decentralized American republic and its federalism was that if you didn't like the laws and rulers where you lived, you could go elsewhere.

"Foot voting is still underrated as a tool for enhancing political freedom: the ability of the people to choose the political regime under which they wish to live," George Mason University law professor Ilya Somin wrote in a 2012 paper since expanded into a book. "When people are able to choose their governments, political leaders have stronger incentives to adopt policies that benefit the people, or at least avoid harming them. And the people themselves are able to select the policies they prefer."

The "people" Somin references aren't the amorphous masses discussed in Social Studies classes as marching to the polls to jam the alleged will of the winners down the throats of the losers. He means individuals turning their backs on governing systems they dislike and picking those that better suit them.

But, as Chapman University law professor Tom Bell—another advocate of political choice—points out in his 2018 book Your Next Government?, "the United States has in recent decades failed to take states' rights seriously, making federal law supreme even in minutely local matters."

Moving does little good when the laws and "vanishing ability to lose an election and not be crushed" (as Cochrane put it) follow you.

Even reviving federalism would accomplish little when many states have larger populations than the whole country did at its founding and the major political divides run not between states or regions, but between urban and rural areas. Within localities are many people who feel trapped by circumstances in "enemy territory," subject to hostile rulers and laws they despise.

How do we make more palatable a political system that functions as a death match between mutually loathing factions who believe themselves—with reason—to be in peril when their enemies win control?

"If every man has freedom to do all that he wills, provided he infringes not the equal freedom of any other man, then he is free to drop connection with the state—to relinquish its protection and to refuse paying toward its support," Herbert Spencer famously argued in 1851. Fundamentally, Spencer wanted the right to exit that Somin favors, but without the physical migration of foot voting, [...].

But Somin not only favors radical decentralization to minimize the costs of migration, he also discusses arrangements whereby "individual citizens can change government service-providers without a physical move." Bell, too, believes that "for the same reason that nation states should and generally do allow the unhappy residents to emigrate, more consent-rich governing services would doubtless guarantee the freedom of citizen-customers to exit to other legal systems" without moving their locations.

In 2001, Swiss economist Bruno Frey proposed what he called functional, overlapping, competing jurisdictions—basically, governments that people choose among as if picking club memberships.

Frey echoed Belgian economist Paul Emile de Puydt who, in the 1860 article "Panarchy," advocated a system of non-territorial federalism under which people could freely register their support for, or withdrawal from, any political associations that gain sufficient support. "I hope we can all go on living together wherever we are, or elsewhere, if one likes, but without discord, like brothers, each freely holding his opinions and submitting only to a power personally chosen and accepted," de Puydt wrote.

These proposals expand on Spencer's "right to ignore the state" in empowering people to join with the like-minded not just to reject officials and laws that don't suit them, but to construct systems that do.

Their advocates emphasize existing precedents for choice in government. "People choose between governments every time they choose to live in a new city, state, or country," writes Bell. "Businesses and others are often able to choose for themselves which state's law will govern their dealings with each other, even if they do not actually reside in the state in question," points out Somin.

What if Americans could choose governing systems rather than having them jammed down their throats? They could embrace rules as limited or restrictive as they please, programs and policies that suit their tastes, and officials who resist treating election to office as opportunities to punish enemies. [...]

True, American politics has been moving away from allowing exit in recent years, centralizing power so that people can't escape and even attempting to continue taxing those who flee, as California lawmakers propose. [...]

We can have a future of increasing conflict between Americans who hate each other. Or we can make it easier for people to peacefully escape each other's control.

Receptivity to casual sexual requests: The more attractive the requester, the higher the proportion of agreement; heterosexuals were most impacted by the attractiveness of the target

Receptivity to casual sexual requests. John E. Edlund ,Dailyn Q. Clark,Alissa M. Kalmus &Aquene Sausville. The Journal of Social Psychology, Jan 27 2021. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224545.2021.1881030

Abstract: Research has long noted that there are differences between men’s and women’s responses to casual sexual requests. In this study, we sought to replicate and extend the Clark and Hatfield paradigm while exploring the influence of requestor attractiveness, sexual orientation, and two individual difference measures: sociosexuality (which is how open to sexuality a person is) and personal mate value (which is how high quality of a mate the person is). We found that attractiveness matters in the likelihood of a request being accepted (the more attractive the requester, the higher the proportion of agreement); sexual orientation matters for the overall proportion of responses agreed to (heterosexuals were most impacted by the attractiveness of the target), and that sociosexuality moderates the likelihood of agreeing to the requests (such that participants with higher sociosexuality scores were more likely to agree to requests).

KEYWORDS: Sexual orientationcasual sexsociosexualitymate value

Secular rituals might play a similar role to religious ones in fostering feelings of social connection and boosting positive affect

Charles SJ, van Mulukom V, Brown JE, Watts F, Dunbar RIM, Farias M (2021) United on Sunday: The effects of secular rituals on social bonding and affect. PLoS ONE 16(1): e0242546. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0242546

Rolf Degen's take: "A secular collective Sunday-ritual fostered social bonding and positive affect to the same degree as its Christian equivalent. https://t.co/EsWZdqQKrA https://t.co/aIAJlJBFCf"

Abstract: Religious rituals are associated with health benefits, potentially produced via social bonding. It is unknown whether secular rituals similarly increase social bonding. We conducted a field study with individuals who celebrate secular rituals at Sunday Assemblies and compared them with participants attending Christian rituals. We assessed levels of social bonding and affect before and after the rituals. Results showed the increase in social bonding taking place in secular rituals is comparable to religious rituals. We also found that both sets of rituals increased positive affect and decreased negative affect, and that the change in positive affect predicted the change in social bonding observed. Together these results suggest that secular rituals might play a similar role to religious ones in fostering feelings of social connection and boosting positive affect.

Discussion

Religious rituals occur in all human societies [77], and they seem to confer various benefits to those who take part [1]. It has been suggested that rituals are evolutionarily adaptive by helping foster social bonds [16]. This hypothesis has received some support from field research on religious rituals [30] and from a large body of research showing social bonds provide health benefits [39–41]. It has also been proposed that attending secular rituals, such as Sunday Assembly meetings, may lead to improved wellbeing (e.g. [53]). However, whether the social bonding effect reported from religious rituals is also seen in secular rituals that mimic the behaviours of religious rituals had not been tested before. This study of participants from Sunday Assemblies provides the first evidence that the fostering of social bonds occurs in a secular ritual setting. We compared this to a matched group of individuals from four Christian churches. The results showed that social bonding improvements are of a similar level at both Sunday Assembly and religious ritual settings.

Follow-up analyses found that the increase in social bonding from before to after the Sunday Assemblies was positively predicted by the change in positive affect, as has been found for churches across the UK [30], but not negative affect. These findings are in line with the ‘broaden and build’ hypothesis, which suggests that positive emotions increase the scope of one’s attention to others to allow for the formation of social connections, which themselves lead to improved mental wellbeing [19, 34, 35]. This hypothesis has also been used to suggest that link between religion and wellbeing stems from changes in positive affect [34, 35], which in turn leads to protective social benefits, such as social support [36].

Stepwise regression analysis found that neither level of spirituality nor level of religiosity played a significant role in social bonding change, despite both variables having been related to wellbeing in the past [78]. This could be the result of the methodology of previous studies, which have often used attendance of religious services as a measure for religiosity itself [1, 79], which could conflate the effect of ritual attendance with religiosity and/or spirituality. Diener and colleagues [36] have noted that the reported relationship between religiosity and wellbeing is conditional on social support and social structure. This may explain why religiosity did not directly predict social bonding change in either Sunday Assembly or church participants. Price and Launay [53] have specifically suggested that future research should account for the length of time one had been attending Sunday Assembly, to see if this could explain the wellbeing effects they reported. In the stepwise regression model, the length of attendance did not add predictive value for the change in social bonding in the Sunday Assembly participants. If, as Price and Launay [53] suggest, the improved wellbeing stems from social bonding, this may suggest that protective effects of participating in secular ritual could occur quickly. We must note, though, that we likely failed to detect this effect for Sunday Assembly participants because there were a number of people attending the ritual for the first time in the Sunday Assembly population, which was not the case with the Christian church participants, for whom we found that length of attendance predicted strength of social bonding. Future research should attempt to account for the effect of newcomers on social bonding during group rituals.

This work is the first to demonstrate that secular rituals, much like religious rituals, promote feelings of social bonding. However, we acknowledge that there are limitations to this study. Firstly, this study was not pre-registered. Given the changes suggested by those promoting Open Science methodologies since the advent of the replication crisis [80–82], the methods and analysis plans could have been registered in advance of conducting the study. Though pre-registration was not done in this case, the full anonymised dataset and the research materials are provided in supplementary materials in accordance with other Open Science practices, and a power analysis was provided to support the sample size used in this study.

Another limitation is that we only conducted research with one type of secular ritual, the Sunday Assembly meetings. Sunday Assembly meetings are not the only secular ritual that mimic religious ritual, with other examples including the Church of Positivism [50]–still active in Brazil–and the Religious Humanism movement in the United States.

One avenue for future research is to conduct studies investigating whether the positive health effects found in those who regularly attend religious rituals can also be seen in those who regularly attend Sunday Assemblies or other similar non-religious rituals that mimic the behaviours of religious rituals, compared to those who do not attend such rituals. Examples of such positive health effects are better immune function and lowering levels of all-cause mortality [3–6], depression [7–9, 83, 84] and suicidality [1]. Here, we have examined the role of ritual on social bonding. However, to better understand the mechanisms underlying the protective factors that have previously been related only to religious participation, future research could compare health outcomes from those who attend secular rituals to those who do not, while taking affect and social bonding into account. We also recommend that, much like in our research, social bonding factors be explicitly measured in future ritual and health research, as this may provide a more comprehensive understanding of the mechanism by which ritual attendance appears to improve wellbeing.

Future research can also look more widely at gatherings of secular groups, which are not intentionally ‘rituals’ but nonetheless may create a sense of connection to something bigger than oneself. A variety of gatherings may function as a form of ‘implicit religion’ [85–87], such as sporting events where one feels connected to a team spirit [88, 89], thus creating social bonds in ways similar to religious rituals. Conducting research in such settings would allow us to better understand the nature and effects of ritual-like social bonding in secular contexts.