Metadehumanization, the perception that another group dehumanizes your own group, is a robust predictor of Americans’ support for anti-democratic norms

Landry, Alexander. 2021. “Metadehumanization Erodes Democratic Norms During the 2020 Presidential Election.” PsyArXiv. April 26. doi:10.31234/osf.io/yj4h6

Abstract: The present research identifies social psychological factors threatening American democracy. Namely, we identify metadehumanization, the perception that another group dehumanizes your own group, as a robust predictor of Americans’ support for anti-democratic norms. Both immediately before and after the 2020 US Presidential Election, American political partisans perceived that their political opponents dehumanized them more than was actually the case. Partisans’ exaggerated metadehumanization inspired reciprocal dehumanization of the other side, which in turn predicted their support for using anti-democratic means to hurt the opposing party. Along with extending past work demonstrating metadehumanization’s corrosive effect on democratic integrity, the present research also contributes novel insights into our understanding of this process. We found the most politically engaged partisans held the most exaggerated, and therefore most inaccurate, levels of metadehumanization. Moreover, despite the socially progressive and egalitarian outlook traditionally associated with liberalism, we found that the most liberal Democrats actually expressed greatest dehumanization than Republicans. This suggests that political ideology can at times be as much an expression of social identity as a reflection of deliberative policy considerations, and demonstrates the need to develop more constructive outlets for social identity maintenance.

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Partisan Differences in (Meta)dehumanization. Moore-Berg et al. (2020a) found roughly equal levels of both metadehumanization and dehumanization between Democrats and Republicans. Consistent with this, independent samples t-tests revealed that Democrats and Republicans did not differ in their metadehumanization (Time 1: p = .63; Time 2: p = .20), nor in their metaprejudice (Time 1: p = .20; Time 2: p = .52). However, in our sample, Democrats expressed greater dehumanization of Republicans than vice-versa (Time 1: M_diff = 11.14, t(858) = 4.86, p = .001, d = .35; Time 2: M_diff = 7.65, t(858) = 3.41, p = .002, d = .24). Democrats also expressed greater prejudice (Time 1: M_diff = 15.30, t(858) = 6.54, p = .001, d = .45; Time 2: M_diff = 13.21, t(858) = 5.61, p = .001, d = .39) and spite (Time 1: M_diff = 0.39, t(853) = 4.72, p = .001, d = .33; Time 2: M_diff = 0.31, t(853) = 3.68, p = .002, d = .26) than Republicans.

Demographic and social factors impacting coming out as a sexual minority among Generation-Z teenage boys

Moskowitz, D. A., Rendina, H. J., Alvarado Avila, A., & Mustanski, B. (2021). Demographic and social factors impacting coming out as a sexual minority among Generation-Z teenage boys. Psychology of Sexual Orientation and Gender Diversity, Apr 2021. https://doi.org/10.1037/sgd0000484

Teenagers have shown a 60% increase in identifying as gay, bisexual, queer/questioning, and pansexual (GBQP) since 2005. Although studies in the early 2000s have measured the prevalence of GBQP identities across adult populations and over time, the correlates of “coming out” as GBQP are less understood among Generation-Z teenagers (i.e., those born after 1997). We sampled 1,194 GBQP male (assigned-at-birth) teenagers aged 13–18 as part of an online HIV prevention study. Demographic (e.g., age, race/ethnicity, location, sexual identity) and social factors (e.g., school-based HIV education; religiousness; internalized stigma; lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender victimization) were surveyed and entered into logistic regression models predicting outness to a female and/or male parental figure, as well as general others. Nearly two thirds were out to a female parental figure; nearly half were out to a male parental figure. We created three multivariable models predicting outness to general others, outness to a female parental figure, and outness to a male parental figure. Statistically significant correlates consistent across the models predicted greater outness for GBQP White teenagers relative to Black and Asian teenagers, gay-identified teenagers relative to bisexual and questioning/unsure teenagers, and GBQP teenagers reporting more experiences of victimization relative to less. Correlates that predicted reduced outness include identifying as religious, attending religious services, and reporting higher internalized sexual minority stigma. We concluded that outness among Generation-Z teenagers varied by sociocultural factors, prompting some teens to move across coming-out milestones more quickly. Most important for mental health, the findings substantiate that victimization toward out-teenagers has not relented and remains an area of concern.

Public Significance Statement: This study identified rates of outness to parental caregivers and to others among a large group of Generation-Z teenagers, ages 13–18. The findings highlight the need for greater attention for teens having difficulty reconciling their sexual identities and who may be being victimized by peers. They also show both the positive and negative impact of spirituality and religiosity on the coming-out process.

Keywords: coming out, teenagers, men who have sex with men, demographic differences

Discussion In this article, we conducted a set of analyses among a diverse nationwide sample of GBQP, Generation-Z teenagers to understand sociodemographic, geographic, and individual factors associated with outness construed both broadly and with parents. Our goal was also to suggest the key factors that might help or hinder movement from milestones like self-realization of sexual identity to disclosure. Overall, many in the sample were out to most or all people in their lives, with nearly two thirds being out to a female parental figure and nearly half being out to a male parental figure. When examining these three outness variables, several consistent factors emerged as associated with being out. In terms of sociodemographic factors, Black and Asian GBQP teenagers and those of other non-Latino race were less likely to be out than White teens to parents, upholding those previous studies from the 2000s (Grov et al., 2006; Rosario et al., 2004). Gay-identified teenagers were more likely to be out than those who identified as bisexual or were unsure of their identities; to our surprise, no differences by age group were identified. We found that religiosity remains an important factor associated with outness—those who identified as religious had two to three times the odds of not being out compared to those of any other religious or spiritual identity, although some of these findings diminished or lacked significance within multivariable analyses. Independent of this effect, people who attended religious services more frequently had significantly lower levels of outness, broadly construed, but did not differ in terms of outness to either parent in multivariable analyses. Finally, we found that lower levels of internalized sexual minority stigma and more experiences of sexual minority victimization were associated with greater outness across the three indicators. The levels of outness in this sample were higher relative to some nationwide research with adults (Pew, 2013). For example, Pew data from 2013 among 1,197 sexual minority adults showed 56% were out to a female parent figure and 39% were out to a male parent figure, which are lower than the 66% and 49%, respectively, within the present sample. This is not surprising, as parents’ attitudes toward having a sexual minority child are continuously improving. As of 2015, 57% of parents reported they would not be upset, relative to 36% in 2004, and 23% in 2000 (Gao, 2015). This trend has likely also contributed to generational cohorts of teens coming out at earlier ages (Dunlap, 2016). Surprisingly, this was not a finding we could replicate with our sample, as 13- to 14-year-olds were just as likely to be out as 17- to 18-year-olds. The lack of findings could be attributable to social acceptability reaching high enough peaks that age of coming out has essentially decreased to around the onset of puberty. Alternatively, the null age findings could be an artifact of the sample being recruited for a larger-scale online HIV prevention study. According to the milestones framework, acknowledgment of same-sex attraction and self-realization of a sexual minority identity precede coming out; enactment of same-sex behavior usually predates coming out too (Floyd & Stein, 2002). This study required participants to report some degree of sexual behavioral enactment to be eligible and thus were more likely to be further along on the milestones continuum. It is for this reason that future studies should continually measure outness by age to see if a floor effect has occurred or if the current timeline documented most recently by Bishop et al. (2020) is not generalizable to those under 18. Our findings regarding religiousness showed some similarities with previous research (Baiocco et al., 2016; Hoffarth & Bogaert, 2017; Winder, 2015) but also described a more complex relationship than that previously understood regarding spirituality. Granted, teenagers identifying as religious were less likely to report outness. They were also less likely to be generally out to people if they reported greater frequency in religious attendance. However, teens who reported being religious in tandem with being spiritual were more likely to come out, even within the adjusted models. In fact, such teens showed similar rates of outness to teens who reported being neither religious nor spiritual. It was previously assumed that religiousness was an indivisible individual difference that kept LGBTQ adolescents/GBQP teens from reaching higher disclosure milestones. Our findings suggest that pockets of religious teenagers may be accessing their spirituality to find strength to come out. Alternatively, teenagers who report being only religious may be referencing their family’s religiousness, which may be why they are less likely to be out. Regardless, our findings regarding religiousness suggest future study into spirituality specifically, as almost 39% of our sample endorsed being spiritual. Additional findings from our study reinforce the impact of internalized sexual minority stigma and experiences of sexual minority victimization on outness. While internalized stigma tended to keep the teenage participants in the closet, victimization was associated with their coming out. The precise directionality of these findings remains unclear though, especially regarding victimization. For example, it is unknown whether teens who are victimized tend to come out more as a resiliency strategy or as a resistance approach to stigma (Asakura & Craig, 2014) or whether those who come out then become targets of victimization. It is also unknown whether gender (a)typicality plays a moderating effect over these constructs. Gender atypicality is associated with victimization among those in adolescence and early adulthood (Toomey et al., 2012, 2014). While our data showed no differences between identifying as male versus an alternative identity (e.g., nonbinary, transgender) regarding reaching the coming-out milestone, we did not delve into the social role of gender expression, which might better elucidate the relationship. Coming out may be less a choice for teens who self-define along the gender continuum (Russell et al., 2014); alternatively, sexual orientation disclosure may be too difficult for teens who are stereotypically and heteronormatively masculine acting. Regardless, enduring external factors like victimization and developing internal attitudes like internalized stigma are psychologically deleterious (Greene et al., 2014). Finding ways for those with internalized stigma to reconcile their cognitive dissonance may improve rates of teenage sexual orientation disclosure. Most important, linking those being victimized—especially those just coming out of the closet—with helpful allies may improve the coming-out experience and reduce physical or psychological distress (Ybarra et al., 2014). Our findings were some of the first to incorporate outness data on gender identities other than “male” (for individuals assigned male at birth), as well as sexual orientations other than lesbian, gay, or bisexual (i.e., pansexual, queer). As mentioned, we found no significant differences between teenagers identifying as transgender, nonbinary, gender nonconforming, and those identifying as male, and this finding should be taken with qualification. We had a relatively small sample of such teenagers, and findings must be replicated with a larger sample. For in reviewing the odds ratios and their confidence intervals, it is likely that with more data, nonmale identified teens would reach statistical significance and trend toward reporting higher rates of coming out relative to male-identified teenagers. We found significant differences between all three categories of sexual identities (i.e., bisexual, pansexual/queer, and questioning/unsure) relative to those self-identifying as gay regarding general outness. These findings suggest teens may feel uncomfortable or uncertain about discussing their sexuality because their sexual identity may be unknown by older generations. Among their own peers, they may not disclose their identity because it might be misunderstood or they might feel stigmatized or be victimized (Kosciw et al., 2015) if they came out. These reasons have certainly been found for reductions in bi outness for other samples (Israel, 2018; Schrimshaw et al., 2018). Yet, while there may be overlap in our general outness findings, it may not be appropriate to talk about nonmonosexual identities as combinable. Bisexuals often are grouped demographically with pansexual, queer, and “other” identities (e.g., demisexual) in research, but our findings show no differences between outness to parents for pansexual and queer teenagers when compared with gay teenagers, but bisexual teens reported significantly reduced outness to parents relative to their gay counterparts. Such findings would suggest that pansexual- and queer-identifying teenagers, if anything, could be grouped with gay-identified teenagers regarding reaching disclosure milestones (when such groupings are required). While it may be convenient to group pansexual, queer, and bisexual individuals into a group for research purposes (commonly known as a “biþ” group; Davila et al., 2019; Rahman et al., 2019), our study suggests that to be a mistake, given they report rates of disclosures closer to gay individuals. Nonmonosexual identities other than bisexual are being readily adopted by teenagers. Our own sample showed about 8% self-identifying outside of gay or bisexual. Considering research is literally just starting to count and account for these identities, treatment of such individuals as being distinct from traditional sexual orientations should become increasingly standard.

Girls with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) appear to have more genetic mutations than boys with ASD; differences in brain structure and function; advocate caution in drawing conclusions regarding female ASD based on male-predominant cohorts

A neurogenetic analysis of female autism. Allison Jack et al. Brain, awab064, April 16 2021. https://doi.org/10.1093/brain/awab064

Abstract: Females versus males are less frequently diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD), and while understanding sex differences is critical to delineating the systems biology of the condition, female ASD is understudied. We integrated functional MRI and genetic data in a sex-balanced sample of ASD and typically developing youth (8–17 years old) to characterize female-specific pathways of ASD risk. Our primary objectives were to: (i) characterize female ASD (n = 45) brain response to human motion, relative to matched typically developing female youth (n = 45); and (ii) evaluate whether genetic data could provide further insight into the potential relevance of these brain functional differences. For our first objective we found that ASD females showed markedly reduced response versus typically developing females, particularly in sensorimotor, striatal, and frontal regions. This difference between ASD and typically developing females does not resemble differences between ASD (n = 47) and typically developing males (n = 47), even though neural response did not significantly differ between female and male ASD. For our second objective, we found that ASD females (n = 61), versus males (n = 66), showed larger median size of rare copy number variants containing gene(s) expressed in early life (10 postconceptual weeks to 2 years) in regions implicated by the typically developing female > female functional MRI contrast. Post hoc analyses suggested this difference was primarily driven by copy number variants containing gene(s) expressed in striatum. This striatal finding was reproducible among n = 2075 probands (291 female) from an independent cohort. Together, our findings suggest that striatal impacts may contribute to pathways of risk in female ASD and advocate caution in drawing conclusions regarding female ASD based on male-predominant cohorts.

Keywords: autism spectrum disorder, functional MRI, genetics, striatum, social perception

Discussion

This ASDf-enriched sample has yielded a number of novel insights into female neuro-endophenotypes of social motion perception and potential contributors to female risk for ASD. While functional MRI highlights widespread functional differences between ASDf and TDf viewing human motion, analysis of the size of rare CNVs containing genes expressed in these functional MRI-identified brain regions suggests that potential impacts to striatum may be related to a sex-differential process of risk in early development. These larger ASDf CNVs support the FPE model prediction of greater genetic load in ASDf versus ASDm. Below, we discuss findings related to our major research objectives: (i) characterization of a functional MRI-based profile of ASDf (versus TDf) response to socially meaningful motion; and (ii) integration of functional MRI and genetics data.

First, we observed that the ASDf brain response during human action observation is characterized by less recruitment of parietal and posterior frontal cortex relative to TDf, particularly right somatosensory cortex, motor/premotor areas, and the putaminal region of striatum. This is distinct both from the ASD neural response associated with this paradigm in previous ASDm-predominant literature,13,14 and from trend-level TDm > ASDm results in this sample, which exhibit minimal overlap with TDf > ASDf. One prominent peak of TDf > ASDf occurred in right PMv, a region putatively associated with ‘mirroring’ properties,47,48 and which some suggest may help observers ‘fill in’ information missing from point-light human motion displays.49 Somatosensory regions detected in TDf > ASDf also display putative mirroring properties.50 Thus, greater recruitment of these regions by TDf might imply stronger engagement of such processes. PMv was not represented in BrainSpan, and was thus excluded from our Objective 2 analyses.

To contextualize our TDf > ASDf results, we also analysed differences in response between TDf and TDm, TDm and ASDm, and between ASDf and ASDm. TDf showed increased response to BIO > SCRAM relative to TDm in a variety of frontal and parietal regions. As in the sample of typically developing adults from the study by Anderson and colleagues20, TDf versus TDm demonstrated greater BIO > SCRAM activation within right DFC, although other regions demonstrating typically developing child (e.g. ventromedial prefrontal cortex) or typically developing adult (e.g. amygdala) sex differences in their cohort did not replicate in our sample, possibly due to differences in the age ranges of our samples. Many of the regions that emerged from our TDf > TDm contrast overlapped with those represented in the TDf > ASDf map, including right-lateralized anterior insula, IFG, DFC, MFG, and bilateral aIPS and paracingulate. Together, these regions resemble the salience and central executive brain networks. The salience network contains bilateral fronto-insular cortex and dorsal anterior cingulate, and contributes to monitoring and detection of salient stimuli.51 The central executive network is correlated with right fronto-insular activity and includes DFC, supplementary motor area, and lateral parietal cortices; these systems together play a role in attention, working memory, and cognitive control.52 The executive and salience sites recruited more strongly by TDf could play a number of roles potentially contributory to resilience in social perception. Right anterior insula contributes to detection of novel salient stimuli51 and switching between the task-negative (default) and task-positive central executive network53; activity in right anterior insula, IFG, and MFG/DFC can indicate renewed attention to a stimulus.54 These functions suggest more robust attentional reorienting among TDf to the human stimulus after a scrambled block, and/or greater attribution of salience to BIO displays by TDf than either TDm or ASDf.

In previous work examining resting state functional connectivity in our GENDAAR cohort, we found that typically developing youth demonstrated sex differences in functional connectivity of the salience but not the central executive network, while ASD youth showed the opposite pattern, with sex differences in the central executive, but not the salience network.55 Given our previous results, and the role of the salience network in managing switching to the central executive network,53 the TDf > ASDf differences we observed in response to social stimuli within nodes of these two networks could be driven by intrinsic neurotypical sex differences in the salience network that are not evident in ASD. Unfortunately, while our present results, and those of our previous resting state work, suggest that anterior insula and aIPS might have relevance to TDf resilience in social perception, these regions were not characterized in BrainSpan, and thus could not be assessed in our Objective 2 analyses.

We did not detect significant differences between ASDf and ASDm in their functional MRI neural response to biological motion. Moreover, contrary to extant literature, ASDm did not differ from TDm on this task. In exploratory follow-up analyses, we considered whether the TDm > ASDm pattern might be similar to that of TDf > ASDf, but below our threshold for statistical detection. Under a more lenient method for statistical inference, ASDm versus TDm displayed right pSTS hypoactivation similar to that found in previous work,13,14 suggesting that modern methods of functional MRI statistical inference may reduce our power to detect this effect in exchange for greater type I error control. TDf > ASDf did not overlap with TDm > ASDm under this more lenient method. Thus, while ASDf and ASDm response to human motion did not significantly differ, at the same time what distinguishes ASDf from TDf does not appear similar to what distinguishes ASDm from TDm.

While ASDf and ASDm functional brain response did not differ, genetic analyses demonstrated significant differences between these groups. Specifically, ASDf (versus ASDm) exhibited larger size of rare CNVs containing genes expressed during early development of striatum. This finding, accompanied by ASDf (versus TDf) hypoactivation of putamen (a component of the striatum) during social perception, suggests that potential impacts to striatum may be an element of developmental risk for ASD trajectories in girls. Previously, putaminal disruptions in ASD versus typically developing individuals have been documented,56–61 albeit largely in ASDm-exclusive or ASDm-predominant samples. We interpret our findings as suggesting that striatal involvement, while not unique to ASDf, may have a particularly important role in ASDf aetiologies. The putamen, historically attributed a primarily motoric role, also appears involved in social and language functions.62 Among typically developing individuals, the putamen receives projections from motor/premotor (primarily terminating in dorsolateral/central putamen), and prefrontal cortex (primarily terminating in anterior putamen), and appears to serve as an interface between information about motivational value and voluntary behaviour.63,64 Recent work using resting state functional MRI data suggests that while TDm (females not assessed) demonstrate distinct functional segregation of putamen into anterior and posterior segments, putamen in ASDm appears as one functional unit.56 In the present investigation, we observed the peak coordinate of TDf > ASDf striatal response in a region of right anterior putamen characterized as having structural connectivity primarily to executive prefrontal regions (including MFG and DFC65) It also may be notable that in addition to reduced ASDf response in M1C, we observed larger size of CNVs containing genes expressed in M1C in many (though not all) of our control tests. Taken together, this pattern of results could indicate disturbances to the striatomotor-cortical system more broadly and, thus, processes of linking information about motivational value to action. Differential putaminal recruitment during social perception might reflect differing organization of functional connectivity, in which the region is linked to the central executive network and, perhaps, associated protective functions for TDf but not ASDf. Genetic disruptions specifically impacting striatal cortex during development may underlie such functional atypicalities, and have greater impact via disruption of female protective mechanisms. The general lack of female characterization in the literature on ASD putaminal disruptions, however, makes it difficult to draw strong conclusions along these lines. Future work should analyse ASDf and TDf patterns of functional connectivity and gene co-expression among these regions to clarify this possibility.

When considering together our findings of robust TDf > ASDf and TDf > TDm differences in brain function, lack of ASD sex differences in brain response, and greater ASDf versus ASDm size of CNVs containing genes expressed in early striatal development, the overall picture presented is complex but not inconsistent with an FPE model. While the FPE predicts that ASDf should have greater genetic load than ASDm—a prediction supported by our findings—this does not necessarily equate to greater symptomaticity or disruption of brain function. While some ASDf may lack resilience factors typically found in TDf, other ASDf may retain aspects of female protection that make their phenotype less severe than it might otherwise have been given their greater aetiological load. Moreover, female resilience factors may also have sociocultural aspects (e.g. more emotion-oriented talk to daughters versus sons66); the different socialization experiences that an ASDf might encounter could lead, by adolescence, to a brain profile that does not significantly differ from ASDm despite greater genetic load.

In sum, our findings provide new insights into ASDf brain response during social perception, reveal a potential substrate of female risk for ASD trajectories, and illuminate unique qualities of TDf response to human motion relative to TDm. In addition to the basic systems for processing social motion engaged by both sexes, TDf (unique from TDm or ASDf) recruit additional salience and central executive systems. Further, relative to TDf, ASDf show reduced recruitment of striatum during this perceptual task. Compared to ASDm, ASDf (both in our cohort and an independent sample) demonstrate larger size of rare CNVs containing genes expressed in early striatal development, suggesting that, for ASDf, potential impacts to striatum may be particularly relevant. Our results demonstrate the risk of drawing conclusions regarding ASDf based on work comprised of ASDm-predominant samples, and argue for continued attention to the unique characteristics of ASDf.

Men lower in status-linked variable "perceived mate value" are relatively disinclined to offset their high hostile sexism with high benevolent sexism

Curvilinear Sexism and Its Links to Men’s Perceived Mate Value. Jennifer K. Bosson, Gregory J. Rousis, Roxanne N. Felig. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, April 23, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672211009726

Abstract: We tested the novel hypothesis that men lower in status-linked variables—that is, subjective social status and perceived mate value—are relatively disinclined to offset their high hostile sexism with high benevolent sexism. Findings revealed that mate value, but not social status, moderates the hostile–benevolent sexism link among men: Whereas men high in perceived mate value endorse hostile and benevolent sexism linearly across the attitude range, men low in mate value show curvilinear sexism, characterized by declining benevolence as hostility increases above the midpoint. Study 1 (N = 15,205) establishes the curvilinear sexism effect and shows that it is stronger among men than women. Studies 2 (N = 328) and 3 (N = 471) show that the curve is stronger among men low versus high in perceived mate value, and especially if they lack a serious relationship partner (Study 3). Discussion considers the relevance of these findings for understanding misogyny.

Keywords: hostile sexism, benevolent sexism, ambivalent sexism, social status, mate value

Quality assurance and cultural sensitivity: The case study of interpreting taboo from English and French to Kinyarwanda and vice versa

Quality assurance and cultural sensitivity: The case study of interpreting taboo from English and French to Kinyarwanda and vice versa. Vital Bizimana. Univ of Rwanda, Master's. Feb 2021. www.dr.ur.ac.rw/bitstream/handle/123456789/1261/DISSERTATION%20BIZIMANA%20VITAL%20FINAL%20VERSION%20AFTER%20DEFENSE%20ok.pdf?sequence=1&isAllowed=y

Abstract: This study claims that interpreting taboo from English and French to Kinyarwanda and vice versa  can affect negatively the quality of interpreting due to cultural factors. Therefore, it explores the  negative consequences of interpreting taboo and investigates relevant strategies to cope with them.

The methods adopted for conducting the research were the following: questionnaires to and semi-structured interviews with interpreters, as well as a comparison of interpreting performances. All  these methods helped to identify the difficulties the interpreters face when dealing with taboo and  the frequency of strategies they use in the case of such difficulties.

In order to assess the quality of the interpreting rendition, the study mainly adopted the list of  quality assessment criteria by Schjöldager (1996). Her list is comprised of comprehensibility and  delivery, language, coherence and plausibility, and loyalty.

Findings obtained at the end of the analysis first show that linguistic taboos in Kinyarwanda,  English and French cultures include but are not limited to words related to sex, race, ethnic group,  blasphemy, bad language (swearing, cursing, insults), sexual taboo (sexual organs, bodily  functions) and scatological taboo (excrements). Secondly, they indicate that ignoring or using  taboo while interpreting from English and French to Kinyarwanda and vice versa may have severe  consequences on the message, the listener and the interpreter. The message may be unfaithful,  implausible, misleading, distorted, diluted or lost. The listener may be shocked, embarrassed or  offended. The interpreter may be marginalized as someone who talks “dirty”. Finally, the findings  show that interpreters resort to various strategies to cope with challenges posed by taboo language.

On the one hand, the strategies include, for euphemistic purposes, equivalence, paraphrasing,  omission, addition and substitution. On the other hand, they are comprised of literal interpretation  and equivalence techniques for faithfulness and linguistic accuracy purposes.

In view of the above, this study recommends schools of interpreting and/or interpreting  associations to organize specialized training on interpreting taboo, to monitor the practice of  interpreting taboo and to draft guidelines on interpreting taboo. It also recommends research on  interpreting taboo from the psycholinguistic, ethical and listener’s perspectives. 

Keywords: taboo, linguistic taboo, culture, interpreting quality, interpreting strategies, euphemism

Research found that people are willing to compromise on physical attractiveness for other qualities; against expectations, people gave more importance to attractiveness than before the epidemic, maybe as proxy for good health

Settling down without settling: Perceived changes in partner preferences in response to COVID-19 concern. Alexopoulos, Cassandra et al. Journal of Social and Personal Relationships (In Press). Apr 2021. http://repository.essex.ac.uk/30179/

Abstract: The goal of this study was to explore the positive association between concern related to COVID-19 and single individuals’ perceived changes to their partner preferences. In addition, we investigated the mediating role of fear of being single. Results indicated that people with greater COVID-19 concern perceived an increase in the importance of stability, family commitment, and physical/social attractiveness, as well as fear of being single. Fear of being single only negatively predicted the importance of physical/social attractiveness, whereas it positively predicted the importance of stability and family commitment. Thus, in most cases, people with a greater concern for COVID-19 perceived themselves to become more selective, even when they exhibit higher levels of fear of being single.

Egos deflating with the Great Recession: Narcissistic traits rose and fell with the U.S. economy, incresed 1982 to 2008 and then declined; economic growth is linked to more narcissism and individualism.

Egos deflating with the Great Recession: A cross-temporal meta-analysis and within-campus analysis of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory, 1982–2016. Jean M.Twenge  et al. Personality and Individual Differences, Volume 179, September 2021, 110947. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2021.110947

Highlights

• Narcissistic personality traits increased 1982 to 2008 and then declined.

• Narcissistic traits rose and fell with the U.S. economy.

• Economic growth is linked to more narcissism and individualism.

Abstract: Scholars posit that economically prosperous times should produce higher individualism and narcissism, and economically challenging times lower individualism and narcissism. This creates the possibility that narcissism among U.S. college students, which increased between 1982 and 2009, may have declined after the Great Recession. Updating a cross-temporal meta-analysis of the Narcissistic Personality Inventory to 2013 (k = 164, N = 35,095) and adding two within-campus analyses to 2015 (Study 2: UC Davis, N = 58,287) and 2016 (Study 3: U South Alabama, N = 14,319) revealed a non-monotonic pattern, with increases in NPI scores between 1982 and 2008 and declines thereafter. The decline in NPI scores during and after the recession took narcissism back to their original levels in the 1980s and 1990s. Implications for the interplay between economic conditions and personality traits are discussed.

Keywords: NarcissismNarcissistic personality traitsBirth cohortTime periodRecession

5. General discussion

Across three separate studies, we identified a non-monotonic trend in narcissism scores over time, with scores increasing until the Great Recession and then decreasing during and after it. Consistent with previous research (Stewart & Bernhardt, 2010; Twenge et al., 2008; Twenge and Foster, 2008, Twenge and Foster, 2010, cf. Grijalva et al., 2015), narcissism increased among college students between 1982 and the late 2000s. Then, around the beginning of the Great Recession, narcissism scores began to falter, by 2013–2016 falling to the levels of the 1980s/1990s. This pattern appeared in both a nationwide cross-temporal meta-analysis of college student samples (Study 1) and within-campus analyses of students from University of California, Davis (Study 2) and the University of South Alabama (Study 3). In some analyses, years with higher unemployment and fewer young people participating in the workforce had lower narcissism scores. Thus, the Great Recession may have acted as a reset for the steady rise in narcissism between the 1980s and the 2000s.

These results are consistent with theoretical models that tie narcissism and related constructs (e.g., higher individualism, lower communalism) to economic growth and decline, especially employment (e.g., Bianchi, 2014, Bianchi, 2016; Greenfield, 2009; Park et al., 2014). It is also consistent with models that link higher socioeconomic status to higher narcissism and related variables (e.g., entitlement, antagonism; Piff, 2014; Piff et al., 2012).

Although we have explored economic factors as a potential cause of trends in narcissism, other causes are also possible. For example, narcissism began to decline when the nation elected its first African-American president, Barack Obama, who regularly spoke about the importance of empathy. In addition, the increasing popularity of social media may have played a role. In the years before 2010 when social media was less popular, these sites may have encouraged narcissism as they were an effective way to gain attention and followers (Liu & Baumeister, 2016; McCain & Campbell, 2018). Once social media became used by the vast majority of traditional-age college students after 2012, however, happiness and self-esteem – traits positively correlated with grandiose narcissism in young populations (Sedikides et al., 2004) – began to decline (Twenge et al., 2018), perhaps because social media leads to unflattering upward social comparison (Steers et al., 2014). The possible suppressive effects of social media on narcissism may be one reason why narcissism scores leveled off in Study 3 after 2013 and why economic factors were better predictors in analyses up to 2013 compared to those up to 2016. This suggests that other factors were lowering NPI scores after 2013. Research should continue to explore links between social media, narcissism, and poor psychological well-being.

The time-lag design of this study holds age relatively constant. Thus, age (i.e., being younger versus older) is unlikely to explain the results; not only would age have to differ systematically with year, but it would have to follow the same non-monotonic trend as narcissism to explain the results. However, this design cannot determine whether the shifts are due to cohort effects (which only affect young people) or time period effects (which affect people of all ages). If this is a cohort effect, early Millennials (those born between 1980 and 1988) reached all-time highs for narcissism and remained that way, while late Millennials (those born between 1989 and 1994) returned narcissism to the levels of the late Boomers (those born in the early 1960s) and will remain that way. If this is a time period effect, it would suggest that the narcissism of all generations deflated during and after the Great Recession.

As found in previous research, the change over time in narcissism is moderate at the average (around a third of a standard deviation), similar to many effects in social psychology (Richard et al., 2003). However, the effects are larger at the ends of the distribution. In 1982, about 19% of college students answered the majority of the NPI items in the narcissistic direction; by 2009 this was 30%, a 58% increase (Twenge & Foster, 2010). By 2013, it was back to around 19%, a 37% decrease. These changes are thus large enough to be noticeable, particularly if those scoring 20 or higher on narcissism cause issues in the classroom or workplace (Campbell et al., 2015).

5.1. Limitations and future research

This research is limited in several ways. First, the method of cross-temporal meta-analysis is limited to the available data. The samples taken each year are not random. Optimally, they are random with respect to the association of interest (i.e., narcissism and time) but that is not guaranteed. We partially remedied this by also examining samples from the same college campus in Studies 2 and 3. Ideally, future research will explore changes over time in other individual difference data sets that are differently constructed, include variables related to narcissism such as better-than-average ratings or values, and include relevant cultural products (e.g. song lyrics). Also, all three of these studies were limited to college students, who are a growing but select portion of young Americans. The conclusions are also limited to the U.S.; it is unknown if the downward trend in narcissism after 2008 also appeared in other countries.

Second, there is not an optimal economic measure to use in this research. We used the unemployment rate and the employment to population ratio because they have a long history of use and are linked directly to individuals' economic experience. The unemployment rate may not have a direct or immediate effect on college students via their job prospects, but may influence them through their parents' employment experiences and their sense of their own economic prospects in the future. Other measures of economic activity such as GDP may be less directly related to individuals psychologically, and price inflation/deflation is challenging to measure cleanly. For example, the consumer price index (CPI) often obscures the sources of inflation that dominate people's thinking on a day-to-day basis (e.g., education, housing prices, and medical care). Overall, there is a need for more sophisticated economic models and data in terms of psychological processes.

When and how does the number of children affect marital satisfaction? An international survey

Kowal M, Groyecka-Bernard A, Kochan-Wójcik M, Sorokowski P (2021) When and how does the number of children affect marital satisfaction? An international survey. PLoS ONE 16(4): e0249516. Apr 22 2021. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0249516

Abstract: The present global study attempts to verify the links between marital satisfaction and the number of children as well as its moderators in an international sample. Data for the study was obtained from our published dataset and included 7178 married individuals from 33 countries and territories. We found that the number of children was a significant negative predictor of marital satisfaction; also sex, education, and religiosity were interacting with the number of children and marital satisfaction, while there were no interactions with economic status and individual level of individualistic values. The main contribution of the present research is extending our knowledge on the relationship between marital satisfaction and the number of children in several, non-Western countries and territories.

Discussion

Our findings are in line with other research [26, 28], which showed that the number of children can be considered as a global, negative correlate of marital satisfaction. Even though some previous studies found that being a parent (as compared to non-parents) is linked to increased overall well-being [1, 2] (and that there are pronounced, cross-cultural differences within this matter, e.g., between American and Chinese adults [62]), the current analyses seem to refute the notion that such beneficial influence of parenthood extends to marital satisfaction. Moreover, as much greater share of variance can be attributed to individuals than to countries, one can reasonably conclude that marital satisfaction depends more on the individual characteristics than on the values promoted in the country. At the same time, we found that the association between marital satisfaction and the number of children vary substantially across countries, what necessitates further investigations.

Our study provided evidence for the complexity and the influence of other variables on the link between marital satisfaction and the number of children, namely, sex, education, and religiosity. We observed that a higher number of children was associated with decreased marital satisfaction only among women. According to the social role theory [37], it is women who are culturally pressured to fulfill tasks related to childbearing and housekeeping, while men provide for their families outside of the home. In such a situation, having more children generates more home duties for mothers than fathers [6, 34]. At the same time, as caring for children and their safety is a typical female role [37], men may solely focus on having fun and playing with the offspring [2], and thus, men may experience less distress and, in turn, more positive emotions regarding their spouse. Considering the imbalance between spouses’ duties related to having more children, results of the present study are in line with the equity theory [35], which predicts that partners, who invests more in the relationship than their spouses, experience more severe distress.

In addition to the sex differences, our analyses showed the interactive effect of the number of children and the level of parental education on marital satisfaction. Previous findings suggested that higher level of parental education should facilitate family size planning and achieving a balance between familial and personal life goals by both parents [63]. However, our results advocate for the opposite–we observed that the more education parents receive, the lower levels of marital satisfaction they experienced. When higher educated parents have more children, they may encounter more difficulties in balancing various social roles. This situation may result from the limitations of time and personal resources necessary to reconcile satisfyingly fulfilling parental, partner, and professional roles at the level determined by generally available knowledge [64].

We hypothesized that material status may be interacting with the number of children and marital satisfaction. Surprisingly, we found no support for this hypothesis. Parents of more children, regardless of their material situation, reported lower levels of marital satisfaction. Two complementary mechanisms may explain these findings. First, according to the restriction of freedom model [26], parents of high material status may more severely perceive a greater restriction of their free time. Instead of pursuing desirable careers or fulfilling dreams that would otherwise be financially affordable, parents focus on their offspring (who require time and attention). Second, according to the financial cost model [26], having children entails a myriad of expenses. With more children, it is even more difficult to make ends meet. Also, economic problems may be associated with husbands’ increased hostility and decreased supportiveness, both leading to wives’ perceptions of lower marital quality [39]. On the other hand, Twenge et al. [26] showed that when a couple becomes parents, a relationship between the transition to parenthood and the decline of marriage satisfaction may be stronger for individuals of higher socioeconomic status. Thus, we conclude that when the number of children increases, neither good nor bad material situation protects spouses from experiencing decreased levels of marital satisfaction. Similarly, in case of individualism. Previous studies found that parents from Western countries, usually recognized as more individualistically oriented [49], experience a decrease of marital satisfaction upon birth of their children [26], and thus, we hypothesized that more level of individualistic values may interact with marital satisfaction and the number of children. However, we found no evidence for the influence of individualism on this relationship.

Analyzing the impact of religiosity on the number of children and marital satisfaction, we observed that religiosity may be a protective buffer against a marital satisfaction decrease in larger families. Many religious communities stress positive marital and family relations [65, 66], offer different forms of support to parents [67], and value parenting likewise bringing up children through religious teachings, ceremonies or accommodations to families with children [65, 68]. Furthermore, religious people may not consider maternity in terms of inner conflict between individual aims and parent obligations [6, 69]. On the contrary, religiosity may promote traditional roles (i.e., being a parent, a spouse), and thus, positively influence the link between parenthood and marital satisfaction [70–72].

The correlations between the number of children and marital satisfaction differed across countries (see Fig 1), being positive in few cases (only among men) and negative in others. However, these correlations were never strong. The plot suggests no emerging patterns that could condition the direction and intensity of these relationships (e.g., a positive relationship in men in Germany, Nigeria, and Mexico). However, a positive effect of individualism on marital satisfaction suggests that it remains dependent on culturally determined issues. Although individualism did not differentiate the relationship of our interest, some country-level or other culturally relevant aspects of spouses’ functioning should be tested in future studies. For example, work culture [73], country policies [74] or social equity norms shared within a society [36] may explain to a higher extent the cultural differences in the role that number of children play in marital satisfaction. Nevertheless, due to the limitations described below we want to stress that the present results should be treated with caution until future cross-cultural studies provide further support.

Strengths and limitations

Results of the present analysis are not free of limitations. Most importantly, the statistical significance of the observed relationship between marital satisfaction and the number of children was very close to the conventional threshold of 0.05. We cannot exclude the scenario in which the significance of this predictor might have been a result of a large sample size, what required caution in drawing any general conclusions. Furthermore, the data samples are not fully representative for the whole world’s population, as the majority of participants inhabited more urbanized regions. We were also unable to analyze interdependent marriage dyads or non-married, cohabitating couples. Moreover, religiosity appeared to be a moderator of the link between the number of children and marital satisfaction, but, unfortunately, it was assessed only by a single question in the survey (“Are you religious?”), which makes further interpretations difficult. The partial, declarative knowledge of participants economic status also limits our conclusions. It would be insightful if future studies focused on the age of the children, as it may also affect the relationship between the family size and marital satisfaction. Finally, our study did not focus on very complex relationships between our variables of interest (i.e., three-way-interactions). We suggest that building upon sound theoretical backgrounds, future studies could form more detailed hypotheses on the interplay between several predictors of marital satisfaction and their temporal dynamics.

On the other hand, in the present analysis we used a large-scale sample database from different regions of the world. All participants answered the same questionnaires, which tried to capture numerous important variables, previously shown to correlate with marital satisfaction. The data was collected in the same period of time and originated in different regions of the world. The main contribution of the present research is extending our knowledge on the relationship between marital satisfaction and the number of children and variables that are frequently hypothesized to influence this relationship (i.e., sex, religiosity, age, education, level of individualism, material situation, and marriage duration) in several, non-Western countries and territories. Such insight may be especially important when considering the importance of marital satisfaction on health and well-being both of spouses [75] and their children [76].

Play vocalisations in primates and other mammals often include sounds of panting, supporting the theory that human laughter evolved from an auditory cue of laboured breathing during play

Play vocalisations and human laughter: a comparative review. Sasha L. Winkler & Gregory A. Bryant. Bioacoustics, Apr 19 2021. https://doi.org/10.1080/09524622.2021.1905065

Abstract: Complex social play is well-documented across many animals. During play, animals often use signals that facilitate beneficial interactions and reduce potential costs, such as escalation to aggression. Although greater focus has been given to visual play signals, here we demonstrate that vocalisations constitute a widespread mode of play signalling across species. Our review indicates that vocal play signals are usually inconspicuous, although loud vocalisations, which suggest a broadcast function, are present in humans and some other species. Spontaneous laughter in humans shares acoustic and functional characteristics with play vocalisations across many species, but most notably with other great apes. Play vocalisations in primates and other mammals often include sounds of panting, supporting the theory that human laughter evolved from an auditory cue of laboured breathing during play. Human social complexity allowed laughter to evolve from a play-specific vocalisation into a sophisticated pragmatic signal that interacts with a large suite of other multimodal social behaviours in both intragroup and intergroup contexts. This review provides a foundation for detailed comparative analyses of play vocalisations across diverse taxa, which can shed light on the form and function of human laughter and, in turn, help us better understand the evolution of human social interaction.

KEYWORDS: Play vocalisationslaughtersocial signallingevolutionvocal communication