People rated themselves as more attractive at later times of a bar's opening hours; this “closing time effect” applied to men regardless of their relationship status, and applied only to single women

Beauty is in the eye of the beer holder but rarely because of the beer. Tobias Otterbring, Kristian Rolschau. Personality and Individual Differences, Volume 179, September 2021, 110921. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2021.110921

Highlights

• The present research examined whether beauty is in the eye of the beer holder.

• People rated themselves as more attractive at later times of a bar's opening hours.

• This “closing time effect” applied to men regardless of their relationship status

• However, this “pretty” pattern only occurred among single women

• People erroneously attributed the “closing time effect” to alcohol consumption.

Abstract: Across three studies, the present research examined beliefs and real-world responses pertaining to whether bar patrons' self-rated attractiveness would be higher later in the night. Contrary to beliefs held by lay people (Study 1A) and researchers in relevant disciplines (Study 1B), the results of a field study (Study 2) revealed that patrons perceived themselves as more attractive at later times, regardless of the amount of alcohol consumed. Relationship status moderated this time-contingent finding, which only applied to patrons who were single. However, consistent with sexual strategies theory, this interplay was further moderated by the patrons' sex. Men rated themselves as more attractive later in the night irrespective of their relationship status, whereas this “pretty” pattern only held for single women. Taken together, the current work highlights the concept of time in forming consumers' evaluative judgments and adds to the literature on the closing time effect.

Keywords: TimeClosing time effectSex differencesAttractivenessRelationship statusSexual strategies theory

5. General discussion

As far as can be ascertained, this is the first scientific work to investigate the validity of the closing time effect with respect to self-rated attractiveness. Studies 1A–B found that lay people and scholars in relevant disciplines believe bar patrons rate their own level of attractiveness more favorably at later times of a bar's opening hours due to increased alcohol consumption. Contrary to this belief, Study 2 found time, but not alcohol intoxication, explained patrons' responses in an actual field setting. Specifically, patrons perceived themselves as more attractive at later times of a bar's opening hours, regardless of the amount of alcohol consumed or how drunk they felt. Relationship status moderated this time-contingent finding, which only applied to patrons who were single. However, consistent with sexual strategies theory (Buss & Schmitt, 1993), this interaction was further moderated by the patrons' sex. Men rated themselves as more attractive the later they responded, regardless of their relationship status, whereas this pattern held only for single women. Notably, the present article offers a novel approach of testing the closing time effect on self-rated attractiveness rather than the previous focus on opposite-sex ratings.

At a general level, the current research highlights the concept of time in forming consumers' evaluative judgments. In particular, the results suggest that merely spending time in consumption contexts associated with a time-restricted market for mating may boost certain individuals' perceptions of their own attractiveness in a way that likely facilitates approach behaviors towards potential mates and mirrors sex differences in short-term mating strategies (Buss, 1989; Buss & Schmitt, 2019; Schmitt, 2003).

While we found support for our theorizing under ecologically valid conditions, as called for by scholars in psychology and consumer research (Cialdini, 2009b; Otterbring et al., 2020), other factors cannot be explicitly ruled out as alternative accounts. It could be that patrons entering bars at later hours simply constitute more attractive crowds, according to themselves or others, but they may also represent a segment that wears fancier clothes and more alluring accessories than patrons entering at earlier hours, given that such style-based strategies seem to play a prominent role in mating contexts (Hill et al., 1987; Townsend & Levy, 1990). Furthermore, “night owls” (i.e., individuals with an eveningness disposition) are more likely to have narcissistic personality traits (Jonason et al., 2013), which is positively (and meta-analytically) related to physical attractiveness (Holtzman & Strube, 2010) as well as short-term mate appeal, including interest as a short-term romantic and sexual partner (Dufner et al., 2013). People with narcissistic tendencies also perceive themselves more positively and are particularly prone to display self-presentation tactics, such as altering their appearance to obtain social gains, wearing expensive, conspicuous clothing, and, among women, wearing makeup and showing cleavage (Back et al., 2010; Fox & Rooney, 2015; Vazire et al., 2008). Therefore, future research on the closing time effect should collect data on patrons' dress style and level of narcissism, since these factors may partially explain the findings reported herein.

A final suggestion for future research is to uncover the specific psychological process explaining our results. The present findings appear to contradict the predictions proposed by Johnco et al. (2010) stemming from mere exposure effects and commodity theory. Mere exposure effects can theoretically explain increases in opposite-sex ratings over time (Halberstadt et al., 2003). However, such exposure effects are unlikely to explain the current findings on self-rated attractiveness. Similarly, commodity theory can explain a general increase in attractiveness ratings of opposite-sex individuals as a function of time, since the scarcity of potential partners due to time restrictions may increase their perceived attractiveness (Cialdini, 2009a; Lynn, 1992), but seems implausible in explaining a rise in patrons' self-rated attractiveness. Moreover, commodity theory cannot explain why the closing time effect should be restricted to patrons who are single (Madey et al., 1996). Among the previous explanations for the closing time effect, reactance theory, as originally suggested by Pennebaker et al. (1979), appears best suited to explain why it occurs and why it might differ depending on bar patrons' relationship status. However, reactance theory cannot easily explain why men and women should be differentially influenced by the effect depending on their relationship status. As such, the theory that offers the most parsimonious explanation for precise pattern of results seems to be sexual strategies theory (Buss & Schmitt, 1993). Future research should try to replicate the current findings, while simultaneously investigating if the psychological mechanism underlying the closing time effect differs as a function of whether the attractiveness ratings relate to opposite-sex individuals or self-evaluations.

People who have had COVID-19 may be more sociable than those who have not had it; people who have had COVID-19 were more conservative-leaning

Personality Correlates of COVID-19 Infection Proclivity: Extraversion Kills. Vania Rolon et al. Personality and Individual Differences, May 14 2021, 110994. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2021.110994

Highlights

• People who have had COVID-19 may be more sociable than those who have not had it.

• Assertiveness and energy level showed no group differences.

• People who have had COVID-19 were more conservative-leaning.

• Group differences in political ideology pertained social conservatism in particular.

Abstract: The current research sought to shed light on the behavioral science that underlies the spread of SARS-CoV-2. We tested the extraversion hypothesis, which suggests that the sociability facet of extraversion may predispose people to becoming infected with the coronavirus via greater human-to-human contact. Since extraverts seek out social opportunities and seem less likely to follow containment measures related to social distancing, we hypothesized that people who have previously become infected would exhibit greater extraversion than would those who have not contracted the virus. We measured overall extraversion and three of its facets–sociability, assertiveness, and energy levels–as well as political orientation. We collected data from 217 adults, aged 40 and older, from the US and the UK, of whom 53 had had the virus at some point prior to the study, and 164 had not. Participants who had had COVID-19 were more dispositionally sociable and were also more conservative-leaning compared to participants who had never had COVID-19. Implications regarding the behavioral science underlying the current pandemic are discussed.

Keywords: COVID-19PersonalityExtraversionBFI-2

4. Discussion

The current research sought to add to the efforts to understand the COVID-19 pandemic by exploring the behavioral science surrounding the spread of SARS-CoV-2. People who contracted COVID-19 reported marginally greater sociability scores than did people who never contracted COVID-19, whereas differences in overall extraversion, assertiveness, and energy level did not differ significantly between groups. In terms of political orientation, exploratory analyses suggest that participants who had been infected with SARS-CoV-2 leaned relatively more conservative, especially regarding social issues, and, in the case of American participants, and potentially agreed more with the Republican Party than did participants who had never been infected.

4.1. Limitations and Future Research

While our sample size may not have been ideal, we believe our study to be a first step into looking at personality differences between people who have become infected with COVID-19 versus those who have not, especially since past research has mostly focused on personality traits and COVID-19 related measures (e.g., perceived susceptibility and obedience of contingency measures) but not actual infections. Larger samples with more evenly distributed techniques would benefit future work. Additionally, collecting data from a broader array of nations would be useful, particularly since the American and British left-right parties may differ from the left-right parties of other nations. While Pennycook (2020) explains how the U.S. right politicized the pandemic, in Mexico, for example, it was President Lopez Obrador’s left government making claims about the country having tamed COVID-19 or that facemasks have practically null utility (Loret de Mola, 2021).

Future research might be wise to test specific models that can provide a broader frame for the relationship between extraversion and COVID-19, perhaps by incorporating other similarly related variables such as risk aversion and disgust sensitivity. For instance, the balancing-selection model (see Nettle, 2006) argues that traits with heritable components that show high degrees of variability might have been selected because both high and low ends of such traits might have benefits and costs from an evolutionary perspective. High extraversion may provide increased social status, but also greater fitness-related costs in the form of more risk-taking behavior. Perhaps across many generations of human life, pandemics that thrive on people interacting with others wipe out sociable extraverts disproportionately.

The directionality of the extraversion-COVID-19 relationship also merits further research. Are extraverts more likely to get infected; can the virus impact hosts’ social behavior; or both? The nervous-system hijacking model (see Reiber et al., 2010; Seitz et al., 2020) suggests viruses may temporarily increase sociable activities in hosts to benefit their spread and replication. Given organisms like toxoplasma gondii can alter our behavior (da Silva and Langoni, 2009), and that SARS-CoV-2 shows up in neural tissue (Mao et al., 2020) and in spinal fluid (Wu et al., 2020) in severe cases–suggesting the virus is making contact with the nervous system in some way–the possibility of viruses affecting human host behavior should not go unresearched.

4.2. Conclusion

Because the SARS-CoV-2 spreads via human-to-human contact, the pandemic is largely an issue of human social behavior. We documented two important personality-based variables that potentially significantly relate to the spread of the virus: the sociability facet of extraversion and self-identified conservative tendencies. We hope that these findings can help inform policy and processes moving forward as we work together as a global community to stop this pandemic in its tracks and get back to life as we knew it.

The Cross-national Association of Gun Ownership Rates and Suicide Rates: An Analysis of 194 Nations

The Cross-national Association of Gun Ownership Rates and Suicide Rates: An Analysis of 194 Nations. Gary Kleck. Archives of Suicide Research, May 12 2021. https://doi.org/10.1080/13811118.2021.1922110

Abstract

Objective: To estimate the cross-national association between suicide rates and gun ownership rates

Method: The association is estimated using the largest sample of nations (n = 194) ever employed for this purpose. Three different measures of national gun ownership rates are related to total suicide rates, firearms suicide rates, and non-firearms suicide rates.

Results: Although gun ownership rates have a significant positive association with the rate of firearms suicide, they are unrelated to the total suicide rate.

Conclusions: Consistent with the results of most prior macro-level studies, cross-national data indicate that levels of gun availability appear to affect how many people choose shooting as their method of suicide, but do not affect how many people kill themselves.

Keywords: Cross-nationalgun ownershipsuicide rates

Interventions to induce skepticism had a significantly stronger average effect on attitudes than did ones that intended to promote belief in climate change; seems that belief in climate change is more easily weakened than strengthened

Influencing Climate Change Attitudes in the United States: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analysis. Jacob B.Rode, Amy L.Dent, Caitlin N.Benedict, Daniel B.Brosnahan, Ramona L.Martinez, Peter H.Ditto. Journal of Environmental Psychology, May 14 2021, 101623. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2021.101623

Highlights

• A meta-analysis was conducted on interventions for climate change attitudes.

• There was a small, statistically significant positive effect of interventions.

• Interventions were less effective at influencing policy attitudes than belief.

• There was no intervention type that was clearly the most effective.

Abstract: Researchers interested in climate change communication have investigated how people respond to messages about it. Through meta-analysis, the current research synthesizes the multitude of experimental studies on this topic to uncover which interventions are most effective at influencing attitudes about climate change. The meta-analysis focuses on experimental studies that included a control condition and measured climate change attitudes among participants in the United States. After a large literature search, 396 effect sizes were retrieved from 76 independent experiments (N = 76,033 participants). Intervention had a small, significant positive effect on attitudes, g = 0.08, 95% CI [0.05, 0.10], 95% prediction interval [-0.04, 0.19], p < .001. Surprisingly, type of intervention was not a statistically significant moderator of this effect, nor was political affiliation. However, type of attitude was a significant moderator: the treatment-control difference in attitudes was smaller for policy support than for belief in climate change, indicating that policy attitudes are more resistant to influence than belief in climate change. Interventions that aimed to induce skepticism (e.g., misinformation) had a significantly stronger average effect on attitudes than did ones that intended to promote belief in climate change, suggesting that belief in climate change is more easily weakened than strengthened.

Keywords: climate changeattitudesmeta-analysisinterventions

The Political Consequences of an Optimistic Personality: Is a psychological resource that contributes to the practice of good citizenship behaviors (more politically engaged & participatory than those with pessimistic dispositions)

The Political Consequences of an Optimistic Personality. Carey Stapleton, Jacob Oliver & Jennifer Wolak. Political Behavior, May 13 2021. https://rd.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11109-021-09717-7

Abstract: Optimists hope for the best possible outcome, while pessimists plan for the worst. We investigate how people’s predispositions to be optimistic versus pessimistic shape how they approach politics. We argue that an optimistic personality is a psychological resource that contributes to the practice of good citizenship behaviors. Using responses from the 2008 Cooperative Campaign Analysis Project and the 2018 Cooperative Congressional Election Study, we demonstrate that people with optimistic personalities are more politically engaged and participatory than those with pessimistic dispositions. Optimists express more positive views of the American people, the government, and national symbols as well. Because optimists have a more positive outlook toward the nation’s future, they help contribute to levels of diffuse support for government and its symbols. While we might worry that optimists hold an unrealistic view of the political world, we find little evidence that dispositional optimism is associated with less accurate perceptions of political realities.

From 2019... Personal info than can be inferred from eye-tracking data: A user's sex, age, ethnicity, personality traits, drug-consumption habits, emotions, fears, skills, interests, sexual preferences, & physical & mental health

From 2019... Kröger J.L., Lutz O.HM., Müller F. (2020) What Does Your Gaze Reveal About You? On the Privacy Implications of Eye Tracking. In: Friedewald M., Önen M., Lievens E., Krenn S., Fricker S. (eds) Privacy and Identity Management. Data for Better Living: AI and Privacy. Privacy and Identity 2019. IFIP Advances in Information and Communication Technology, vol 576. Springer, Cham. March 2020.  https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-42504-3_15

Abstract: Technologies to measure gaze direction and pupil reactivity have become efficient, cheap, and compact and are finding increasing use in many fields, including gaming, marketing, driver safety, military, and healthcare. Besides offering numerous useful applications, the rapidly expanding technology raises serious privacy concerns. Through the lens of advanced data analytics, gaze patterns can reveal much more information than a user wishes and expects to give away. Drawing from a broad range of scientific disciplines, this paper provides a structured overview of personal data that can be inferred from recorded eye activities. Our analysis of the literature shows that eye tracking data may implicitly contain information about a user’s biometric identity, gender, age, ethnicity, body weight, personality traits, drug consumption habits, emotional state, skills and abilities, fears, interests, and sexual preferences. Certain eye tracking measures may even reveal specific cognitive processes and can be used to diagnose various physical and mental health conditions. By portraying the richness and sensitivity of gaze data, this paper provides an important basis for consumer education, privacy impact assessments, and further research into the societal implications of eye tracking.

Keywords: Eye tracking Gaze Pupil Iris Vision Privacy Data mining Inference 

3 Discussion and Implications

As shown in the previous section, various kinds of sensitive inferences can be drawn from eye tracking data. Among other categories of personal data, recorded visual behavior can implicitly contain information about a person’s biometric identity, personality traits, ethnic background, age, gender, emotions, fears, preferences, skills and abilities, drug habits, levels of sleepiness and intoxication, and physical and mental health condition.  To some extent, even distinct stages of cognitive information processing are discernable from gaze data. Thus, devices with eye tracking capability have the potential to implicitly capture much more information than a user wishes and expects to reveal. Some of the categories of personal information listed above constitute special category data, for which particular protection is prescribed by the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation (Art. 9 GDPR).  Of course, drawing reliable inferences from eye tracking data is not a trivial task.

Many situational factors can influence eye properties and gaze behavior in complex ways, making it difficult to measure the effect of a particular action, internal process, or personal characteristic of the user in isolation [55]. Seemingly identical ocular reactions can result from completely different causes. For example, an intensive gaze fixation on another person’s face may indicate liking, aversion, confusion, recognition, and much more. Similarly, a sudden change in pupil size can be indicative of many different feelings or internal states, including physical pain, sexual arousal, interest, happiness, anger, or simply be a reaction to ambient events and conditions, such as noise or varying lighting [19, 55].

In spite of existing challenges and limitations, the reviewed literature demonstrates that there is considerable potential for inferences in many areas and that numerous research projects, patented systems, and even commercial products have already taken advantage of the richness of eye tracking data to draw inferences about individuals with high accuracy.

It should be acknowledged that many of the cited inference methods were only tested under controlled laboratory conditions and lack evaluation in real-world scenarios [4, 18, 27, 52, 65, 67, 69, 86, 88]. On the other hand, it may reasonably be assumed that some of the companies with access to eye tracking data from consumer devices (e.g., device manufacturers, ecosystem providers) possess larger sets of training data, more technical expertise, and more financial resources than the researchers cited in this paper.  Facebook, for example, a pioneer in virtual reality and eye tracking technology, is also one of the wealthiest and most profitable companies in the world with a multi-billion dollar budget for research and development and a user base of over 2.3 billion people [93]. It seems probable that the threat of unintended information disclosure from gaze data will continue to grow with further improvements of eye tracking technology in terms of cost, size, and accuracy, further advances in analytical approaches, and the increasing use of eye tracking in various aspects of daily life.

In assessing the privacy implications of eye tracking, it is important to understand that, while consciously directed eye movements are possible, many aspects of ocular behavior are not under volitional control – especially not at the micro level [19, 55].  For instance, stimulus-driven glances, pupil dilation, ocular tremor, and spontaneous blinks mostly occur without conscious effort, similar to digestion and breathing. And even for those eye activities where volitional control is possible, maintaining it can quickly become physically and cognitively tiring [58] – and may also produce certain visible patterns by which such efforts can be detected. Hence, it can be very difficult or even impossible for eye tracking users to consciously prevent the leakage of personal information.

Though this paper focuses on privacy risks, we do not dispute the wide-ranging benefits of eye tracking. Quite the opposite: we believe that it is precisely the richness of gaze data and the possibility to draw insightful inferences from it that make the rising technology so valuable and useful. But to exploit this potential in a sustainable and socially acceptable manner, adequate privacy protection measures are needed.

Technical safeguards have been proposed to prevent the unintended disclosure of personal information in data mining, including specialized solutions for eye tracking data [58, 80]. These comprise the fuzzing of gaze data (i.e., inserting random noise into the signal before passing it down the application chain) and the utilization of derived parameters (e.g., aggregated values instead of detailed eye fixation sequences) [58]. Experiments have already shown that approaches based on differential privacy can prevent certain inferences, such as user re-identification and gender recognition, while maintaining high performance in gaze-based applications [80]. In addition to approaches at the technical level, it should also be examined whether existing laws provide for sufficient transparency in the processing of gaze data and for proper protection against inference-based privacy breaches. The promises and limitations of existing technical and legal remedies are beyond the scope of this paper but deserve careful scrutiny and will be considered for future work.

Even though eye tracking is a demonstrative example, the threat of undesired inferences is of course much broader, encompassing countless other sensors and data sources in modern life [47]. In other recent work, we have examined sensitive inferences that can be drawn from voice recordings [49] and accelerometer data [48, 50], for instance. In our view, the vast possibilities of continuously advancing inference methods are clearly beyond the understanding of the ordinary consumer. Therefore, we consider it to be primarily the responsibility of technical experts, technology companies, and governmental agencies to inform consumers about potential consequences and protect them against such covert invasions of privacy. Also, since it is unlikely that companies will voluntarily refrain from using or selling personal information that can be extracted from already collected data, there should be strong regulatory incentives and controls

About the economy, women are less likely to provide a judgment than their male counterparts, are less likely to give "extreme" answers in which they strongly agree or disagree, & are less confident in their answer's accuracy

Confidence Men? Evidence on Confidence and Gender among Top Economists. Heather Sarsons and Guo Xu. AEA Papers and Proceedings. May 2021, Vol. 111, No. : Pages 65-68. https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/pandp.20211086

Abstract: Using data from economists working in top US universities, we find that women are less confident than men along three margins. When asked about their level of agreement on survey questions about the economy, women are less likely to provide a judgment than their male counterparts. Conditional on providing a judgment, women are less likely to give "extreme" answers in which they strongly agree or disagree. Women are also less confident in the accuracy of their answer. We show that the confidence gap is driven by women being less confident when asked questions outside their field of expertise.

---

Women are 7.3 percentage points less likely to provide extreme judgments (column 1). In terms of magnitude, this gap is economically large. Compared to the mean of the dependent vari-able (19.8 percent), this corresponds to a gap of 36 percent. The gap is somewhat smaller for the self-reported confidence level but still nontrivial (column 3). On average, women tend to report a confidence score that is 0.221 points lower than men. This corresponds to a gap of 4 percent when evaluated against the mean...

The results show that both men and women are less confident when asked questions outside of their field but that a confidence gap persists. For example, while men are 5 percentage points less likely to give an extreme answer when speaking on a topic out-side of their primary field, women are 9.2 per-centage points less likely to do so (column 1). For the measure of confidence, men are on aver-age 0.585 points less confident when speaking on a topic outside their primary field (column 2). Once again, that confidence gap is significantly larger for women. We would expect women to be less confident than men when answering questions outside of their field if women actually have a narrower range of expertise than men do. The results, however, do not change when we control for the respondents’ breadth of expertise using RePEc data and allow breadth to vary by gender. More importantly, accounting for the differential confidence when moving beyond one’s own field “explains away” the level effect of gender.

[...] it appears that the confidence gap emerges when women are speaking on topics on which they might be less informed.

On days when employees reflected on their best possible leader self, they engaged in more helping and visioning via positive affect

Reflecting on one's best possible self as a leader: Implications for professional employees at work. Remy E. Jennings  Klodiana Lanaj  Joel Koopman  Gerry McNamara. Personnel Psychology, March 12 2021. https://doi.org/10.1111/peps.12447

Abstract: Most professional employees aspire to leadership, and this suggests that a best possible leader self—a personalized representation of who an employee aspires to be at their best as a leader in the future—is likely a relevant and motivating self‐representation for employees at work. Integrating theory on best possible selves with control theory, we suggest that activating a best possible leader self can have beneficial effects for the way that any employee feels and behaves at work. Specifically, we propose that employees who reflect on their best possible leader self will enact more leader‐congruent behaviors and subsequently perceive themselves as more leaderlike due to the positive affect generated by such reflection. We found support for our theoretical expectations in an experimental experience sampling study that included both current and aspiring leaders. On days when employees reflected on their best possible leader self, they engaged in more helping and visioning via positive affect. Furthermore, employees perceived themselves as more leaderlike after performing these leader‐congruent behaviors, as captured by higher enacted leader identity and clout. We discuss theoretical and practical implications for research on leadership.

Desire for power mediates associations between narcissism and mate retention behaviors; the present studies provide additional support for the importance of distinguishing between different aspects of narcissism

Desire for power mediates associations between narcissism and mate retention behaviors. Virgil Zeigler‐Hill  David Andrews  Karla Borgerding. Personal Relationships, May 4 2021. https://doi.org/10.1111/pere.12380

Broader Impact Statement: The present studies examined the associations that narcissistic personality features had with mate retention behaviors. The results of the present studies provide additional support for the importance of distinguishing between different aspects of narcissism. Distinguishing between these aspects of narcissism allowed for a more complete and nuanced understanding of the connections that narcissistic personality features had with mate retention behaviors through the desire for power.

Abstract: The present research examined whether the associations that narcissistic personality features had with mate retention behaviors were mediated by the desire to have more power in the relationship. Across three studies (N = 497), narcissistic personality features had divergent associations with mate retention behaviors such that the assertive/extraverted and vulnerable/neurotic aspects of narcissism often had positive associations with benefit‐provisioning behaviors, whereas the antagonistic/disagreeable aspect of narcissism had positive associations with cost‐inflicting behaviors that were mediated by the desire for power. Similar patterns emerged for those involved in heterosexual or LGBTQ relationships. Discussion focuses on the implications of these results for the role that the desire for power plays in the connections between narcissistic personality features and mate retention behaviors.

High‐Status people are more individualistic and analytic‐thinking in the west and wheat‐farming areas, but not rice‐farming areas

High‐Status people are more individualistic and analytic‐thinking in the west and wheat‐farming areas, but not rice‐farming areas. Haotian Zhang  Thomas Talhelm  Qian Yang  Chao S. Hu. European Journal of Social Psychology, May 11 2021. https://doi.org/10.1002/ejsp.2778

Abstract: Previous studies have found that high‐status people are more individualistic and think more analytically than people of lower social status. We find new evidence that this is not always the case. We tested a large sample (N = 1,418) of people across China on analytic thought and the friend‐stranger distinction. In China's more individualistic wheat‐farming regions, social status patterns replicated findings from the West: high‐status people thought more analytically and drew smaller distinctions between friends and strangers. But in more interdependent rice‐farming regions, high‐status people thought more holistically and drew a larger distinction between friends and strangers. This suggests that culture shapes social status differences in thought style and individualism. The data also showed that STEM majors thought more analytically than non‐STEM majors. STEM differences in thought style were larger among older students, which is consistent with the idea that STEM training encourages analytic thinking over time.

Body-wide unique photoreceptor cells that allows head-removed flatworms to move like intact animals reveals the mechanistic framework underpinning one of the most sensitive eye–brain-independent responses known

Discovery of a body-wide photosensory array that matures in an adult-like animal and mediates eye–brain-independent movement and arousal. Nishan Shettigar, Anirudh Chakravarthy, Suchitta Umashankar, Vairavan Lakshmanan, Dasaradhi Palakodeti, and Akash Gulyani. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, May 18, 2021 118 (20) e2021426118; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2021426118

Popular version: https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01192-8

Significance: This study highlights the breathtaking sophistication of form and function possible with eye-independent light-sensory systems. We have discovered a body-wide sensory organization of unique photoreceptor cells that allows even head-removed flatworms to move like intact animals, revealing the mechanistic framework underpinning one of the most sensitive eye–brain-independent photoresponses known. Distinct from the ocular system, the body-wide sensory array matures in adult-like animals, can trigger arousal of intact animals from a “resting-state” and employs “noncanonical” opsins. Our discovery of a body-wide network of photoreceptor cells triggering coordinated movement is intriguing and conceptualizes how “dispersed”-sensory nodes may network to control outputs typically through a centralized brain. Our work illustrates how eye-independent systems can deeply influence animal physiology and behavior.

Abstract: The ability to respond to light has profoundly shaped life. Animals with eyes overwhelmingly rely on their visual circuits for mediating light-induced coordinated movements. Building on previously reported behaviors, we report the discovery of an organized, eye-independent (extraocular), body-wide photosensory framework that allows even a head-removed animal to move like an intact animal. Despite possessing sensitive cerebral eyes and a centralized brain that controls most behaviors, head-removed planarians show acute, coordinated ultraviolet-A (UV-A) aversive phototaxis. We find this eye–brain-independent phototaxis is mediated by two noncanonical rhabdomeric opsins, the first known function for this newly classified opsin-clade. We uncover a unique array of dual-opsin–expressing photoreceptor cells that line the periphery of animal body, are proximal to a body-wide nerve net, and mediate UV-A phototaxis by engaging multiple modes of locomotion. Unlike embryonically developing cerebral eyes that are functional when animals hatch, the body-wide photosensory array matures postembryonically in “adult-like animals.” Notably, apart from head-removed phototaxis, the body-wide, extraocular sensory organization also impacts physiology of intact animals. Low-dose UV-A, but not visible light (ocular-stimulus), is able to arouse intact worms that have naturally cycled to an inactive/rest-like state. This wavelength selective, low-light arousal of resting animals is noncanonical-opsin dependent but eye independent. Our discovery of an autonomous, multifunctional, late-maturing, organized body-wide photosensory system establishes a paradigm in sensory biology and evolution of light sensing.

Keywords: planariansextraocular photoreceptionUV-Aopsinslight-sensing

Many initiatives have been put in place to reduce the effect of gender differences in negotiation; the strongest evidence on effectiveness in narrowing gender disparities is found for policies that increase transparency

Gender Differences in Negotiation and Policy for Improvement. Maria Recalde & Lise Vesterlund. NBER Working Paper 28183, December 2020. DOI 10.3386/w28183

Abstract: Men more than women succeed when negotiating over labor-market outcomes, and gender differences in negotiation likely contribute to the gender wage gap and to horizontal and vertical segregation in the labor market. We review the evidence on the many initiatives that have been put in place to reduce the effect of gender differences in negotiation. Categorizing these as either ‘fix-the-women’ or ‘fix-the-institutions’ initiatives we find serious challenges to the former. Women do not appear to be broken and encouraging them to negotiate more and differently often backfires. The evidence suggests that ‘fix-the-institution’ initiatives are more effective in reducing gender differences in outcomes. Concerns of adverse effects of banning negotiations or salary history requests have not materialized, and preliminary evidence points to reductions in the gender differences in negotiation outcomes. The strongest evidence on effectiveness in narrowing gender disparities is found for policies that increase transparency. Numerous studies find that gender differences in negotiation diminish when it is clear what to expect from the negotiation and suggest that initiatives which improve transparency are likely to help equalize opportunities at the bargaining table.

More-men-more-violence association holds particularly for male violence against other men, but is insignificant for violence against women; significant among childless men, but not fathers; robustness checks question causality of associations

Are skewed sex ratios associated with violent crime? A longitudinal analysis using Swedish register data. Andreas Filser et al. Evolution and Human Behavior, Volume 42, Issue 3, May 2021, Pages 212-222. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2020.10.001

David Schmitt's take: more-men-more-violence association holds particularly for male violence against other men, but is insignificant for violence against women...significant among childless men, but not fathers...robustness checks question causality of associations

Abstract: There is widespread concern in both the popular and academic literature that a surplus of men in a population intensifies mating competition between men, particularly unpartnered men, resulting in increased violence towards both men and women. Recent contributions challenge this perspective and argue that male mating competition and levels of violence will be higher when sex ratios are female-skewed. Existing empirical evidence remains inconclusive. We argue that this empirical ambiguity results from analyses of aggregate-level data, which put inferences at risk of ecological fallacies. Our analysis circumvents such problems by using individual-level, longitudinal demographic register and police data for the Stockholm metropolitan area, Sweden (1990–2003, n = 758,498). These data allow us to investigate the association between municipality-level sex ratios and violent offending (homicide, assault, threat, and sexual crimes) while adjusting for sociodemographic factors. Results suggest that aggregated offending rates are negatively associated with male-skewed sex ratios, whereas individual-level violent offending correlates positively with male-skews. We find that the more-men-more-violence association holds particularly for male violence against other men, but is insignificant for violence against women. Moreover, the association is significant among childless men, but not among fathers. However, robustness checks question the causality of these associations. Female violent offending is positively, albeit due to a low number of cases, insignificantly associated with male-skews. Moreover, both male and female non-violent offending is higher in male-skewed municipalities. We discuss the implications with regard to the theoretical debate and problems of unobserved heterogeneity in the sex ratio literature.

Keywords: Sex ratioViolent crimeMating marketSweden

4. Discussion

In this study, we use Swedish register data to investigate the link between local sex ratios and violent criminal offending. Existing theoretical approaches are contradictory and empirical evidence remains inconclusive, suggesting both negative and positive associations between male-skewed sex ratios and violence (Schacht et al., 2014, Schacht et al., 2016; Schnettler and Filser, 2015, Schnettler and Filser, 2020). To our knowledge, this study is the first to use individual-level, longitudinal data to circumvent an ecological fallacy, a common problem of previous research on the issue (Filser & Schnettler, 2018; Pollet et al., 2017; Schacht et al., 2014). The detail of our data enable us to disentangle associations of intra- and inter-sexual violence with the sex ratio and to adjust for a number of socio-demographic confounders. Moreover, we investigate hypothesized, but largely untested differences in these associations by socio-economic, marital, and parental status.

On the surface, our results seem to provide additional support for the more-men-more-violence hypothesis. We find that male-on-male violence is positively associated with male-skewed sex ratios. Results for male-on-female violence suggest a similar positive association with male-skews, which is somewhat weaker and not statistically significant, due to a smaller sample size for these offenses. Both findings are compatible with the hypothesis that an abundance of men will particularly result in high levels male-male violence. Furthermore, our results suggest that intra-male violence correlates significantly with local sex ratios among childless men, but not among fathers. This may appear as further support for the hypothesis that local male-skews particularly instigate violent rivalry among men competing for partners.

However, the full set of results, including the results from models examining female-on-female violent offenses, and non-violent offenses, suggests caution before drawing any firm conclusions. First, when comparing our findings on male and female offending, we would expect either no association between sex ratios and female offending or one that is opposite to the association with male offending (cf. Stone, 2015). Yet, we find that the association between the sex ratio and female violent offending resembles that for male offending. The association for female offending is not significant, but this may be largely due to the low number of offenses by women in our data. The number of offenses is even lower for analyses of female offending split by victims' sex, which precludes any meaningful interference from results on female-on-male and female-on-female violent offending.

Second, we find that municipality-level sex ratios are not only associated with violent offending, but also with a general indicator of any non-violent offending. Property and white-collar offenses might correlate with sex ratios, as individuals are more pressurized to obtain resources and resort to scramble competition (Benenson & Abadzi, 2020; Edlund et al., 2013). However, given the broadness of the indicator, we would expect these associations to be weaker, compared to violent offenses. While this is only true for non-violent offending by men, we find that the association of sex ratios with female non-violent offending is even stronger than the one for violent offending. Furthermore, we find that the associations of sex ratios with non-violent offending are in the same direction for both male and female offenders. This contradicts theoretical expectations related to scramble competition as women should become less and not more likely to engage in non-violent offending as the sex ratio increases, that is, as the environment becomes less female-skewed.

In sum, these findings prompt us to suspect that there are still potential confounders that might drive the association between sex ratios and violent crime that we are not able to account for. We are able to adjust our models for contextual and individual-level socio-economic deprivation in a more comprehensive way than previous studies. Socio-economic deprivation is a key confounder of the association between sex ratios and violent crime, given that young women are more likely to migrate to more economically thriving regions (Leibert, 2016) and levels of violent crime are correlated with prosperity (Hooghe et al., 2011). We address this issue by including municipality-level fixed effects to account for time-constant unobserved heterogeneity on the municipality level. Moreover, we include a range of time-varying socioeconomic and demographic status variables on both the individual and context level. These adjustments should take care of socio-economic unobserved heterogeneity, yet some limitations remain.

Beyond socioeconomic factors, sex-selective migration patterns might be a source of unobserved heterogeneity. Empirical evidence suggests that women out-migrate from male-biased areas to more strongly female-biased areas than men (Uggla & Mace, 2017). With regard to violence and crime, one potential explanation could be that men are less concerned about falling victim to a crime (Jackson, 2009). Consequently, sex-selective migration might drive the association of sex ratios and violent crime independently of economic deprivation. Unfortunately, we are not able adjust our models for migration patterns in our analysis, particularly migration from outside our study area.

Another limitation of our study is the comparatively small geographical scope of our data. An underlying assumption of our analysis is that individuals are sensitive to cues of the municipality-level sex ratio and that municipalities meaningfully represents the local ecology which impacts individual behavior. However, individuals might have committed offenses in different contexts than their municipality of residence, resulting in a mismatch of the contextual sex ratio at the offense and our sex ratio measure. Moreover, municipalities might be too small entities to measure sex ratios in a way that also correlates closely with individuals' perceptions of partner markets (Filser & Preetz, 2020; Fossett & Kiecolt, 1991; Gilbert, Uggla, & Mace, 2016). Furthermore, our study area consists of a metropolitan area with an urban center, Stockholm city. Municipalities are a meaningful social entity in Sweden, because they organize schools and municipality centers serve as local hubs. However, individuals still commute and move between municipalities. With a size of 7150 km2, the area is well connected by public transport and roads. Consequently, municipalities are not as separate as calculating specific municipality-level sex ratios suggests them to be.

Nevertheless, the level of detail in our data allow us to elucidate a number of aspects previous studies have not been able to explore. A key contribution of our paper is to support concerns about studying the association of sex ratios and aggregated rates of individual social outcomes, as it is commonly done in the existing sex ratio literature (cf. Pollet et al., 2017 for an in-depth critique). Specifically, our findings demonstrate how, based on the same data, sex ratios and aggregated violent offending rates can suggest a negative association, even when individual probabilities for violent offending are actually positively associated with sex ratios. This illustrates the importance of individual-level analyses to further establish a coherent empirical basis in the sex ratio literature.

Moreover, our paper illustrates that detailed offending data are necessary to generate clearer evidence with regard to which types of violent offenses are associated with sex ratio skews. We wish to remain cautious with too much emphasis on the differential levels of significance due to diverging sample sizes in offenses. Yet, the weaker association for male-on-female offending compared to male-on-male offending puts predictions of increased male-on-female intimate partner violence (D'Alessio & Stolzenberg, 2010; Daly & Wilson, 1998; Uggla & Mace, 2015b; Vandello, 2007) or higher levels of sexual harassment in male-skewed environments into perspective (Malamuth et al., 2005; Trent & South, 2012; Trent, South, & Bose, 2015). However, our data do not differentiate between violence against (intimate) partners and other female victims and thus our results on male-on-female violence can only serve as a combined indicator of violence against women by both partners and other men. Additional research is necessary to disentangle these different types of male-on-female violence and their associations with the sex ratio.

Moreover, our results reveal that the association of skewed sex ratios with violence may differ across individual demographic characteristics, as has been shown for other outcomes (Uggla & Mace, 2017). Specifically, sex ratios are positively associated with violent offending in childless men, but not among fathers. While we outlined above that this finding should be treated with caution, it still serves as an illustration for the yet untapped potential of individual-level data for the literature on sex ratios and violent offending. Future studies should further explore this aspect.

In sum, our findings demonstrate the need for studies relying on more detailed data and advanced causal identification strategies when exploring the association of sex ratios with violence and aggression. Observational studies, no matter how detailed, might be unable to overcome unobserved heterogeneity problems at both the individual and the aggregate level. Experimental studies have generated evidence for sex ratio effects on aggression by human participants (Arnocky, Ribout, Mirza, & Knack, 2014). We encourage future research to evaluate whether these effects vary across parental status groups as our results indicate.

Finally, our findings should be considered within their specific socio-sexual context (see Schacht et al., 2014). Our study population fits the WEIRD definition (Henrich, Heine, & Norenzayan, 2010), with high levels of acceptance for uncommitted sexual relationships (cf. Widmer, Treas, & Newcomb, 1998). Therefore, our paper complements the literature in that it comes from a sexually liberal society, while previous individual-level analyses use data from more sexually restrictive contexts (Diamond-Smith & Rudolph, 2018; South et al., 2014). Such societies might not be suitable test cases for the more-men-more-violence hypothesis, since this perspective emphasizes uncommitted sexual relationships as a main mediator for the link between sex ratios and male violence (Schacht et al., 2014, Schacht et al., 2016). This limitation does not apply to our study. While we cannot provide evidence of a counterfactual causal effect of male-skewed sex ratios on violent crime, our findings at least cast doubt on the more-men-less-violence hypothesis vis-à-vis the more-men-more-violence hypothesis in this context.

CRED Louvain climate disaster events “This is creating weather-related disasters that are completely unprecedented”

Dot Earth
NEW YORK TIMES BLOG
SEARCH



Gore Pulls Slide of Disaster Trends
BY ANDREW C. REVKIN FEBRUARY 23, 2009 12:31 PM February 23, 2009 12:31 pm 183
COLELLAPHOTO.COM via AAAS.org Al Gore addresses the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Former Vice President Al Gore is pulling a dramatic slide from his ever-evolving global warming presentation. When Mr. Gore addressed a packed, cheering hall at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in Chicago earlier this month, his climate slide show contained a startling graph showing a ceiling-high spike in disasters in recent years. The data came from the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters (also called CRED) at the Catholic University of Louvain in Brussels.

The graph, which was added to his talk last year, came just after a sequence of images of people from Iowa to South Australia struggling with drought, wildfire, flooding and other weather-related calamities. Mr. Gore described the pattern as a manifestation of human-driven climate change. “This is creating weather-related disasters that are completely unprecedented,” he said. (The preceding link is to a video clip of that portion of the talk; go to 7th minute.)

Now Mr. Gore is dropping the graph, his office said today. Here’s why.

Two days after the talk, Mr. Gore was sharply criticized for using the data to make a point about global warming by Roger A. Pielke, Jr., a political scientist focused on disaster trends and climate policy at the University of Colorado. Mr. Pielke noted that the Center for Research on the Epidemiology of Disasters stressed in reports that a host of factors unrelated to climate caused the enormous rise in reported disasters (details below).

Dr. Pielke quoted the Belgian center: “Indeed, justifying the upward trend in hydro-meteorological disaster occurrence and impacts essentially through climate change would be misleading. Climate change is probably an actor in this increase but not the major one — even if its impact on the figures will likely become more evident in the future.”

Officials at the disaster center, after reviewing what Mr. Gore showed and said, sent a comment to Dr. Pielke’s blog and to me. You can read their full response below. I sent it to Mr. Gore’s office and asked for his interpretation. Kalee Kreider, Mr. Gore’s spokeswoman on environmental matters, wrote back today:


I can confirm that historically, we used Munich Re and Swiss Re data for the slide show. This can be confirmed using a hard copy of An Inconvenient Truth. (It is cited if you cannot recall from the film which is now several years old!). We became aware of the CRED database from its use by Charles Blow in the New York Times (May 31, 2008). So, it’s a very new addition.

We have found that Munich Re and other insurers and their science experts have made the attribution. I’m referring you particularly to their floods section/report [link, link] Both of these were published in a series entitled “Weather catastrophes and climate change-Is there still hope for us.”

We appreciate that you have pointed out the issues with the CRED database and will make the switch back to the data we used previously to ensure that there is no confusion either with regards to the data or attribution.

As to climate change and its impacts on storms and floods, the IPCC and NOAA among many other top scientific groups have indicated that climate change will result in more extreme weather events, including heat waves, wildfires, storms and floods. As the result of briefings from top scientists, Vice President Gore believes that we are beginning to see evidence of that now.
Reproduced with permission, from Guha-Sapir, D., Vos, F.; Quantifying Global Environmental Change Impacts: Methods, Criteria and Definitions for Compiling Data on Hydro-Meteorological Hazards in Coping with Global Environmental Change, Disasters and Security – Threats, Challenges, Vulnerabilities and Risks. Edited by H. Brauch et al Hexagon Series on Human and Environmental Security and Peace, vol. 5 (Berlin – Heidelberg – New York: Springer-Verlag, 2009). Click on the image for a full-sized version of the graph, which shows storm trends as a green band and flooding and related landslides in blue.

At right is a link to the Belgian center’s graph of disaster trends through 2008 (click to see the whole thing). And here is the center’s statement (highlight added):


CRED is fully aware of the potential for misleading interpretations of EM-DAT figures by various users. This is a risk all public datasets run…. Before interpreting the upward trend in the occurrence of weather-related disasters as “completely unprecedented” and “due to global warming”, one has to take into account the complexities of disaster occurrence, human vulnerabilities and statistical reporting and registering.

Over the last 30 years, the development of telecommunications, media and increased international cooperation has played a critical role in the number of disasters that are reported internationally. In addition, increases in humanitarian funds have encouraged reporting of more disasters, especially smaller events. Finally, disasters are the convergence of hazards with vulnerabilities. As such, an increase of physical, social, economic or environmental vulnerabilities can mean an increase in the occurrence of disasters.

We believe that the increase seen in the graph until about 1995 is explained partly by better reporting of disasters in general, partly due to active data collection efforts by CRED and partly due to real increases in certain types of disasters. We estimate that the data in the most recent decade present the least bias and reflect a real change in numbers. This is especially true for floods and cyclones. Whether this is due to climate change or not, we are unable to say.

Once again, we would like to point out that although climate change could affect the severity, frequency and spatial distribution of hydro-meteorological events, we need to be cautious when interpreting disaster data and take into account the inherent complexity of climate and weather related processes — and remain objective scientific observers.

[UPDATE: 5:10 p.m.: I’ve posted on a more measured effort at climate risk communication.]

Also on the disaster-climate front, there is an interesting story in the Washington Post today describing a variegated assemblage of efforts to flee in the face of climate-related threats. Matthew Nisbet pondered how a global warming story without a hot political element made it onto a front page.

It’s pretty clear it was the climate-disaster link. There were some things missing from the article, however. As the folks in Belgium explained above, the connection between human-driven climate change and recent trends in disasters remains highly uncertain, even as most climate scientists foresee intensification of floods and droughts and, of course, more coastal flooding with rising sea levels.

So while the climate hook might have given this story its “front-page thought,” there’s no examination in the article of simultaneous trends in population growth in poor places, urbanization (people are leaving marginal lands for many reasons) and the like.

In the absence of that hook, it’s basically a story about people moving out of harm’s way, something that’s been happening throughout human history.183

From 2019... Middle‐aged women with a greater number of recent stressful life events demonstrate memory decline over a decade later

Stressful life events and cognitive decline: Sex differences in the Baltimore Epidemiologic Catchment Area Follow‐Up Study. Cynthia A. Munro  Alexandra M. Wennberg  Nicholas Bienko  William W. Eaton  Constantine G. Lyketsos  Adam P. Spira. International Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry, March 22 2019. https://doi.org/10.1002/gps.5102

Abstract

Introduction: The reasons why women are at higher risk than men for developing dementia are unclear. Although studies implicate sex differences in the effect of stress on cognitive functioning, whether stressful life events are associated with subsequent cognitive decline has received scant research attention.

Methods: In Wave 3 (1993–1996) of the Baltimore Epidemiologic Catchment Area study, 337 men and 572 women (mean age = 47 years) reported recent (within the last year) and remote (from 1981 until 1 year ago) traumatic events (eg, combat) and stressful life events (eg, divorce/separation). At Waves 3 and 4 (2004–2005), they completed the Mini Mental State Examination (MMSE) and a word‐list memory test. Multivariable models were used to examine the association between traumatic and stressful life events at Wave 3 and cognitive change by Wave 4.

Results: A greater number of recent stressful life events at Wave 3, but not of more remote stressful events, was associated with greater verbal memory decline by Wave 4 in women but not in men. Stressful events were not associated with change in MMSE, and there were no associations between traumatic events occurring at any time and subsequent memory or MMSE decline in either sex.

Conclusions: Unlike men, middle‐aged women with a greater number of recent stressful life events demonstrate memory decline over a decade later. Sex differences in cognitive vulnerability to stressful life events may underlie women's increased risk of memory impairment in late life, suggesting that stress reduction interventions may help prevent cognitive decline in women.

From “NASA Lies” to “Reptilian Eyes”: Mapping Communication About 10 Conspiracy Theories

From “Nasa Lies” to “Reptilian Eyes”: Mapping Communication About 10 Conspiracy Theories, Their Communities, and Main Propagators on Twitter. Daniela Mahl, Jing Zeng, Mike S. Schäfer. Social Media + Society, May 12, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051211017482

Abstract: In recent years, conspiracy theories have pervaded mainstream discourse. Social media, in particular, reinforce their visibility and propagation. However, most prior studies on the dissemination of conspiracy theories in digital environments have focused on individual cases or conspiracy theories as a generic phenomenon. Our research addresses this gap by comparing the 10 most prominent conspiracy theories on Twitter, the communities supporting them, and their main propagators. Drawing on a dataset of 106,807 tweets published over 6 weeks from 2018 to 2019, we combine large-scale network analysis and in-depth qualitative analysis of user profiles. Our findings illustrate which conspiracy theories are prevalent on Twitter, and how different conspiracy theories are separated or interconnected within communities. In addition, our study provides empirical support for previous assertions that extremist accounts are being “deplatformed” by leading social media companies. We also discuss how the implications of these findings elucidate the role of societal and political contexts in propagating conspiracy theories on social media.

Keywords: conspiracy theory, social media, Twitter

Discussion

Conspiracy theories are a fast-changing phenomenon and highly responsive to external events. In light of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, a plethora of conspiracy theories abound online. Going beyond previous studies on either the general phenomenon of conspiracy theories (e.g., Del Vicario et al., 2016) or specific conspiracy theories (e.g., Broniatowski et al., 2018), our study provides an empirically informed comparison of the most visible conspiracy theories on Twitter by shedding light on the interplay of platform affordances and the dissemination of conspiracy theory content.

Regarding the diversity of conspiracy theories, our results reveal a variety of prevalent conspiratorial explanations circulating on Twitter: Agenda 21, Anti-Vaccination, Chemtrails, Climate Change Denial, Directed Energy Weapons, Flat Earth, Illuminati, Pizzagate, Reptilians, and 9/11. While most of these conspiracy theories are directed against the establishment and elite, referring to secret machinations of influential people or institutions acting for their own benefit (e.g., Agenda 21, Illuminati), others construct narratives challenging science, epistemic institutions, or scientists (e.g., Anti-Vaccination, Flat Earth).

Concerning communities evolving around conspiracy theories on Twitter as well as main propagators within these communities, our results reveal two loosely connected clusters of pro- and anti-conspiracy theories. Both anti-conspiracy theory communities, Anti-Flat Earth and Pro-Vaccination, are centered around scientists and medical practitioners. Their use of pro-conspiracy theory hashtags likely is an attempt to directly engage and confront users who disseminate conspiracy theories. Studies from social psychology have shown that cross-group communication can be an effective way to resolve misunderstandings, rumors, and misinformation (e.g., DiFonzo, 2013). By deliberately using pro-conspiracy hashtags, anti-conspiracy theory accounts inject their ideas into the conspiracists’ conversations. However, our study suggests that this visibility does not translate into cross-group communication, that is, retweeting each other’s messages. This, in turn, indicates that debunking efforts hardly traverse the two clusters.

Finally, our study lends support to previous assertions that social media platforms are taking increasingly proactive measures to systematically crack down on accounts promoting conspiracy theories (e.g., Rogers, 2020). As our results show, users banned from Twitter are predominantly those who propagate conspiracy theories.

Alignments Between Conspiracy Theories and Their Communities

In line with recent research demonstrating that conspiracy beliefs tend to “stick together” (Douglas et al., 2019, p. 7; van Prooijen, 2018), our study reveals a general proximity between several conspiracy theories. We argue that three factors help us to explore these overlaps in more depth. First, the closely aligned conspiracy theories Climate Change Denial, Pizzagate, and 9/11 share structural and thematic features. They provide alternative rationales and explanations for national or international policies, political affairs, or events, challenging accounts from governments and official authorities (Huneman & Vorms, 2018; Räikkä, 2009). Other conspiracy theories such as Chemtrail, Reptilians, and Illuminati emphasize a conspiracy of powerful groups and non-human entities, claiming that, for instance, aliens or secret societies rule the world (Uscinski, 2018). In contrast to political conspiracy theories, these conspiracies mingle reality with fiction and are often closely tied to popular culture such as Dan Brown’s novel “The Da Vinci Code.” Second, factors such as ideological and geographic proximity further help explain alignments between conspiracy theories. A shared characteristic of several conspiracy theories is that they are disseminated by people with conservative political views who support Donald Trump and that they are mostly popular in the United States. For instance, conspiracy theories around Climate Change, Agenda 21, and Directed Energy Weapons have their roots in anti-environmentalist and anti-globalist ideologies, both of which are aligned with conservative political ideology and values (Kirilenko & Stepchenkova, 2014) and popular among the political right and populists in the United States (Harris et al., 2017). 9/11 and Pizzagate conspiracy theories are also widely promoted by conservative and right-wing politicians in the United States and often supported by individuals who hold conservative beliefs (Stempel et al., 2007). In contrast, believers in Anti-Vaccination, Flat Earth, Reptilians, Illuminati, and Chemtrail conspiracy theories can be found across the political spectrum, and their respective communities are less US-centric. For instance, Anti-Vaccination sentiment is on the rise around the globe and the movement finds supporters on both the political left and right (Holt, 2018). In addition, some of the most influential propagators of Illuminati and Reptilians conspiracy theories are based outside the United States (Robertson, 2013), which underlines the importance of societal and political contexts to understand the propagation patterns of conspiracy theories.

Limitations and Future Research

As all studies, ours comes with some limitations as well. A general limitation resides in the way we built our sample. First, hashtag-based approaches to collect tweets leave out ancillary discussions by participants who have chosen not to use these hashtags or any hashtags at all (Burgess & Bruns, 2015). Future studies should dive deeper and make use of alternative sampling methods, such as including specific user-defined keywords, utilizing topic-related dictionaries or classifiers, or examine recent tweeting history and follower network information of participating accounts to capture further communication (Burgess & Bruns, 2015). Second, our analysis was limited to a relatively small sample of English-language Twitter only, limiting the generalizability of our findings. As prior research suggests that conspiracy theories are communicated differently according to national and regional contexts (e.g., Gray, 2008), studies on other languages and linguistic regions would be recommendable.

To further enhance our understanding of conspiracy theories in digital environments, future research should incorporate more cross-platform, cross-lingual, and cross-regional comparative perspectives in general. Furthermore, we argue that future research of online conspiracy theories should not be limited to mainstream platforms, such as Twitter, Facebook, or YouTube. These platforms, as indicated in both literature (e.g., Rogers, 2020) and our current study, have been systematically cracking down on accounts that promote conspiracy theories. As more and more conspiracy theorists and their followers migrate to “alternative” social media, such as Gab, BitChute, and Parler, more research will be required to investigate the impacts of this trend.