New social interaction mechanisms—change in the rules of exchange and collective-action dilemmas—devised by the interacting individuals, allow for self-interested individuals to remain prosocial as societies grow

Cooperation in large-scale human societies—What, if anything, makes it unique, and how did it evolve? Simon T. Powers, Carel P. van Schaik, Laurent Lehmann. Evolutionary Anthropology: Issues, News, and Reviews, June 4 2021, https://doi.org/10.1002/evan.21909

Abstract: To resolve the major controversy about why prosocial behaviors persist in large-scale human societies, we propose that two questions need to be answered. First, how do social interactions in small-scale and large-scale societies differ? By reviewing the exchange and collective-action dilemmas in both small-scale and large-scale societies, we show they are not different. Second, are individual decision-making mechanisms driven by self-interest? We extract from the literature three types of individual decision-making mechanism, which differ in their social influence and sensitivity to self-interest, to conclude that humans interacting with non-relatives are largely driven by self-interest. We then ask: what was the key mechanism that allowed prosocial behaviors to continue as societies grew? We show the key role played by new social interaction mechanisms—change in the rules of exchange and collective-action dilemmas—devised by the interacting individuals, which allow for self-interested individuals to remain prosocial as societies grow.

4 PROSOCIALITY IN LARGE-SCALE SOCIETIES: DECISION-MAKING MECHANISMS VS SOCIAL INTERACTION MECHANISMS

As discussed in Section 2, large-scale societies are dependent on prosocial behaviors for their existence. Yet, evolutionary theory shows that, everything else being equal, the selection pressures favoring prosocial behaviors decrease drastically as the number of interacting individuals increases, and hence prosocial behavior is unlikely to be favored in large groups (Powers & Lehmann, 2017). So what was the key mechanism that allowed for prosocial behavior to be sustained in the transition from small-scale to large-scale societies? Did prosocial behavior start to go against the actor's genetic self-interest as the scale of society increased? If so, it would need to be maintained by a decision-making mechanism that is less sensitive to material payoff compared to the decision-making mechanism of evolutionary biology (FMM) described in the previous section. Or alternatively, was prosocial behavior still payoff-sensitive because of changes in the social interaction mechanism?

4.1 Hypothesis 1: A special decision-making mechanism is the key driver of prosocial behavior in large-scale societies

The first hypothesis is the cultural group selection hypothesis (Richerson et al., 2016; Richerson & Boyd, 2005), which posits that the main driver maintaining the expression of prosocial behavior in the transition to large-scale societies is that humans are largely SLM agents with a high degree of prestige and conformity bias. These biases can maintain prosocial behavior within a group, even if the prosocial behavior is not payoff-sensitive and hence not an equilibrium behavior for self-interested agents. Prosocial acts in large-scale societies can therefore be altruistic under this hypothesis. If different groups reach different patterns of behavior, some with a greater frequency of prosocial behaviors, and some with less, then competition between groups can cause the prosocial behavior to spread throughout the population (Boyd et al., 2003; Henrich & Boyd, 2001). However, explicit formal models investigating these processes (Lehmann & Feldman, 2008; Molleman et al., 2013; Peña et al., 2009), and holding everything else constant in comparison to payoff-biased transmission, have so far generally failed to show that conformist-biased transmission favors the spread of prosocial behaviors. Prestige-biased transmission fares better, though (Molleman et al., 2013).

Cultural group selection was first proposed to explain the transition to large-scale social societies in economics (Hayek, 1988) but without much detail as to what form of competition between groups would do the job, a point that has been expressed as follows (Sugden, 1993):

Sometimes it seems to be suggested that less successful groups imitate more successful ones; sometimes, that individuals migrate from less successful to more successful groups; sometimes, that more successful groups reproduce more rapidly; and sometimes, that more successful groups exterminate less successful ones. I think we must assume that Hayek has no particular theory of group selection clearly in mind, but has the hunch that there is some common criterion of “success” or “fitness” that would be favored by any plausible theory.

Much the same variations of group competition have been proposed in the more recent literature (Richerson et al., 2016). It has been argued that cultural group selection will be reinforced if competition between groups involves the physical displacement of less prosocial groups by their more prosocial neighbors, for example, through warfare (Bowles et al., 2003; Boyd et al., 2003; Turchin et al., 2013). This type of group competition could cause payoff-insensitive prosocial behaviors to spread if SLMs use prestige or conformity bias, including altruistic behaviors. It has also been proposed that competition between groups could take the form of individuals either migrating to more successful groups, or imitating individuals in more successful groups (Richerson et al., 2016). This could cause payoff-insensitive prosocial behaviors to spread if SLMs use prestige bias when choosing the group to migrate to or imitate. In both of these cases, the social interaction mechanism does not matter much because of the agent's decision-making mechanism.

On the other hand, both types of group competition could also function with payoff-biased SLMs. However, in this case there would need to be a mechanism of social interaction which ensures that prosocial behaviors give a higher payoff than non-prosocial behaviors within a single group, for example, non-altruistic forms of sanctioning (Ostrom, 1990). And with payoff-biased SLMs, prosocial behaviors could only be cooperative in large groups of genetically unrelated individuals, and not altruistic. This idea has been proposed in some “weaker” versions of the cultural group selection hypothesis, which argue that prosocial behaviors in social dilemmas are actually cooperative equilibria within a single group (Richerson et al., 2016). However, this is typically an assumption of cultural group selection models (Bowles et al., 2003; Boyd & Richerson, 1990), rather than the models demonstrating the evolution of a social interaction mechanism that makes prosocial behaviors an equilibrium for self-interested individuals in a single group. In summary, there is no single theory of cultural group selection and the different variants make different assumptions on the payoff-sensitivity of individual behavior.

4.2 Hypothesis 2: A refinement of social interaction mechanisms is the key driver of prosocial behavior in large-scale societies

The second hypothesis is the institutional path hypothesis (Powers et al., 2016; Powers & Lehmann, 2017), which posits that the driver maintaining the expression of prosocial behavior in the transition to large-scale societies is a refinement of social interaction mechanisms (see Glossary, Table 1); namely, people changed the rules of their economic games. Individuals are thus assumed to have formal and/or informal political interactions that affect their economic interactions. The hypothesis is that as groups grew in size, individuals have refined and created new institutional rules supporting exchange and/or have changed systems of monitoring and sanctioning to handle larger numbers of individuals in collective-action problems. Institutional rules may also have reduced the effective number of individuals that interact through the creation of nested group structures (Ostrom, 1990). These new mechanisms of social interaction (not necessarily created by “deliberate design,” see more on this in the next section) would lead to prosocial behaviors increasing material payoff to the actor, and hence can be generally favored even by self-interested individuals. Prosociality among non-relatives in large-scale societies is thus always cooperative, rather than altruistic, and so individual behavior is always payoff-sensitive under this hypothesis.

Due to this payoff-sensitivity, the institutional-path hypothesis is compatible with RSM agents, behavioral ecology-biased FMM agents, and with SLM agents that use payoff-biased social learning when choosing prosocial behavior. It is also compatible with the PAM subtype of FMM to the extent that the institutional rules recreate the conditions where cooperative prosocial behaviors were payoff-sensitive in small-scale societies, for example, effective sharing of reputational information. Moreover, PAMs would be expected to create institutional rules similar to those found in small-scale societies in circumstances that are ecologically similar (Boyer & Petersen, 2012; Petersen et al., 2013), for example, to create rules of uniform sharing in periods of high resource variance (Cosmides & Tooby, 1992).

The form of the institutional rules a group ends up with will be influenced by proximate factors such as asymmetries in power, influence, and information (Singh et al., 2017), which determine the outcome of political interactions. Furthermore, only a subset of the individuals affected by the institutional rules may take part in the political interactions, and the interests of those taking part may not be representative of the interests of the group as a whole. Consequently, conflicts of interests between segments of the group may result in institutional rules not being optimal for all group members, as exemplified by the rise of highly despotic states such as Ancient Egypt, where despotic leaders biased institutional rules in favor of themselves. As such, the institutional path hypothesis is compatible with the widespread existence of inefficient institutions (North, 1990). On the other hand, when the interests of group members are aligned, or bargaining strengths are equal, then efficient institutions that increase average material-payoff are more likely to arise, a point that has been repeatedly stressed in the (political) economics literature (Greif, 2006; North, 1990; Ostrom, 1990).

The ability to create and enforce rules by self-interested individuals, especially over food sharing and property rights, would have been necessary to support the hunter-gatherer lifestyle (Hill, 2009). If hunter-gatherers did not have political interactions, then the institutional path hypothesis cannot explain the origin of large-scale societies. But there is evidence that hunter-gatherers do indeed have political interactions that affect their economic interactions, even though they lack the bureaucratic elements of large-scale societies. For example, when the extant Ache hunter-gatherer society transitioned from foraging to horticulture, they advocated and voted in local meetings to transfer fields from public to private ownership (Kaplan et al., 2005).

4.3 A combination of a special decision-making mechanism and a change in social interaction mechanisms?

Since both the cultural group selection and the institutional-path hypotheses assume a quantitative scaling up of the same kinds of exchange and collective-action problems, the above analysis shows that a key question in determining the driving factors in the transition to large-scale societies is what decision-making mechanism determines the expression of prosocial behavior. If individuals are sensitive to material payoff when choosing prosocial behavior, then there must have been a change in their social interaction mechanisms, as proposed by the institutional-path hypothesis. Without such a change, individuals should stop acting prosocially as they took part in exchanges and collective actions with more individuals, because when everything else is constant the pressures favoring prosocial behaviors decrease rapidly as the number of interacting individuals increases. Conversely, if there was no change in the social interaction mechanisms then individuals must be less sensitive to payoff. If so, a special decision-making mechanism must operate, whereby some form of cultural group selection does the work in explaining why prosocial behaviors, be they cooperative or altruistic, are stable in large-scale societies.

Because humans undoubtedly experiment with many behaviors by trial-and-error and do considerably rely on social learning (Legare, 2017), the rules constraining behavior in economic interactions to which a society converge must to some extent at least partly be the outcome of some “spontaneous order” (Hayek, 1988; Sugden, 1993; Vanberg, 1994) and not the outcome of fully deliberate design. A case in point is the advent of the usage of money, which is a typical rule-based change in economic organization that is both in the interest of individuals using it and that is likely to have spread gradually by payoff-biased social learning (Vanberg, 1994). As such, some ingredients of the cultural group selection hypothesis may be complementary with the institutional-path hypothesis, with competition between groups spreading different “spontaneous orders.” However, this depends critically on the exact version of “cultural group selection” that has been operating. If the version of cultural group selection involves altruistic behaviors or altruistic punishment, then it is not complementary as it assumes individuals that are not self-interested (André, 2011; Pinker, 2015).

Competition between groups resulting from warfare, differential migration, or environmentally induced extinctions acts as an equilibrium selection device (Binmore, 2005a; Boyd & Richerson, 1990; Harsanyi & Selton, 1988), favoring equilibria that lead to a higher average payoff for group members. Cultural group selection advocates traditionally stressed that high-payoff equilibria resulted from prestige and conformity biased SLMs causing behaviors to spread within groups even if they were not payoff-sensitive in the underlying social interaction mechanism, rather than being equilibria because they were payoff-sensitive (Henrich et al., 2015; Richerson & Boyd, 2005). But prosocial equilibria can also exist within groups under payoff-biased social learning, or under RSM agents that rationally choose their actions, if the right mechanisms of social interaction are in place. In this case, between-group competition can again act as an equilibrium selection device, spreading by cultural transmission mechanisms of interaction that lead to cooperation, without individuals acting against their self-interest (Binmore, 2005a; Boyd & Richerson, 1990; Harsanyi & Selton, 1988). This can act alongside the creation of mechanisms of interaction by bargaining and negotiation, helping to fill in where individuals are less than fully rational, that is, boundedly-rational RSMs or PAMs. On the other side, an explicit consideration of political interactions for changing institutional rules can complement cultural group selection models, which typically leave unspecified how a group arrives at a particular equilibrium in the first place. Much formal work remains to be done to ascertain the conditions under which such equilibrium selection processes at the level of rules of the game (instead of economic behavior under given rules) may work. There are essentially no models of this to date.

Despite ingredients of the cultural group selection and institutional path hypotheses not being necessarily mutually exclusive, there is a crucial need to understand whether the main driver of the evolution of prosocial behavior in large-scale societies is a special decision-making mechanism that can cause agents to perform prosocial behaviors that are not payoff-sensitive, or the creation of new mechanisms of social interaction that maintain the expression of payoff-sensitive behavior as group size increases. Without clarification, the perennial question of the extent to which prosocial behaviors in large-scale societies are compatible with (genetically) self-interested individuals will remain. Fully elucidating the evolved decision-making mechanism that humans use is extremely challenging. Determining, however, whether observed prosocial behaviors are payoff-sensitive is less challenging. For example, we can more easily determine whether systems of monitoring and sanctioning involve altruistic behaviors, or whether they directly benefit the individuals doing the monitoring and sanctioning by increasing their material payoff (Guala, 2012; Ostrom, 1990). If it is the former, then this suggests that a special decision-making mechanism was key to their spread and maintenance. If it is the latter, then the creation of new mechanisms of social interaction is likely to have been the key driver. Empirical work should thus pay more attention to the payoff sensitivity of monitoring and sanctioning behaviors.

We show how the degree to which consumers perceive a moral basis for their product attitudes robustly predicts their intended and actual marketplace behaviors

Morality Matters in the Marketplace: The Role of Moral Metacognition in Consumer Purchasing. Andrew Luttrell, Jacob D. Teeny and Richard E. Petty. Social Cognition, Volume 39 Issue 3, Jun 2021, online May 2021. https://doi.org/10.1521/soco.2021.39.3.328

Abstract: To better understand the seemingly inconsistent influence of consumers' morality on their marketplace behaviors, we apply insights from research on attitude moralization to the consumer domain. That is, rather than predefining certain products as “moral,” this approach treats morality as the extent to which individual consumers metacognitively perceive their positive product attitudes as rooted in moral (vs. non-moral) considerations. Across multiple studies (N = 1,105), a wide variety of product categories, and multiple methodological approaches (i.e., correlational, experimental, and longitudinal), we show how the degree to which consumers perceive a moral basis for their product attitudes robustly predicts their intended and actual marketplace behaviors. Importantly, these findings hold above and beyond overall attitudes, other metacognitive assessments (e.g., certainty and ambivalence), and explicit product quality. By extending prior research in moral social cognition to the consumer domain, we provide a more refined account of morality's role in consumer behavior.

An effect of the mere presence of a phone on relationship quality & creativity is at minimum harder to find than what was previously assumed in the literature: This research contributes to qualify the view that smartphones are harmful

Linares C, Sellier A-L (2021) How bad is the mere presence of a phone? A replication of Przybylski and Weinstein (2013) and an extension to creativity. PLoS ONE 16(6): e0251451. Jun 9 2021. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0251451

Abstract: A 2013 article reported two experiments suggesting that the mere presence of a cellphone (vs. a notebook) can impair the relationship quality between strangers. The purpose of the present research is twofold: (1) closely replicate this article’s findings, and (2) examine whether there may be an impact of the mere presence of a phone on creativity, whether at a group- or an individual- level. In two experiments (N = 356 participants, 136 groups), we followed the original procedure in the 2013 article. In particular, groups of participants who had never seen each other before the study had a conversation in the mere presence of either a smartphone or a notebook. The participants then carried out creative tasks, in groups (Studies 1 and 2) or alone (Study 1). In both studies, we failed to replicate the original results on relationship quality. We also failed to find any effect of the mere presence of a phone on creativity. We discuss possible reasons which may have caused differences between our results and the original ones. Our main conclusion is an effect of the mere presence of a phone on relationship quality and creativity is at minimum harder to find than what was previously assumed in the literature. More generally, this research contributes to qualify the view that smartphones are harmful.

General discussion

In two studies, we failed to replicate Przybylski and Weinstein’s [12] results showing an adverse effect of the mere presence of a mobile phone on relationship formation, when considering both dyads and triads of strangers. We also did not find any effect of the mere presence of a mobile phone on any aspect of creative cognition, examining both divergent and convergent creativity processes and outputs, and both group and individual creativity. These results suggest that mere presence of a mobile phone may not be as harmful as has been previously claimed [12, 13].

Non-replication of Przybylski and Weinstein (2013)

The failed replication result directly adds to the line of research on the negative consequences of the mere presence of a mobile device [12, 13, 49–51], by suggesting that this negative influence may not be as marked as was previously assumed. If we cannot exclude that there might be other instances where this presence is harmful, our findings at least point out the fragility of the phenomenon. At a broader level, our results also nuance the dominant view that smartphones and technology are harmful, adding to burgeoning research that is casting doubt on the pervasiveness of their negative effects [e.g., 4, 8, 77]. Our findings also complement research on mere exposure effects [78–80]. Finally, our research supports the importance of replications [e.g., 29, 81, 82]: Until an effect has been independently replicated, researchers need to remain cautious in assuming its existence [28, 31].

Despite our best efforts to conduct the closest replication as possible, our studies contain limitations. First, null effects do not invalidate an effect. It may be that the mere presence of the phone is harmful in different populations from those we sampled (e.g., in populations where the use of the smartphone may not be as pervasive as in large European cities). Second, even though our sample sizes were much greater than those in Przybylski and Weinstein [12], they may not have provided enough power to detect an effect [77]. Third, we measured relationship quality after the creative tasks and self-reports on the creative process, which might have wiped out the effect due to fatigue or contamination.

Is there a way to reconcile our results with those of Przybylski and Weinstein [12]? We see several possibilities, all of which relate to the timing of our experiments. We collected our data in 2018, compared to Przybylski and Weinstein (in or before 2012) [12]. The first possibility is that people might have simply gotten used to the presence of mobile devices, which could make them immune to their mere presence. Relatedly, our sample included mainly participants in their twenties, that belong to a generation who grew up with smartphones, and thus who might find their presence very natural. Another reason could be that the technology has evolved greatly between 2012 and 2018. Przybylski and Weinstein [12] used a cellphone, while we used a smartphone. Indeed, the number of smartphone users worldwide has more than doubled during this interval [83]. Additionally, people have developed strong bonds to them, although this is less likely to explain our results since in our studies, participants were exposed to a lab device [77, 84, 85]. If any of these conjectures were true, then our findings would provide an updated assessment of the social consequences of the mere presence of a mobile phone, suggesting that its effect was short-lived.

Null effect on creativity

The absence of evidence supporting a link between the mere presence of a smartphone and creativity advances the exploration of the effects of technology on idea generation. Our results suggest that the mere presence of a technological device like a smartphone may not affect general measures of creativity, whether positively or negatively. Previous research has pointed out the critical role of the environment for creativity which can be affected by incidental cues like sound or background color or the presence of physical objects [66, 86–90]. Relatedly, a lay belief exists that a creative environment should be free from any distractions [91, 92]. Our findings suggest that creativity may not be that sensitive to the mere presence of technology.

One limitation of this investigation is that participants did the creativity tasks only after the conversation. However, in the real-world, creativity endeavors are rarely isolated from other processes, and we would argue that this improbably caused our null effects.

Implications and avenues for future research

The main implication of this research is to moderate calls to completely isolate from smartphones’ presence. It may not be necessary to ban even switched off smartphones from the dinner table or to enforce strict cellphone policies in organizations [93–96]. For instance, the American, French and British governments have a no-phone policy during meetings, whereby each member has to leave their phones at the entry of the meeting room [97]. Our findings suggest that these constraints could be partly released, at least for meetings in which there is no concern that sensible information may be recorded.

Of course, when people’s own smartphones are present, the temptation to use them might still be detrimental for social interactions or creativity [19, 98, 99]. In Misra et al. [13] for instance, acquaintances in the mere presence of their own mobile devices experienced a lower relationship quality, although similarly to Przybylski and Weinstein [12], this finding remains to be replicated. In a study we do not report here, we investigated whether individual idea generation could be affected by the presence of one’s own smartphone. Again, we observed no effect on creative cognition. At this point, it is our view that there is not much influence of the mere presence of a phone on creative cognition. What may be worthwhile investigating are ways in which smartphones may impact creativity, other than via their mere presence. For instance, future research could explore the difference between generating ideas on one’s smartphone rather than on one’s personal computer [84, 85]. This could also be interesting when exchanging ideas with other people, in the wake of research on electronic brainstorming [100–102]. More broadly, the topic of creativity and technology still offers a wide field of investigation.

Conclusion

We did not replicate Przybylski and Weinstein’s [12] finding that the mere presence of a mobile device impairs relationship quality, nor did we find any effect of this presence on creativity. There is one practical recommendation arising from our results: next time you meet a stranger or work on a creative task, you may leave your phone on the table. Just turn on the airplane mode.

Many people listen to music for hours every day, often near bedtime; we investigated whether music listening affects sleep, focusing on a rarely explored mechanism: involuntary musical imagery (earworms)

Bedtime Music, Involuntary Musical Imagery, and Sleep. Michael K. Scullin, Chenlu Gao, Paul Fillmore. Psychological Science, June 9, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797621989724

Abstract: Many people listen to music for hours every day, often near bedtime. We investigated whether music listening affects sleep, focusing on a rarely explored mechanism: involuntary musical imagery (earworms). In Study 1 (N = 199, mean age = 35.9 years), individuals who frequently listen to music reported persistent nighttime earworms, which were associated with worse sleep quality. In Study 2 (N = 50, mean age = 21.2 years), we randomly assigned each participant to listen to lyrical or instrumental-only versions of popular songs before bed in a laboratory, discovering that instrumental music increased the incidence of nighttime earworms and worsened polysomnography-measured sleep quality. In both studies, earworms were experienced during awakenings, suggesting that the sleeping brain continues to process musical melodies. Study 3 substantiated this possibility by showing a significant increase in frontal slow oscillation activity, a marker of sleep-dependent memory consolidation. Thus, some types of music can disrupt nighttime sleep by inducing long-lasting earworms that are perpetuated by spontaneous memory-reactivation processes.

Keywords: music cognition, stuck-song syndrome, involuntary memory, slow-wave activity, primary auditory cortex, open data, open materials

Japan: The authors examined whether positive affect predicted a reduction of all-cause and cause-specific mortality as well as the onset of morbidity (heart disease, stroke, hypertension, diabetes, and cancer); the search failed

Nakagawa, Takeshi, Yukiko Nishita, Chikako Tange, Makiko Tomida, Rei Otsuka, Fujiko Ando, and Hiroshi Shimokata. 2021. “Does Positive Affect Predict Mortality and Morbidity?.” PsyArXiv. June 9. doi:10.31234/osf.io/n42f6

Abstract: Positive affect contributes to health and longevity. While most research has been conducted in individualistic societies where the experience and expression of positive emotions are highly valued, evidence remains scarce in collectivistic societies that de-emphasize the importance thereof. Employing 19-year longitudinal data of Japanese adults (age range 40‒79; N = 2,033), we examined whether positive affect predicted mortality and morbidity. Health outcomes were all-cause and cause-specific mortality as well as the onset of morbidity (heart disease, stroke, hypertension, diabetes, and cancer). After adjusting for relevant covariates, the Cox proportional hazards models revealed that positive affect predicted none of the outcomes. Our results did not replicate the health−benefits of positive affect. We discussed potential reasons for the null results.

We advance the hypothesis that women are as competitive as men once the incentive for winning includes factors that matter to women

Option to Cooperate Increases Women’s Competitiveness and Closes the Gender Gap. Alessandra Cassar, Mary L. Rigdon. Forthcoming: Evolution and Human Behavior, April 19, 2021. maryrigdon.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/04/CassarRigdon_OptionToCooperate_EHB.pdf

Abstract. We advance the hypothesis that women are as competitive as men once the incentive for winning includes factors that matter to women. Allowing winners an opportunity to share some of their winnings with the low performers has gendered consequences for competitive behavior. We ground our work in an evolutionary framework in which winning competitions brings asymmetric benefits and costs to men and women. In the new environment, the potential to share some of the rewards from competition with others may afford women the benefit of reaping competitive gains without incurring some of its potential costs. An experiment (N = 438 in an online convenience sample of US adults) supports our hypothesis: a 26% gender gap in performance vanishes once a sharing option is included to an otherwise identical winner-take-all incentive scheme. Besides providing a novel experiment that challenges the paradigm that women are not as motivated to compete as men, our work proposes some suggestions for policy: including socially-oriented rewards to contracts may offer a novel tool to close the persistent labor market gender gap.

6 Discussion

We posit that having the availability of an option to share may incentivize women to compete, although most of the laboratory experiments prevent it by design. Our work demonstrates that the incentive structure critically affects what level of competitive performance is observed. The theoretical expectation that males are more competitive than females has produced laboratory tools fine-tuned to record a competitiveness trait as it gets expressed in males, but not necessarily in females, whose motivation to compete would get under-estimated when factors that matter to women are not included in the experiment. Most of the experimental literature focuses on winner-take-all contests, as they appear predominant in the economy. Our work suggests that under these remarkably exclusionary environments, women display a lower desire to compete, but, different incentive structures could be put in place to reduce such gaps. Our results demonstrate that women’s competitiveness gets expressed in different ways and reacts to different rewards. Furthermore, the classic winner-take-all environments commonly used may not even resemble real life competitive situations necessarily better than the modified design with the sharing option we advance here: CEOs compete for their companies’ shareholders (who are getting most of the benefits from the business’ success); prime ministers and politicians compete for the well-being of their constituencies and their countries. So many of the leadership positions in the economy would be better represented as competitions on behalf of a group. Experiments that include this component tend to find no gap in competitiveness. Still, we agree that many positions of power are gained mainly for exclusionary gains and, in these environments, women may indeed be turned off by the openly competitive nature and non-egalitarian distribution of the gains. It is in these work environments where we expect to see that a change of the incentives structure may encourage 25more women to enter and stay. Some companies (e.g. in Silicon Valley) are already starting to adopt compensation schemes based on teams’ performance rather than individual prizes. Such shifts may avoid distortions (by aligning personal incentives with the company’s goals) and, in addition, may encourage more women to compete. A lower female competitiveness has been found in many experiments around the world. Yet, the most recent cross-cultural studies and meta-analysis seem to suggest that such sex differences tend to be more pronounced in individualistic and gender-egalitarian societies rather than in more traditional societies at lower levels of economic development. Once greater availability of material and social resources removes the gender-neutral goal of subsistence, gender-specific ambitions and desires may emerge and more gender-equal access to resources may allow women and men to express preferences independently from each other (Giudice, 2015). Interestingly, gendered differences in preferences such as risk, patience, altruism, positive and negative reciprocity, and trust have also been found to be positively associated with economic development as well as societal gender equality (Falk & Hermle, 2018). If it is confirmed that sex preferences vary even more at higher levels of development, a change in labor market incentives structure appears even more appealing as option. The gender stereotype that women are less competitive or less economically driven is costly, both to individual women who may be under-placed and under-paid and to society at large, erroneously looking disproportionately to men for leadership (Eagly et al., 1992; Rudman & Glick, 1999). Our work demonstrates that equal-seeming incentives can be structured differently — by being socially-oriented — and women respond by increasing performance. This result has important policy implications, since understanding these differences is key for designing institutional mechanisms and contracts that promote the reduction of inequalities; for example by modifying individual bonuses to include resource to be allocated to team members for reaching communal goals, by integrating salaries with benefits for children (e.g. vouchers for education), by awarding top employees with decision power over a company’s charitable contributions, and by focusing on the positive effects of one’s work for a desired group or valuable cause. In conclusion, our study is at the intersection of economics, evolutionary psychology, anthropology, and biology and our findings may be of interest to a broad interdisciplinary scientific audience. Despite Darwin’s recognition of the importance of intra-sexual competition, the topic of female competitiveness has been largely ignored, until recently. Economists, looking for why women rarely reach top jobs, have accumulated a large body of experimental evidence pointing to women’s lower desire to compete; 26hence, the argument is that they self-select into less prominent and lower paying positions. Our experimental findings support the idea that women will compete as much as men once we substitute the winner-take-all incentives with a socially oriented option. Our work contributes a novel result to the much-debated topic of the gender wage gap, offering a different interpretation to the classic results, one for which the alleged gender differences in competitiveness cannot be appealed to. 

Civil disobedience in scientific authorship, & resistance and insubordination in science: The distribution of credit, resources & opportunities in science is heavily skewed due to unjust practices and incentives, hardwired into science’s rules

Civil disobedience in scientific authorship: Resistance and insubordination in science. Bart Penders & David M. Shaw. Policies and Quality Assurance, Volume 27, 2020 - Issue 6, Pages 347-371, May 14 2020. https://doi.org/10.1080/08989621.2020.1756787

Abstract: The distribution of credit, resources and opportunities in science is heavily skewed due to unjust practices and incentives, hardwired into science’s rules, guidelines and conventions. A form of resistance widely available is to break those rules. We review instances of rule-breaking in scientific authorship to allow for a redefinition of the concept of civil disobedience in the context of academic research, as well as the conditions on which the label applies. We show that, in contrast to whistleblowing or conscientious objection, civil disobedience targets science’s injustice on a more systemic level. Its further development will ease critical evaluation of deviant actions as well as helping us evaluate deviance, defiance and discontent in science beyond issues of authorship. However, empirically, civil disobedience in science engenders uncertainties and disagreements on the local status of both act and label.

Keywords: Civil disobedienceresistanceresearch integrityresearch governanceauthorshipprotest

Conclusion

Whether in the form of pseudonyms, guest authors or creative authorship attribution processes, civil disobedience in authorship serves the explicit purpose of demonstrating how many of the written and unwritten rules governing the distribution of credit and other resources in academia reinforce a long series of inequalities. The unwillingness of some authors to accept that they cannot give credit to those whom they feel legitimately deserve it, or cannot receive credit when they legitimately feel they should, and their willingness to act in a variety of ways, constitutes a critique of scientific infrastructures and their undesirable fall-out. Civil disobedience calls for critical examination of these infrastructures and invites them to reflect upon themselves. We do not claim that all the examples we included meet the formal criteria for civil disobedience provided by Thoreau, Schuyt or others. Many of them do not: some resemble civil disobedience but are based on laziness or annoyance rather than moral outrage, and others game the system rather than attempting to expose its weaknesses. In many cases the boundaries are very fuzzy.9 If anything, the examples have served as a training set for our redefinition of the notion for the context of science: the cases we discuss support a modification of their conception of civil disobedience for this particular academic context – although the consent requirement would most likely also benefit the conception of civil disobedience in many other sectors of society structured around collective action.

We believe that these modifications retain the conceptual core of civil disobedience as put forth by Thoreau and Schuyt, thereby allowing the retention of the label: the acts of resistance are not part of conventional academic practice, but neither do they constitute conscientious objection or whistleblowing. While they may appear limited in their practical effect in terms of changing the culture of science, they consistently draw attention to issues affecting researchers and also act as a means of combating the moral attrition imposed on researchers by injustices in science. Assembling these seemingly disparate actions under the label of civil disobedience in science will ease critical evaluation of deviant actions as well as helping us evaluate deviance, defiance and discontent in science beyond issues of authorship. To avoid abuse, an empirical focus remains vital, so that the label itself does not act as a legitimation in and of itself.

Scientific publishing practices will continue to evolve, and so will the policies, rules, guidelines and conventions that prescribe specific behavior. Along with prominent scholarship on the detrimental effects of the current socio-political infrastructures of science, civil disobedience is a critical voice that is easily ignored, or dismissed as harmless fun. We must realize though, that many of these policies, rules, guidelines and conventions are national and sometimes even regional (or limited to a single institute). The discussion of whether or not breaking a rule qualifies as civil disobedience is thus an empirical one, requiring the study of local practices and conventions as well as the motivations of particular agents, for instance: does an actor’s annoyance constitute moral outrage or not?

Answering these and other questions about civil disobedience requires data and the need for data also presents a lesson for how to legitimately shape and initiate civil disobedience. When documented, moral outrage, acts of deviance, communication about them and considerations underpinning all of them constitute such data. In the absence of such evidence, when authors are revealed to be guests only after the fact, and transparency about disobedience is lacking, the presumption must be that this is not a case of disobedience but of research misconduct (or at least detrimental research practice), with all the sanctions that that might entail. While we support the use of civil disobedience in science when done ethically, those engaging in it can actively articulate the boundary between practices that could be misconstrued as misconduct and those that represent civil disobedience by engaging with the question as an empirical matter.

We also cannot ignore the political dimensions of the problem. Power asymmetries in science place early career researchers at huge disadvantages, even in their ability to engage in civilly disobedient behavior when legitimately morally outraged. Tenure and other protective measures makes civil disobedience safer for senior faculty than for young researchers.10 To them, incomplete adherence to the aforementioned criteria may offer a proxy for that safety (especially the transparency and consent requirements) and manifestations in the form of satire offer similar protection – but they too can document the process. Ideally, we would see civil disobedience in faculty members such as in the case of Sarah Elgin, who included hundreds of students as authors on a publication. In fact, her actions are exemplary of civil disobedience: she has publically defended her actions when the contributions of all students were challenged as not living up to minimum requirements for authorship. As part of this, she referred to the mismatch between the reality of large-scale research and credit-distribution mechanisms. Her actions sparked immediate debate in the community about credit politics and inequality in science (for a list of examples, see Woolston 2015). In fact, she has done so more than once, as her lab’s web pages disclose. Despite the availability of such a, perhaps paradigmatic, example, in the international, global domain of science, uncertainties and disagreements on the status of resistance, digression, deviant behavior and the attribution of the label “civil disobedience” are likely to remain. Researching the rebellious makes fraud, fun and civil disobedience into strange bedfellows and urges us to take great care in attributing said labels.

After biting the gigantic female, epidermal tissues, & eventually the circulatory systems, fuse, so the male, whose only job is to yield sperm, depends on the female for nutriment, & the female becomes a self-fertilising hermaphroditic host

Precocious sexual parasitism in the deep sea ceratioid anglerfish, Cryptopsaras couesi Gill. Theodore W Pietsch. Nature volume 256, pages38–40. Jul 3 1975. https://www.nature.com/articles/256038a0

Abstract: The eleven families and nearly one hundred species of ceratioid anglerfish are distributed throughout the world's oceans below a depth of 500 m. The Ceratiidae, with two monotypic genera, Ceratias Kröyer and Cryptopsaras Gill, is one of four ceratioid families whose members exhibit a peculiar and unique mode of reproduction in which dwarfed males become permanently and parasitically attached to the body of a relatively gigantic female. Males of this family have large, forwardly directed eyes, apparently relying entirely on vision for their search and identification of a conspecific female. As in other ceratioid males, they are also equipped with a set of pincher-like denticles at the tips of their jaws for grasping and holding fast to a mate. Attachment is followed by fusion of epidermal tissues, and eventually by a uniting of the circulatory systems, so that the male, whose single function is to produce sperm, becomes dependent on the female for blood-transported nutriment, and the female becomes a kind of self-fertilising hermaphroditic host. Since its discovery 50 years ago, the story of sexual parasitism in ceratioid anglerfish has become a part of everyday scientific knowledge, yet no thoroughly satisfactory analysis of the known facts concerning this remarkable reproductive strategy has been made, in spite of the elegant work of Bertelsen1. This report describes sexual parasitism in surprisingly young females of C. couesi. Contrary to previous thought, it is now evident that parasitic attachment can take place at an extremely early age immediately following metamorphosis.

Check also https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anglerfish

Are fathers a good substitute for mothers? Increasing proportion of father’s care shows negative associations with children’s weight and BMI velocity

Are fathers a good substitute for mothers? Paternal care and growth rates in Shodagor children. K. E. Starkweather, M. H. Keith, S. P. Prall, N. Alam, F. Zohora, M. Emery Thompson. Developmental Psychobiology, June 4 2021. https://doi.org/10.1002/dev.22148

Abstract: Biparental care is a hallmark of human social organization, though paternal investment varies between and within societies. The facultative nature of paternal care in humans suggests males should invest when their care improves child survival and/or quality, though testing this prediction can be challenging because of the difficulties of empirically isolating paternal effects from those of other caregivers. Additionally, the broader context in which care is provided, vis-à-vis care from mothers and others, may lead to different child outcomes. Here, we examine the effects of paternal care on child growth among Shodagor fisher-traders, where fathers provide high levels of both additive and substitutive care, relative to mothers. We modeled seasonal z-scores and velocities for height, weight, and body mass index (BMI) outcomes using linear mixed models. Our evidence indicates that, as predicted, the context of paternal care is an important predictor of child outcomes. Results show that environmental seasonality and alloparental help contribute to a nuanced understanding of the impact of Shodagor paternal care on child physiology.

Stereotyping: Online dating sites portray women with greater body display, as younger, shorter, practicing feminine touch, holding subordinate body postures, maintaining seductive eye contact, and at an intimate distance from the ads’ audience

Sticking to stereotypes: a cross-cultural analysis of gender portrayals in homepage advertisements of online dating sites in 51 countries. Aditi Paul & Saifuddin Ahmed. The Social Science Journal, Jun 4 2021. https://doi.org/10.1080/03623319.2021.1937468

Abstract: Research shows that people hold gender-stereotypical beliefs when it comes to dating and courtship. We argue that online dating sites (ODSs) will portray men and women in stereotypical ways to be consistent with user expectations. We conduct a content analysis examining implicit and explicit gender stereotypes in the homepage advertisement (ad) images used by 662 ODSs from 51 countries. Results indicate that these sites use women more often than men in their homepage ads. Compared to men, ODSs portray women with greater body display, as younger, shorter, practicing feminine touch, holding subordinate body postures, maintaining seductive eye contact, and at an intimate distance from the ads’ audience. These gender-stereotypical depictions, by and large, stay consistent across countries. The negative impact that ODSs can have on interpersonal relationships by promoting such restrictive stereotypical portrayals of men and women is discussed.

KEYWORDS: Gender stereotypesonline datingcross-culturalGoffman

Brain and testis: more alike than previously thought?

Brain and testis: more alike than previously thought? Bárbara Matos, Stephen J. Publicover, Luis Filipe C. Castro, Pedro J. Esteves and Margarida Fardilha. June 2 2021. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsob.200322

Abstract: Several strands of evidence indicate the presence of marked similarities between human brain and testis. Understanding these similarities and their implications has become a topic of interest among the scientific community. Indeed, an association of intelligence with some semen quality parameters has been reported and a relation between dysfunctions of the human brain and testis has also been evident. Numerous common molecular features are evident when these tissues are compared, which is reflected in the huge number of common proteins. At the functional level, human neurons and sperm share a number of characteristics, including the importance of the exocytotic process and the presence of similar receptors and signalling pathways. The common proteins are mainly involved in exocytosis, tissue development and neuron/brain-associated biological processes. With this analysis, we conclude that human brain and testis share several biochemical characteristics which, in addition to their involvement in the speciation process, could, at least in part, be responsible for the expression of a huge number of common proteins. Nonetheless, this is an underexplored topic, and the connection between these tissues needs to be clarified, which could help to understand the dysfunctions affecting brain and testis, as well as to develop improved therapeutic strategies.

1. Introduction

The human body is an orchestrated set of different organs that work together, contributing to the maintenance of overall health and homeostasis. The human brain is the control center of the nervous system, playing a critical coordination role. It receives signals from sensory organs and translates them into functional information to multiple physiological compartments such as muscles and glands. In addition, the brain is also responsible for speech production, memory storage, and the elaboration of thought and emotion [1,2]. The human testis is the male gonad, and is of the utmost importance for reproduction and species evolution. It has two main functions: production of gametes (sperm) and synthesis/secretion of hormones (primarily, testosterone) [3,4].

Despite these clearly dissimilar functions and the apparent structural and morphological differences between human brain and testis, in the last four decades it has become increasingly evident that these tissues share several features. The similarity was further confirmed by analysis of gene expression, with evidence that human brain and testis, among all the organs of the body, share the highest number of genes [5,6]. More recently, authors found a positive correlation between general intelligence and three key measures of semen quality: sperm concentration, sperm count and sperm motility [7]. A possible association between male sexual dysfunction and neurological disorders was also proposed by several authors [8,9]. These findings raise some interesting questions. (i) Why do the human brain and testis share a similar gene expression profile? (ii) Have these tissues a similar cellular organization and cooperation between cell types? (iii) Are their functions related? (iv) What are the implications of the similarities between human brain and testis?

In this context, we review the similarities between human brain and testis, and between human neuron and sperm at the cellular and molecular levels. The proteomic profile of the two human tissues (brain and testis) and the two types of cells (neuron and sperm) were also compared and critically discussed. 

Dissociative Amnesia: Most case studies reviewed offered wek evidence, plagued by ambiguity, & failed to rule out plausible alternative explanations of dissociative amnesia, such as ordinary forgetting and malingering

A Critical Review of Case Studies on Dissociative Amnesia. Ivan Mangiulli et al. Clinical Psychological Science, June 8, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1177/21677026211018194

Abstract: Dissociative amnesia, defined as an inability to remember important autobiographical experiences, usually of a stressful nature, is a controversial phenomenon. We systematically reviewed 128 case studies of dissociative amnesia reported in 60 articles that appeared in peer-reviewed journals in English over the past 20 years (2000–2020). Our aim was to examine to what extent these cases met core features of dissociative amnesia. All cases were about reports of autobiographical memory loss, but the evidence offered in support of a dissociative amnesia interpretation was often weak and plagued by an ambiguous heterogeneity with respect to nature, etiology, and differential diagnoses of alleged memory loss. Most case studies failed to rule out plausible alternative explanations of dissociative amnesia, such as ordinary forgetting and malingering. We encourage clinicians and researchers to more critically investigate alleged cases of dissociative amnesia and provide criteria for how a dissociative amnesia case ideally would look like.

Keywords: dissociative amnesia, organic amnesia, trauma, ordinary forgetting, malingering

COVID-19 in 18 countries, 6 languages: We observed an early strong upsurge of anxiety-related terms, which was stronger in countries with stronger increases in cases; positive emotions remained relatively stable

Metzler, Hannah, Bernard Rimé, Max Pellert, Thomas Niederkrotenthaler, Anna Di Natale, and David Garcia. 2021. “Collective Emotions During the COVID-19 Outbreak.” PsyArXiv. June 8. doi:10.31234/osf.io/qejxv

Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed the world's population to sudden challenges that elicited strong emotional reactions. Although investigations of responses to tragic one-off events exist, studies on the evolution of collective emotions during a pandemic are missing. We analyzed the digital traces of emotional expressions in tweets during five weeks after the start of outbreaks in 18 countries and six different languages. We observed an early strong upsurge of anxiety-related terms in all countries, which was stronger in countries with stronger increases in cases. Sadness terms rose and anger terms decreased around two weeks later, as social distancing measures were implemented. Positive emotions remained relatively stable. All emotions changed together with an increase in the stringency of measures during certain weeks of the outbreak. Our results show some of the most enduring changes in emotional expression observed in long periods of social media data. Words that frequently occurred in tweets suggest a shift in topics of conversation across all emotions, from political ones in 2019, to pandemic related issues during the outbreak, including everyday life changes, other people, and health. This kind of time-sensitive analyses of large-scale samples of emotional expression have the potential to inform mental health support and risk communication.

The absence of pessimism was more strongly related to positive health outcomes than was the presence of optimism

Scheier, M. F., Swanson, J. D., Barlow, M. A., Greenhouse, J. B., Wrosch, C., & Tindle, H. A. (2021). Optimism versus pessimism as predictors of physical health: A comprehensive reanalysis of dispositional optimism research. American Psychologist, 76(3), 529–548. Jun 2021. https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000666

Abstract: Prior research has related dispositional optimism to physical health. Traditionally, dispositional optimism is treated as a bipolar construct, anchored at one end by optimism and the other by pessimism. Optimism and pessimism, however, may not be diametrically opposed, but rather may reflect 2 independent, but related dimensions. This article reports a reanalysis of data from previously published studies on dispositional optimism. The reanalysis was designed to evaluate whether the presence of optimism or the absence of pessimism predicted positive physical health more strongly. Relevant literatures were screened for studies relating dispositional optimism to physical health. Authors of relevant studies were asked to join a consortium, the purpose of which was to reanalyze previously published data sets separating optimism and pessimism into distinguishable components. Ultimately, data were received from 61 separate samples (N = 221,133). Meta-analytic analysis of data in which optimism and pessimism were combined into an overall index (the typical procedure) revealed a significant positive association with an aggregated measure of physical health outcomes (r = .026, p < .001), as did meta-analytic analyses with the absence of pessimism (r = .029, p < .001) and the presence of optimism (r = .011, p < .018) separately. The effect size for pessimism was significantly larger than the effect size for optimism (Z = −2.403, p < .02). Thus, the absence of pessimism was more strongly related to positive health outcomes than was the presence of optimism. Implications of the findings for future research and clinical interventions are discussed.

Discussion

The results of the present reanalyses confirm the findings from earlier quantitative and qualitative reviews. The presence of optimism combined with the absence of pessimism (as assessed by the overall/combined scale) is a reliable predictor of physical health. This was true for an analysis that pooled all of the outcomes together and also true for the majority of analyses that examined subgroups of outcomes separately. This replication of prior findings is noteworthy inasmuch as over 80 percent of the studies included in the present reanalyses were not included in the previous meta-analysis (Rasmussen et al., 2009). The novel findings concern the relative strength of optimism and pessimism in contributing to associations with health. Although each was a significant predictor of physical health, the Optimism, Pessimism, and Health 19 effect sizes associated with the absence of pessimism were generally greater in size than those associated with the presence of optimism. The magnitude of these differences was great enough to be significantly different for the analysis aggregating across outcomes, as well as for several of the analyses that investigated subgroups of outcomes separately. Adjustment of the findings for publication bias did little to alter the basic nature of the primary findings. Moderator analyses were conducted on the effect sizes from the overall/combined scale, as well as the two subscales. These analyses failed to identify any significant moderator. It is of interest that there were no significant differences in effect sizes as a function of the type of study employed. Cross-sectional studies are open to a number of methodological criticisms, most notably the issue of reverse causality. Longitudinal studies examine associations across time, but without provisions for equating the health of participants at baseline. As such, longitudinal studies are subject to many of the same criticisms as are cross-sectional studies. Prospective studies provide the gold standard, in that they offer an assessment of the change in the outcome variable overtime (or otherwise start with participants who can be assumed to be equivalent in health at baseline). Given these considerations, it is especially striking that the moderator analyses revealed that study design did not significantly impact the magnitude of the effect sizes that were obtained. The foregoing discussion speaks to the statistical reliability of the effects that emerged. A few words also need to be said about the magnitude of the effects that emerged. The effects sizes reported here appear small. Several considerations should be borne in mind, however, when evaluating the effect sizes obtained. First, as just noted, the effect sizes reported are adjusted for a host of factors, including those related to demographics, study design, and other confounding psychosocial factors. Thus, the effect sizes reported are unique to optimism and pessimism. It is not surprising that the effect sizes are somewhat small, especially so inasmuch as shared variance with related psychosocial factors had been removed. The second point to make is that statistical effects, even small ones, can be quite meaningful when applied to large numbers of people. Take for example, the effect size Optimism, Pessimism, and Health 20 characterizing the association between the pessimism subscale and mortality. The corresponding adjusted odds ratio for this effect in the present reanalysis is 1.074 [95% CI (1.024, 1.126)]. In terms of the number of people who lived and died in the United States in 2016 (the year the most recent study in these reanalyses was published), this odds ratio implies that a 1-point change in the pessimism direction of the pessimism subscale corresponds to an increase in 97,914 deaths from all causes [95% CI (32,540, 162,641)]. Finally, it is worth mentioning that the size of the effects obtained using the present metaanalytic techniques are quite comparable to effects reported in other meta-analyses of psychosocial factors and physical health when the studies are put on this same metric [see, e.g., Richardson et al. (2012) for a meta-analysis of perceived stress and incident coronary heart disease and Kivimäki et al., 2012 for a meta-analysis of job strain and coronary heart disease]. Taken together, these considerations suggest that from a public health standpoint the magnitude of the effects obtained in the present analysis are nontrivial and quite comparable to other findings in the literature. The present set of reanalyses has several potential limitations that should be highlighted. First, search terms for the present analysis relied heavily on the framework used by Rasmussen et al. (2009). The scheme used here is only one of many that could be adopted. Different search terms could yield a different corpus of studies, and the findings obtained using those different studies could be somewhat different. Second, the yield rate for relevant studies was 32%. It is difficult to evaluate this yield rate compared to other meta-analytic studies. This is the case because the data required for the present study could not be extracted from published studies. Rather, the analysis was contingent on authors of those published studies reanalyzing their data and forwarding on the results of those re-analyses. It is likely that this extra requirement lowered the yield rate to some extent. The third limitation concerns the homogeneous nature of the gender and racial composition of the participants. Although these factors differed somewhat from study to study, over 90% of the overall sample were white and women. Additionally, over 90% of the studies were conducted Optimism, Pessimism, and Health 21 in the United States. More studies are clearly needed to determine if the effects reported here are replicable in more diverse populations. Fourth, the conduct of the present research was a group effort. The analyses could not have been done if consortium members had not conducted the needed analyses and forwarded their findings to the primary authors for further meta-analytic processing. On the positive side, the project represents one of the best examples of collaborative science in the truest sense of the term. On the negative side, the more people involved, the more potential there is for error. This concern is mitigated by the fact that the researchers involved had already published peer reviewed papers with these same data, and as such had already demonstrated significant capability with these analyses. Finally, the outcomes examined in the present study all involved physical health. It is unclear if similar findings would obtain if mental health outcomes were examined. Perhaps optimism and pessimism would be equally robust as predictors of psychological well-being. Perhaps optimism would be stronger. It is important not to extrapolate the findings obtained with the present set of outcomes to possible findings involving other outcomes. Future research on psychological well-being should report results for the optimism and pessimism subscales separately, in order to evaluate the relative strength of the two dimensions in predicting outcomes in that domain. There is a more nuanced point to be made here than simply to acknowledge that the differential impact of optimism and pessimism on psychological well-being needs to be explored. That is, stress has been identified as one potentially important factor that might mediate the impact of optimism (and pessimism) on physical health (Scheier & Carver, 2018). How? The idea is that stress (and stress-related emotions) might modulate downstream biological systems that underlie health and disease. Optimists cope with and psychologically react to adversity in a different way than do pessimists (Segerstrom et al., 2017). It would be interesting to see within this context if the presence or absence of optimism and the presence or absence of pessimism relate differentially Optimism, Pessimism, and Health 22 to the various emotions that arise in reaction to stressful circumstances. It would further be interesting to see if these potentially different emotions (that characterize the reactions of optimists and pessimists to stress) might themselves be more or less strongly related to physical health outcomes. Answering questions such as these could further in a significant way our understanding of why it might be that the absence of pessimism is more strongly related to physical health outcomes than is the presence of optimism. Limitations aside, the present findings have at least three implications. First, future research should, as a matter of course, provide effect size information for the overall/combined scale and the two subscales separately—a suggestion that has been made previously (Scheier et al., 1994). Such a practice is even more important now that quantitative data exist documenting the differential associations of the two subscales with physical health. With the complete complement of effect sizes reported, future research could continue to evaluate the importance of the separate contributions of optimism versus pessimism without the need to establish consortiums. The present findings also hold important implications for positive psychology (Peterson & Park, 2003; Seligman & Csikszentmihalyi, 2000). Positive psychology emphasizes those characteristics that enable people to experience full, industrious, and resilient lives. As such, it stands in contrast to traditional views that tend to focus on negative attributes, such as depression, anxiety, and other characteristics which undermine successful living. Dispositional optimism is often described as a good example of a variable falling within the positive psychology domain (e.g., Dunn, 2018). As the present data make clear, however, the presence of optimism does not provide the whole story. Optimism is important, but it does not appear to be as important as the absence of pessimism in predicting physical health. In the future, researchers in positive psychology might benefit from taking these findings into account when planning and conducting research. Researchers should examine more closely the predictor variables they are using to see if negative and positive characteristics might be intermingled in the measures employed. If so, an effort should be made to tease apart the positive Optimism, Pessimism, and Health 23 and negative components of the measures to determine what is in fact responsible for doing the predicting. Ultimately, it may turn out that it is the positive aspects of the measures that are important, but it also possible that the negative features are the ones driving the observed associations. Only by explicitly evaluating these possibilities will we know for sure. The final implication concerns interventions. Future efforts to design and adapt interventions to promote better health should keep in mind the differential links between optimism, pessimism, and physical health. In this regard, it is interesting that some cognitive behavior therapies seem to put a greater emphasis on lessening pessimism than they do on promoting optimism. One example of such an intervention concerns cognitive restructuring (Leahy & Rego, 2012), in which participants are trained to challenge the automatic thoughts, beliefs, and expectancies underlying negative feelings. Participants confront their automatic, negative thinking by systematically, and explicitly monitoring their moods and assessing in a more objective fashion the information in the ongoing context that either supports or challenges their negative thoughts. Perhaps existing interventions that focus more on lessening pessimism such as those involving cognitive restructuring will be more successful in promoting better health than will those that place a greater weight on promoting optimism, or even those that place an equal weight on both components. Note that it is not a matter of causing harm, but more a matter of targeting the component that offers the most gain. It is also possible, however, that things are more complicated. Perhaps what works best will depend on the nature of the outcome of interest (e.g., health behaviors versus biological pathways). Intervention efforts with respect to optimism, pessimism, and physical health are still in their infancy. As research in the intervention domain continues to evolve, it would seem prudent to keep the distinction between optimism and pessimism in mind. Doing so may prove profitable both practically and theoretically.

Canadians who feel disgust towards sitting on the toilet seat of a public bathroom are in general more socially conservative, tend to vote for conservatives, & favor conservative policies on issues like gay rights & immigration

The political phenotype of the disgust sensitive: Correlates of a new abbreviated measure of disgust sensitivity. Patrick Fourniera, Michael Bang Petersen, Stuart Sorok. Electoral Studies, Volume 72, August 2021, 102347. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.electstud.2021.102347

Abstract: The fields of political psychology and election studies often live separate lives. One reason has been the difficulty of including long psychological question batteries in the high-quality, representative samples that are the hallmark of election studies. In this study, we examine a novel one-item measure of psychological differences in sensitivity to one particular emotion: disgust. We demonstrate that disgust sensitivity serves as a foundational political difference that colors a very large range of social and political attitudes and behaviors: including ideology, political engagement, reactions towards outgroups, support for government intervention, behavior during a pandemic, and vote choice.

Keywords: Disgust sensitivityElection studyIdeologyVote choicePolicy attitudesGroup ratings