Moral dilemmas and trust in leaders during a global health crisis

Moral dilemmas and trust in leaders during a global health crisis. Jim A. C. Everett et al. Nature Human Behaviour, Jul 1 2021. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-021-01156-y

Abstract: Trust in leaders is central to citizen compliance with public policies. One potential determinant of trust is how leaders resolve conflicts between utilitarian and non-utilitarian ethical principles in moral dilemmas. Past research suggests that utilitarian responses to dilemmas can both erode and enhance trust in leaders: sacrificing some people to save many others (‘instrumental harm’) reduces trust, while maximizing the welfare of everyone equally (‘impartial beneficence’) may increase trust. In a multi-site experiment spanning 22 countries on six continents, participants (N = 23,929) completed self-report (N = 17,591) and behavioural (N = 12,638) measures of trust in leaders who endorsed utilitarian or non-utilitarian principles in dilemmas concerning the COVID-19 pandemic. Across both the self-report and behavioural measures, endorsement of instrumental harm decreased trust, while endorsement of impartial beneficence increased trust. These results show how support for different ethical principles can impact trust in leaders, and inform effective public communication during times of global crisis.

Discussion

The COVID-19 pandemic has raised a number of moral dilemmas that engender conflicts between utilitarian and non-utilitarian ethical principles. Building on past work on utilitarianism and trust, we tested the hypothesis that endorsement of utilitarian solutions to pandemic dilemmas would impact trust in leaders. Specifically, in line with suggestions from previous work and case studies of public communications during the early stages of the pandemic, we predicted that endorsing instrumental harm would decrease trust in leaders, while endorsing impartial beneficence would increase trust. Experiments conducted during November–December 2020 in 22 countries across six continents (total N = 23,929; valid sample for self-report task 17,591; valid sample for behavioural task 12,638) provided robust support for our hypothesis. In the context of five realistic pandemic dilemmas, participants reported lower trust in leaders who endorsed instrumental sacrifices for the greater good and higher trust in leaders who advocated for impartially maximizing the welfare of everyone equally. In a behavioural measure of trust, only 28% of participants preferred to vote for a utilitarian leader who endorsed instrumental harm, while 60% voted for an impartially beneficent utilitarian leader. These findings were robust to controlling for a variety of demographic characteristics as well as participants’ own policy preferences regarding the dilemmas. Although we observed some variation in effect sizes across the countries we sampled, the overall pattern of results was highly robust across countries. Our results suggest that endorsing utilitarian approaches to moral dilemmas can both erode and enhance trust in leaders across the globe, depending on the type of utilitarian morality.

We designed our set of dilemmas to rule out several alternative explanations for our findings, such as a general preference for less restrictive leaders (Supplementary Note 7), leaders who treat everyone equally (Supplementary Note 8) and leaders who seek to minimize COVID-19-related deaths (Supplementary Note 9). In addition, all of our results survived planned robustness checks to account for the possibility that local policies related to lockdowns or contact tracing could bias participants’ responses. Post hoc analyses demonstrated that our findings were highly consistent across the different dilemmas for instrumental harm (Lockdown, Tracing and Ventilators) and impartial beneficence (Medicine and PPE).

While the robustness of our findings across countries speaks to their broad cultural generalizability, further work is needed to understand the observed variations in effect sizes across countries. It seems plausible that both economic (for example, gross domestic product or socio-economic inequality) and cultural (for example, social network structure) differences across countries could explain some of the observed variations. One possibility, for example, is that country-level variations in tightness–looseness72, which have been associated with countries’ success in limiting cases in the COVID-19 pandemic73, might moderate the effects of moral arguments on trust in leaders. Another direction for future research could be to explore how country-level social network structure might influence our results. Individuals in countries with a higher kinship index74 and a more family-oriented social network structure, for example, might be less likely to trust utilitarian leaders, especially when the utilitarian solution conflicts with more local moral obligations.

There are several important limitations to the generalizability of our findings. First, although our samples were broadly nationally representative for age and gender (with some exceptions; see Results), we did not assess representativeness of our samples on a number of other factors including education, income and geographic location. Second, while our results do concord with the limited existing research examining the effects of endorsing instrumental harm and impartial beneficence on perceived suitability as a leader37, and held across different examples of our pandemic-specific dilemmas, it of course remains possible that different results would be seen when judging leaders’ responses in other types of crises (for example, violent conflicts, natural disasters or economic crises) or at different stages of a crisis (for example, at the beginning versus later stages). Third, the reported experiments tested how responses to moral dilemmas influenced trust in anonymous, hypothetical political leaders. In the real world, however, people form and update impressions of known leaders with a history of political opinions and behaviours, and it is plausible that inferences of trustworthiness depend not just on a leader’s recent decisions but also on their history of behaviour, just as classic work on impression formation shows that the same information can lead to different impressions depending on prior knowledge about the target person75. Furthermore, we did not specify the gender of the leaders in our experiments (except in the voting task for China and for the Hebrew and Arabic translations, where it is not possible to indicate ‘leader’ without including a gendered pronoun; here it was translated in the masculine form). Past work conducted in the United States suggests that participants may default to an assumption that the leader is a man76, but it will be important for future work to assess whether men and women leaders are judged differentially for their moral decisions. Because women are typically stereotyped as being warmer and more communal than men77, it is plausible that women leaders would face more backlash for making ‘cold’ utilitarian decisions, especially in the domain of instrumental harm. Fourth, because the current work focused on trust in political leaders, it remains unclear how utilitarianism would impact trust in people who occupy other social roles, such as medical workers or ordinary citizens. Fifth, and finally, it could be interesting to explore further the connection between impartial beneficence and intergroup psychology, especially with regards to teasing apart ‘impartiality’ and ‘beneficence’. For example, even holding beneficence constant, a leader who advocates for impartially sharing resources with a rival country may be perceived differently from one who impartially shares with an allied country (and, while speculative, this distinction might explain why Israel was an outlier in impartial beneficence, being a country in a region with ongoing local conflicts).

Our results have clear implications for how leaders’ responses to moral dilemmas can impact how they are trusted. In times of global crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, leaders will necessarily face real, urgent and serious dilemmas. Faced with such dilemmas, decisions have to be made, and our findings suggest that how leaders make these judgements can have important consequences, not just for whether they are trusted on the issue in question but also more generally. Importantly, this will be the case even when the leader has little direct control over the resolution. While a national leader (for example, a president or prime minister) has the power and responsibility to resolve some moral dilemmas with policy decisions, not all political leaders (for example, as in our study, local mayors) have that power. A leader with little ability to directly impact the resolution of a moral dilemma might consider that voicing an opinion on that dilemma could reduce their credibility on other issues that they have more power to control.

To conclude, we investigated how trust in leaders is sensitive to how they resolve conflicts between utilitarian and non-utilitarian ethical principles in moral dilemmas during a global pandemic. Our results provide robust evidence that utilitarian responses to dilemmas can both erode and enhance trust in leaders: advocating for sacrificing some people to save many others (that is, instrumental harm) reduces trust, while arguing that we ought to impartially maximize the welfare of everyone equally (that is, impartial beneficence) increases trust. Our work advances understanding of trust in political leaders and shows that, across a variety of cultures, it depends not just on whether they make moral decisions but also which specific moral principles they endorse.

From an Evolutionary Perspective... Sex Differences in Voyeuristic and Exhibitionistic Interests: Exploring the Mediating Roles of Sociosexuality and Sexual Compulsivity

Sex Differences in Voyeuristic and Exhibitionistic Interests: Exploring the Mediating Roles of Sociosexuality and Sexual Compulsivity from an Evolutionary Perspective. Andrew George Thomas, Bridie Stone, Paul Bennett, Steve Stewart-Williams & Leif Edward Ottesen Kennair. Archives of Sexual Behavior, Jul 6 2021. https://rd.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-021-01991-0

Abstract: Sociosexuality and sexual compulsivity predict sex differences in voyeuristic interest in the population. In this study, we used a sample of 1113 participants from the UK (46% men) to consider whether sociosexuality and sexual compulsivity interacted to explain these sex differences and whether this relationship extended to the related domain of exhibitionism. In doing so, we tested novel predictions derived from an evolutionary perspective which views voyeuristic and exhibitionistic interest as manifestations of a short-term mating strategy. Participants reported their levels of repulsion toward voyeurism and exhibitionism and their interest in performing such acts under different levels of risk. There were clear sex differences in voyeuristic and exhibitionistic repulsion that were partially mediated by the serial combination of sociosexuality and sexual compulsivity. Examining the sexes separately revealed qualitatively different relationships between sociosexuality and sexual compulsivity when predicting exhibitionistic, but not voyeuristic, repulsion. Combined, sociosexuality and sexual compulsivity also mediated the sex difference in willingness to commit acts of voyeurism, but not exhibitionism, which was equally low for both sexes. The results highlight the role sociosexuality plays in voyeuristic and exhibitionistic interest, which coupled with an evolutionary perspective, may have implications for how we view courtship disorders.

Discussion

Our investigation into the role of sociosexuality in voyeuristic and exhibitionistic interest yielded four key findings. (1) There were clear sex differences in voyeuristic and exhibitionistic repulsion within the normal population. (2) These differences were partially mediated by the serial combination of sociosexuality and sexual compulsivity. (3) There were sex-specific relationships between sociosexuality and sexual compulsivity when predicting exhibitionistic repulsion. Finally, (4) the sex differences and mediational role of sociosexuality and sexual compulsivity found for repulsion also applied to willingness to commit acts of voyeurism, but not exhibitionism. We now explore these findings in turn.

Sex Differences in Repulsion within the Normal Population

Most participants reported feelings of repulsion, rather than arousal, when thinking about voyeurism and exhibitionism. Yet, there was still variance among the sample, with some considering these acts either neutral or arousing. These individuals constituted approximately 29.7% and 8.9% of the sample for voyeurism and exhibitionism, respectively. These figures are fairly consistent with literature from other Western cultures (Ahlers et al., 2011; Joyal & Carpentier, 2017) though the proportion was a touch smaller for the latter and larger for the former. Importantly, we also found a sex difference: Men were less repulsed by the idea of voyeurism and exhibitionism, on average, than women were. These differences were large in the case of voyeurism and medium in the case of exhibitionism, which is in line with previous research in other countries (Dawson et al., 2016; Iwawaki & Wilson, 1983; Makanjuola et al., 2008; Oliveira Júnior & Abdo, 2010). When sex differences in mating interests and motivations transcend cultural boundaries and persist across a variety of contexts, this suggests that their development is fairly canalized (Thomas et al., 2020). Thus, it is important to consider what insights evolutionary theory may provide when investigating such differences.

Sociosexuality and Sexual Compulsivity as Partial Mediators

Using mediation analyses, we found that a combination of sociosexuality and sexual compulsivity accounted for a large portion of the sex difference in voyeuristic (31%) and exhibitionistic (56%) repulsion. These findings complement previous research which has demonstrated that paraphilic interests are linked to sociosexuality and are partially mediated by sexual compulsivity (Dawson et al., 2016).

Uniquely, we used a model that specified a serial relationship between sociosexuality and sexual compulsivity, with the former driving the latter. This prediction was grounded in evolutionary thinking (Buss & Schmitt, 1993; Gangestad & Simpson, 2000) that views sociosexuality as a proxy for mating strategy. From this perspective, the long evolutionary history of sexual asymmetry in the reproductive costs and benefits associated with short-term mating has led men to develop a greater interest in it on average. Indeed, the sex difference in sociosexual desire is among one of the largest found in psychology (d = 0.88 in the present study). Thus, one’s sex impacts one’s mating strategy, which in turn leads to the activation of psychological adaptations designed to facilitate that strategy, including increased sexual compulsion and greater arousal at the thought of engaging in spontaneous sexual acts with strangers. Together, these findings have implications for the way we view some courtship disorders. If sex differences in voyeuristic and exhibitionistic interests are a consequence of sex differences in sociosexuality, then men may be better represented among those with extreme versions of such interests (i.e., those with paraphilic disorders) because moderate sex differences in means translate into large sex differences at the extremes (Stewart-Williams & Thomas, 2013a).

An evolutionary approach to this issue also allows us to make predictions about what should influence voyeuristic and exhibitionistic repulsion. For example, if these interests reflect mating strategy, then we would expect them to covary with other factors associated with short-term mating. Thus, an evolutionary account of these phenomena would predict attitudes toward voyeurism to be more relaxed when resources are abundant or in stressful environments where the benefits of paternal investment are lower (Quinlan, 2007; Thomas & Stewart-Williams, 2018). There is also scope to explore the role mating strategy plays in other sex differences, such as responses to visual sexual stimuli. As in the present study, we might expect sociosexuality to mediate this difference and that responses to visual sexual stimuli may moderate interest in voyeuristic or exhibitionistic activity (Rupp & Wallen, 2008).

Of course, a major premise of this study is that sociosexuality is a reliable proxy of short-term mating strategy. This assumption is not unique to our study, and others have used sociosexuality as a proxy for mating effort (e.g., Dawson et al., 2016). We chose the SOI-R as our key measure because it is one of the most widely used and validated measures of the preference for uncommitted sex. Yet, the use of this measure comes with limitations, it forces us to assume that short- and long-term strategies lie on a spectrum rather than being activated separately (Thomas & Stewart-Williams, 2018) and it neglects to measure the time and resources dedicated to mating effort (Albert et al., 2021). Future research could use a wider array of measures to assess whether similar patterns are observed when using different proxies of mating strategy and reproductive success. Other measures of sex drive should also be considered to overcome some of the limitations of the SCS. At its core, the scale captures the extent to which sexual thoughts and behaviors interfere with one’s daily life. While research using the scale demonstrates its usefulness as a measure of individual difference in the general population (e.g., Carvalho et al., 2015; Muise et al., 2013), it is possible that other measures of sex drive would capture more variance. Finally, while we recorded repulsion toward a large array of paraphilia through use of the Paraphilia Scale (Seto et al., 2012), we only sought to explain sex differences in the two for which we had a priori hypotheses. It may be worth considering what evolutionary insights might bring to other paraphilia, unrelated to the early stage of courtship process in the future. Those involving elements of control (e.g., sadism and masochism), for example, may reflect other evolved aspects of our mating psychology such as paternity certainty and mate guarding (Goetz et al., 2008).

Sex-Specific Patterns of Predictors

We expected both voyeuristic and exhibitionistic repulsion to have similar relationships with sociosexuality and sexual compulsion as they share a common root in their spontaneous and opportunistic approach to courtship. Our sex-specific models revealed that sociosexuality was a positive predictor of repulsion for both acts in men and women alike. However, we did find some variation in the role of sexual compulsivity in predicting exhibitionistic repulsion. For men, sociosexuality predicted unique variance in exhibitionistic repulsion even when controlling for sexual compulsivity, while for women sexual compulsivity fully mediated the effect of sociosexuality. Given our theoretical stance that sexual compulsivity is primarily a product of mating strategy rather than the cause, the results can be interpreted as follows: Men with unrestricted sociosexuality find exhibitionism more appealing for reasons that include but are not limited to their increased drive toward sex. Unrestricted women, in contrast, find exhibitionism more appealing because of their increased sexual compulsivity. Together, this suggests that the way in which mating strategy gives rise to exhibitionistic interest may be more nuanced for men than women, possibly reflecting different selection pressures.

From Feelings to Action

When participants actually considered committing acts of voyeurism, they were heavily influenced by the risk of getting caught. However, a sex difference also emerged that reached its peak (d = 0.27) when risk was negligible. This sex by risk interaction was not found in previous studies, likely due to low power (Rye & Meaney, 2007). This effect size indicates that sex differences in voyeuristic interest decrease when moving from repulsion toward anticipated action. When we controlled for sociosexuality and sexual compulsivity, this sex difference disappeared. Thus, while these two variables only partially mediate repulsion, they fully mediate anticipated action. Put another way, the combination of sociosexuality and sexual compulsivity is only one of several explanatory factors of the sex difference in voyeuristic repulsion, but is the key factor when explaining willingness to engage in a voyeuristic act.

The findings for exhibitionism were markedly different. Sex differences at the level of repulsion were not replicated when examining anticipated action. Essentially, there was a large floor effect with both sexes showing considerably less interest in performing an act of exhibitionism. While a small effect of risk was found, there were no sex differences to explain. Previous research has shown sex differences in general paraphilic behavior to be moderated by sexual compulsivity (Bouchard et al., 2017). Our findings highlight the importance of considering paraphilia separately as this relationship may not generalize across all behaviors, even when they fall within similar domains (i.e., courtship).

Interest in exhibitionistic behavior increases (as do sex differences) when the definition is expanded to include more passive behavior, such as performing sexual acts with a partner in locations where a stranger is likely to see (Joyal & Carpentier, 2017) rather than actively exposing oneself to a stranger. Thus, repeating the task using this context might reveal sex differences. If so, this would suggest that willingness to commit these acts depends on the level of involvement as well as risk. Future research may also want to consider more contemporary exhibitionistic behavior—such as sending a digital photograph of one’s genitalia to an opposite sex stranger (an increasingly common practice; Mandau, 2020).

The present study aimed to determine whether there is a relationship between superstition and the placebo effect, and whether this relationship affects human cognition and behaviour

The role of superstition in the placebo effect on memory performance. Sieun An, Viraj Dhiren Malani & Aanchal Setia. Cognitive Processing, Jul 6 2021. https://rd.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10339-021-01025-6

Abstract: Superstitions and the placebo effect have each been found to influence human behaviour. The present study aimed to determine whether there is a relationship between superstition and the placebo effect, and whether this relationship affects human cognition and behaviour. We hypothesized that more superstitious people would be more prone to the placebo effect and that it would improve their performance on cognitive tasks. Results showed that in the placebo condition, more superstitious people memorized more words than less superstitious people. However, in the control condition, less superstitious people memorized more words than more superstitious people. Overall, the findings supported our hypothesis. The findings of the study are important, as they draw a link between the placebo effect and superstition, and further show that these two elements impact human performance in cognitive ability tasks.

The Reasons People Think About Staying and Leaving Their Romantic Relationships: A Mixed-Method Analysis

The Reasons People Think About Staying and Leaving Their Romantic Relationships: A Mixed-Method Analysis. Laura V. Machia, Brian G. Ogolsky. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, November 5, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167220966903

Abstract: Across three studies (total N = 993) with diverse methodologies (i.e., experimental studies, longitudinal in vivo sampling), we found that there are distinct reasons why individuals believe their romantic relationship will become, or did become, less committed, and reasons why individuals believe their relationships will become, or became, more committed. Whereas the strongest endorsed reasons to stay (e.g., satisfaction) are the same as the strongest endorsed reasons to leave (e.g., dissatisfaction), there are many constructs that are more strongly endorsed as either leave reasons (e.g., quality of alternatives) or stay reasons (e.g., love). These reasons are important glimpses into the process that occurs when someone is deciding whether to stay or leave a relationship, and results empirically confirm a core tenet of Interdependence Theory that until now has been only theoretical (i.e., some outcomes contribute more motivation to staying in the current relationship, whereas others contribute more motivation to leaving).

Keywords: romantic relationships, relationship breakup, decision-making, commitment, Interdependence Theory

Are High-Interest Loans Predatory? It is often argued that people might take on too much high-cost debt because they are present focused and/or overoptimistic about how soon they will repay

Are High-Interest Loans Predatory? Theory and Evidence from Payday Lending. Hunt Allcott, Joshua J. Kim, Dmitry Taubinsky & Jonathan Zinman. NBER Working Paper 28799. May 2021. DOI 10.3386/w28799

Abstract: It is often argued that people might take on too much high-cost debt because they are present focused and/or overoptimistic about how soon they will repay. We measure borrowers' present focus and overoptimism using an experiment with a large payday lender. Although the most inexperienced quartile of borrowers underestimate their likelihood of future borrowing, the more experienced three quartiles predict correctly on average. This finding contrasts sharply with priors we elicited from 103 payday lending and behavioral economics experts, who believed that the average borrower would be highly overoptimistic about getting out of debt. Borrowers are willing to pay a significant premium for an experimental incentive to avoid future borrowing, which we show implies that they perceive themselves to be time inconsistent. We use borrowers' predicted behavior and valuation of the experimental incentive to estimate a model of present focus and naivete. We then use the model to study common payday lending regulations. In our model, banning payday loans reduces welfare relative to existing regulation, while limits on repeat borrowing might increase welfare by inducing faster repayment that is more consistent with long-run preferences.

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Critics argue that payday loans are predatory, trapping consumers in cycles of repeated high interest borrowing. A typical payday loan incurs $15 interest per $100 borrowed over two weeks, implying an annual percentage rate (APR) of 391 percent, and more than 80 percent of payday loans nationwide in 2011-2012 were reborrowed within 30 days (CFPB 2016). As a result of these concerns, 18 states now effectively ban payday lending (CFA 2019), and in 2017, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB) finalized a set of nationwide regulations. The CFPB’s then director argued that \the CFPB’s new rule puts a stop to the payday debt traps that have plagued communities across the country. Too often, borrowers who need quick cash end up trapped in loans they can’t afford" (CFPB 2017).

Proponents argue that payday loans serve a critical need: people are willing to pay high interest rates because they very much need credit. For example, Knight (2017) wrote that the CFPB regulation \will significantly reduce consumers’ access to credit at the exact moments they need it most." Under new leadership, the CFPB rescinded part of its 2017 regulation on the grounds that it would reduce credit access.

At the core of this debate is the question of whether borrowers act in their own best interest. If borrowers successfully maximize their utility, then restricting choice reduces welfare. However, if borrowers have self-control problems ("present focus," in the language of Ericson and Laibson 2019), then they may borrow more to finance present consumption than they would like to in the long run. Furthermore, if borrowers are "naive" about their present focus, overoptimistic about their future financial situation, or for some other reason do not anticipate their high likelihood of repeat borrowing, they could underestimate the costs of repaying a loan. In this case, restricting credit access might make borrowers better off.

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We find that on average, people almost fully anticipate their high likelihood of repeat borrowing. The average borrower perceives a 70 percent probability of borrowing in the next eight weeks without the incentive, slightly lower than the Control group’s actual borrowing probability of 74 percent. Experience seems to matter. People who had taken out three or fewer loans from the Lender in the six months before the survey—approximately the bottom experience quartile in our sample—underestimate their future borrowing probability by 20 percentage points. By contrast, more experienced borrowers predict correctly on average

Police department in Washington State where neck restraints were 230 times over the previous eight years: Restraints yielded a lower rate of injury to subjects but a higher rate of injury to officers, & resulted in no subject fatalities

Use of vascular neck restraints in law enforcement: A case-study of Spokane, WA. Matthew J. Hickman, Robert M. Scales, Jared N. Strote &John L. Worrall. Police Practice and Research, Jul 5 2021. https://doi.org/10.1080/15614263.2021.1948849

Abstract: The high-profile deaths of Eric Garner and George Floyd have led to legislative actions banning the use of neck restraints by law enforcement officers. The debates behind these policy changes are important, but they are also entirely lacking in any data on the actual use of neck restraints. We write neither to defend nor condemn the use of neck restraints by law enforcement; rather, we seek to provide information to assist with data-driven decision-making about the technique. We present data from a police department in Washington State where, prior to the May 2021 statewide ban on use of neck restraints, officers had used them quite regularly: 230 times over the previous eight years. Results indicate that neck restraints were typically used when dealing with subjects who were physically non-compliant or actively resisting police were associated with use of other physical tactics (rather than weapons), yielded a lower rate of injury to subjects but a higher rate of injury to officers, and resulted in no subject fatalities.

Keywords: Police use of forcevascular neck restraintvnrlnrchokehold

Attractive individuals had a greater sense of power than their less attractive counterparts and thus exhibited a more effective nonverbal presence, which led to higher managerial ratings of their hirability

Is beauty more than skin deep? Attractiveness, power, and nonverbal presence in evaluations of hirability. Min-Hsuan Tu, Elisabeth K. Gilbert, Joyce E. Bono. Personnel Psychology, June 30 2021, https://doi.org/10.1111/peps.12469

Abstract: It turns out that being good-looking really does pay off: decades of research have shown that attractive individuals are more likely to get ahead in their careers. Although prior research has suggested that bias on the part of evaluators is the source of attractive individuals’ favorable career outcomes, there is also evidence that these individuals may be socialized to behave and perceive themselves differently from others in ways that contribute to their success. Building on socialization research and studies on nonverbal power cues, we examined nonverbal communication in individuals with varying degrees of physical attractiveness. In two experimental studies with data from 300 video interview pitches, we found that attractive individuals had a greater sense of power than their less attractive counterparts and thus exhibited a more effective nonverbal presence, which led to higher managerial ratings of their hirability. However, we also identified a potential means for leveling this gap. Adopting a powerful posture was found to be especially beneficial for individuals rated low in attractiveness, enabling them to achieve the same level of effective nonverbal presence as their highly attractive counterparts naturally displayed. Our research sheds new light on the source of attractive individuals’ success and suggests a possible remedy for individuals who lack an appearance advantage.

Bankers already told us this repeatedly, & we scorned them: Contrary to conventional wisdom, higher capital requirements can create adverse incentives; sometimes it may be optimal to impose lower capital requirements

Limits of stress-test based bank regulation. Tirupam Goel and Isha Agarwal. BIS Working Papers No 953, July 6 2021. https://www.bis.org/publ/work953.htm

Abstract: Supervisory risk assessment tools, such as stress-tests, provide complementary information about bank-specific risk exposures. Recent empirical evidence, however, underscores the potential inaccuracies inherent in such assessments. We develop a model to investigate the regulatory implications of these inaccuracies. In the absence of such tools, the regulator sets the same requirement across banks. Risk assessment tools provide a noisy signal about banks' types, and enable bank specific capital surcharges, which can improve welfare. Yet, a noisy assessment can distort banks' ex ante incentives and lead to riskier banks. The optimal surcharge is zero when assessment accuracy is below a certain threshold, and increases with accuracy otherwise.

Summary

Focus: How should supervisory risk assessments, such as stress tests, inform bank regulation when such assessments provide imprecise signals? What trade-offs do regulators face when redesigning assessments to improve accuracy? Does the disclosure of assessment results improve the effectiveness of capital requirements? We develop a theoretical framework to investigate these questions. A key element of our framework is the impact of assessment accuracy on the future behaviour of banks. This, in turn, is crucial for the design of risk assessments and for subsequent decision-making about capital requirements.

Contribution: This paper strives to fill an apparent gap in the literature. Despite empirical evidence of noisy risk assessments, there is a lack of studies on what this noise implies for the effectiveness of capital requirements. We examine how capital regulation based on potentially inaccurate assessments affects banks' incentives to improve their risk profile, and derive the attendant optimal regulation. Our framework is robust and tractable. This also allows us to study trade-offs faced by regulators when making assessments more accurate and in disclosing results to investors. Moreover, we examine trade-offs involved in choosing optimal capital requirements when bank failure is socially costly.

Findings: Contrary to conventional wisdom, we show that higher capital requirements can create adverse incentives. This can lead to more risky banks when information frictions are present. As such, capital requirements must be less sensitive to assessment results when accuracy is lower. Where the regulator can enhance some aspects of accuracy only by worsening others, it may be optimal to impose lower capital requirements. We find that while disclosure of assessment outcomes can improve market discipline in general, when assessments are less accurate they can amplify risk-taking by banks. This further limits the effectiveness of capital requirements based on assessments. Regulatory trade-offs are aggravated when bank failures are more costly.

Keywords: capital regulation; stress-tests; information asymmetry; adverse incentives; disclosure policy; Covid-19.

JEL classification: G21, G28, C61

All kinds of visual stimuli that could induce an aesthetic experience in the viewer activate the same brain regions, regardless of cultural backgrounds

Neural representations of visual aesthetic experience (VAE): a meta-analysis. Xiyu Feng, Jing Gan, Xiaoqi Huang & Siyang Luo. Culture and Brain, Jul 6 2021. https://rd.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40167-021-00102-z

Abstract: The present study intended to investigate the generic nature of visual aesthetic experience. Researchers have not agreed upon what constitutes visual aesthetic experience, and the present study proposed that visual aesthetic experience is comprised of at least two components: enhanced visual processing and positive emotional and reward experience. We applied a general activation likelihood estimation meta-analysis to 42 functional magnetic resonance imaging experiments described in 37 published studies. The general activation likelihood estimation revealed activation in the left orbitofrontal cortices and bilateral anterior cingulate cortex, which was thought to be related to emotional and reward processes, and activation in the right fusiform gyrus. In addition, a conjunction analysis of passive viewing tasks and tasks with explicit instructions showed activation in the anterior cingulate cortex/orbitofrontal cortex, and contrast analysis revealed stronger activation in the anterior cingulate cortex/orbitofrontal cortex during the passive viewing task without explicit instructions to make aesthetic evaluations, suggesting that stronger emotional experiences occur under such conditions. A conjunction analysis of groups with different cultural backgrounds showed activation in the ventral anterior cingulate cortex/orbitofrontal cortex, suggesting that there are universal cultural components of visual aesthetic experience. Together, our findings complement the existing literature by including all kinds of visual stimuli that could induce an aesthetic experience in the viewer and contributes to our understanding of aesthetics by showing that it involves enhanced visual sensation and positive emotional and reward experience.

Why Do Depressed People Often Have Inaccurate Beliefs?

Cognitive Behavior Therapy for Depression From an Evolutionary Perspective. Steven D. Hollon, Paul W. Andrews and J. Anderson Thomson Jr. Front. Psychiatry, July 5 2021. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyt.2021.667592

Abstract: Evolutionary medicine attempts to solve a problem with which traditional medicine has struggled historically; how do we distinguish between diseased states and “healthy” responses to disease states? Fever and diarrhea represent classic examples of evolved adaptations that increase the likelihood of survival in response to the presence of pathogens in the body. Whereas, the severe mental disorders like psychotic mania or the schizophrenias may involve true “disease” states best treated pharmacologically, most non-psychotic “disorders” that revolve around negative affects like depression or anxiety are likely adaptations that evolved to serve a function that increased inclusive fitness in our ancestral past. What this likely means is that the proximal mechanisms underlying the non-psychotic “disorders” are “species typical” and neither diseases nor disorders. Rather, they are coordinated “whole body” responses that prepare the individual to respond in a maximally functional fashion to the variety of different challenges that our ancestors faced. A case can be made that depression evolved to facilitate a deliberate cognitive style (rumination) in response to complex (often social) problems. What this further suggests is that those interventions that best facilitate the functions that those adaptations evolved to serve (such as rumination) are likely to be preferred over those like medications that simply anesthetize the distress. We consider the mechanisms that evolved to generate depression and the processes utilized in cognitive behavior therapy to facilitate those functions from an adaptationist evolutionary perspective.

Question 9: Why Do Depressed People Often Have Inaccurate Beliefs?

The ARH posits that depression is an adaptation that evolved to facilitate solving complex (often social) problems by virtue of motivating a switch from quick heuristic-driven Type 1 thinking into a more energy-expensive but carefully deliberative Type 2 thinking (rumination) (16). Cognitive theory suggests that depression is in large part a consequence of inaccurate beliefs and maladaptive information processing and that rumination is, at best, a symptom of depression and at worst a maintaining cause. If depression evolved because it motivates efforts to solve complex (often social) problems and rumination (careful deliberation) is the means by which it achieves that goal, how is it that the beliefs that people hold when depressed seem to be incorrect (at least to their therapist). We think that there are several possible resolutions to this conundrum.

Intraspecific Competition Occurs in All Species

First, maladaptive mistakes and failures are an integral part of the human condition. Within every species, individuals compete for scarce resources that are important for survival and reproduction (e.g., food, territories, mates). As a result of that competition, it is inevitable that there are winners and losers. Human beings compete for these resources through situationally dependent cognition and behavior (95). For humans, the social world is incredibly complex and constantly in flux, such that the best strategy often changes from one situation to another. As a result, humans have evolved the cognitive capacity to develop mental models of human nature in order to predict how best to behave and what to expect from others in response. Due to differences in genes and experience, some people will develop mental models that work relatively well, while others will develop mental models that work more poorly. In other words, we do not need to invoke the concept of a mental disorder to understand why people develop inaccurate beliefs about their social world. It is simply a necessary consequence of the fact that humans compete to develop better mental models of human nature, and some people are less successful than others in this competition.

But this perspective also suggests that natural selection might have favored the evolution of psychological mechanisms that adjust mental models when they fail to function properly. Mental models are not necessarily “maladaptive” just because they are inaccurate; they are maladaptive if they lead to losses or failures to achieve the resources that make reproduction possible (e.g., mates, food, status, social support). Thus, we argue that the reason why depression is often associated with failures and losses in important domains (e.g., romantic relationships) is because these events suggest that one's mental models of the social world are not working well and need to be revised through the employment of careful methodical Type 2 thinking.

Evolutionary Mismatch

Second, it is possible that what is going on reflects nothing more than evolutionary mismatch. Evolved adaptations are traits that exist now because they were shaped by selective pressures that operated in the past (96). Modern environments may deviate substantially from ancestral ones. If so, then what was adaptive in the past may not be adaptive in the present. Most people crave foods that taste sweet. That was adaptive in our evolutionary past when the primary source of simple carbohydrates were fruits that were also rich in vitamins but serves us less well with the advent of processed sugars that lead to obesity and tooth decay. Similarly, starvation was a recurring risk in our ancestral past leading to a preference for the kinds of high caloric foods that raise the risk for metabolic syndrome for those members of the species who have access to an ample supply of meats and starches. From an evolutionary perspective, people have evolved to pay undue attention to how they are treated by close relatives (those who share your genes) and especially by their parents. If your parents do not love or invest in you, that does not bode well for your future. Most recurrence-prone patients have stable (albeit latent) self-images at the core of their depressotypic schemas that they are flawed in some fashion (usually unlovable or incompetent) that predate adolescence. In many instances these beliefs stemmed from the belief (accurate or otherwise) that their parents did not value them and in our ancestral past that could prove to be highly problematic. It likely still is true that being valued by one's parents helps one survive one's childhood, but it is less likely that retaining those negative beliefs about oneself into adolescence helps one navigate complex social relationships as adults. Moreover, the “nuclear family” is a rather modern invention. Children raised in hunter-gatherer societies were usually surrounded by “allo (other) mothers” who contribute the care and nurturing of the child. “Parental investment” in our ancestral past was more a matter of “tribal investment” than it is today.

Adaptive Search Strategies Are Imperfect

Natural selection causes a species to incrementally increase its fitness, but it does so without foresight or purpose, and it does not guarantee perfection. As Tooby and Cosmides opined “there is no such thing as an adaptation that can maximize fitness under all possible circumstances” (96). The human eye is a good example. It is one of 40 different kinds of “eyes” that evolved in the animal kingdom to process electromagnetic radiation and it functions to let organisms “see” objects at a distance. The human eye contains a “blind spot” at the back of the retina where the optic nerve exits on its way to the brain. No “intelligent designer” would have “designed” an eye that functioned in that fashion (there is nothing adaptive about having a “blind spot” in the back of one's eye and not all species have one) but natural selection does not double back on itself. If a feature represents an improvement over what came before then it tends to be selected regardless of whether some other solution might have worked better. Search-based optimization techniques are useful and often find a superior solution but that does not guarantee that the optimal solution will be found.

The ARH suggests only that people who are depressed will use a slow deliberate “Type 2” processing style to search for a solution to their problems, not that they will always succeed when they do so. It is quite possible that some will get “stuck” for a period of time at a suboptimal solution. Based on clinical (and personal) experience we suspect that it can be quite useful to carefully examine one's own role when things go wrong since that is the easiest thing to correct in the future, but ascribing blame in the form of a stable trait (unlovable or incompetent) is more likely to keep one “stuck” than focusing on the behaviors that one did (or did not) engage in. Traits are simply harder to correct than actions (20). Clinical experience also suggests that those trait ascriptions are more “conditional” than stable and thus still amenable to change. As previously described, much of what gets done in CBT is focused around getting patients to consider alternative explanations for their problems and to examine the existing evidence for each and to run behavioral experiments to test between those competing beliefs. For example, in the case of the sculptor, it was breaking big tasks down into their component parts and doing them one at a time (graded task assignment) that helped him past his tendency to get so overwhelmed by the magnitude of the task that he did not get started. In effect, gathering evidence and running behavioral experiments allows one to correct misguided assumptions and beliefs (it was not that he was “incompetent” just that he chose the wrong behavioral strategy), and thus correct the residue of unfortunate prior experiences (his belief in his own “incompetence” came from being forced to compete with a younger brother for his father's attention and frequently losing out to a sibling who was more outgoing and more facile). What he learned as a young adolescent was not out-of-line with the competition that he faced and the “failures” he experienced; it just was not all that relevant to the challenges he faced as an adult. That said, depression is needed to motivate one to search for the solution to a problem and without that search there is no solution (21).

Normal Anxiety Can Disrupt Rumination

Getting “unstuck” from a suboptimal solution may involve doing something different than what one has done in the past and for many people that can involve the perception of risk and its attendant affect anxiety. Anxiety often co-occurs with depression [two-thirds of the patients who met criteria for MDD in the DeRubeis and colleagues in the 2005 Penn-Vandy study also met criteria for one or more anxiety “disorder” (69)] but its effect on cognition is different (42).

Whereas, depression leads the individual to ask, “where did I go wrong” and to carefully weigh paths forward, anxiety tends to promote a “better-safe-than-sorry” approach that is often an adaptive response to an imminently dangerous situation (24, 42). Expressing a romantic interest in someone opens one to the risk of rejection and pursing a goal in an achievement domain leaves one at risk for failure, but neither takes one out of the gene pool. Choosing not to act on either does nothing to further the propagation of one's genes.

Earlier we described a teacher who thought that a prior sexual assault as an adolescent undercut her value as a prospective mate and relied on dissimulations and manipulations as compensatory strategies (lying about her past and manipulating romantic partners to get what she wanted) to generate a series of troubled and transitory relationships when in fact it was these interpersonal “safety behaviors” that sabotaged the relationships she formed (20). It was not until she took the chance of leveling with a new romantic partner about what had happened to her in the past (something that took great courage on her part) that she learned that he was not the least concerned about what that meant about her (other than he was sorry that she had been assaulted) and that she could drop the safety behaviors (the lies and manipulations) and simply ask for what she wanted from him in the relationship. Fifteen years she had been stuck on a suboptimal peak because of the anxiety that the thought of full disclosure caused her. The process of climbing down off that suboptimal peak was fraught with a sense of dread that took several months in therapy (and a conversation with a girlfriend and an anonymous survey of “eligible” males) to overcome but the outcome was quite gratifying to her, and she got better (and more comfortable) engaging in self-revelation (as needed) across a series of increasingly satisfying relationships.

Large Fitness Consequences Can Favor Seemingly Unproductive Cognitions

There is nothing so universally depressogenic as the loss of a child. It is not uncommon for parents who have lost a child to ruminate intensely over what they might have done to prevent the child's death even when it seems clear to others (including the therapist) that there was nothing else they could have done. That being said, understanding the causes of a negative event (even one that has already occurred) can be useful in preventing similar negative events in the future (16, 97).

In our ancestral past, women had an average of about six children over their lifetimes of whom several died (98). Effort spent on understanding the causes of one child's death might help prevent the death of another (99, 100). Watching parents engage in self-recriminating rumination might seem cruel, but the fitness costs are so great that natural selection would have favored the expenditure of a great deal of cognitive effort even if it only had a miniscule chance of increasing the odds of survival for the other children. We focused on the loss of a child in this example, but the same principle extends to any situation in which the fitness consequences are great.

As Dawkins describes in his 1976 treatise “The Selfish Gene,” we are but “survival machines” engineered by natural selection to propagate our gene lines at all times even if at our own affective expense (101). An evolutionary perspective would suggest that there is little point in trying to convince grieving parents not to engage in a causal analysis in such a situation (or other patients from grieving in the aftermath of a romantic breakup or the loss of a job) but rather to point out that the brain is designed to explore the possible causes of negative life events on the off chance that such events can be prevented in the future. To ruminate in response to loss or failure is an eminently “species-typical” (human) thing to do. The optimal response in CBT is to label it as an attempt to solve a problem (or prevent a future one) and to help the process along.

Inclusive Fitness Theory

As previously noted, one of the most important insights in evolutionary biology over the last century is that organisms are not designed by natural selection to maximize their own survival or even their own reproductive success but rather to maximize the reproductive success of their gene line (102). This is what Dawkins meant when he labeled us as nothing more than “survival machines” (101). Individuals not only propagate their gene lines through their own reproductive efforts (direct fitness) but also via propagating the reproductive success of their biological relatives (indirect fitness). The sum of direct and indirect fitness is called inclusive fitness (103), and it is this sum that best predicts of what kinds of behaviors organisms engage in because that is what is actually maximized by natural selection (102).

The essence of the idea was captured by the iconic quip by the evolutionary geneticist J. B. S. Haldane who was reported to have said that he would not sacrifice his life for his brother, but he would do so for two brothers or eight cousins (104). This phenomenon is easiest to see in the lives of social insects. Only a small percentage of the individuals actually reproduce (the queen and one or more of the male drones) while the vast majority labor to ensure the propagation of a gene line comprised solely of their biological siblings. This concept is crucial in explaining many important biological events including multicellularity, apoptosis and other forms of programmed cell death, as well as the evolution of social systems characterized by family groups and parenting behavior in humans. Where it intersects especially with clinical concerns has to do with self-sacrifice. No one would question a parent's willingness to sacrifice his or her life for the life of his or her child, but not all would see the same genetic mechanism “baked in” to the suicidal ruminations of a person who is concerned about being a burden to biological relatives.

In not-so-distant times amongst peoples who lived on the edge starvation in northern climes (like the Inuit north of the Arctic circle), it would be considered “de rigueur” for post-reproductive elders to walk out into the snow and not come back if the winters were too long and their grandchildren faced starvation as a consequence (105). Such “altruistic” notions might seem misguided in situations in which starvation is not imminent (suicide is the “gift that keeps on giving” to the survivors) but the psychological mechanism would have been selected for in our ancestral past in a manner wholly in keeping with the concept of inclusive fitness.

Many people who die by suicide believe that their families would be better off without them (106). Most patients entertain at least “passive” suicidal ideation, and over half of all people who die by suicide have a history of depression. Self-sacrificial impulses would be favored by natural selection among those individuals who see themselves as defective or impaired and those with a history of childhood abuse (self-esteem is often based on parent's behavior). People with a history of failed relationships also are at risk even during the reproductive years (107–109).

If some of our readers have a visceral response to the use of the word “adaptive” to describe suicide and other forms of self-destructive behavior, this is an indication that the evolutionary perspective is novel and non-intuitive. Clinicians need to understand the naturalistic fallacy. An ‘is' is not an ‘ought.' Cancer ‘is' a collection of cells that are pursuing their inclusive fitness. It is hardly an “ought,” but intervention ‘is' nevertheless warranted. Moreover, we should not let moral repugnance bias the scientific study of human behavior. Prolicide (killing one's offspring), the killing of conspecifics, and sexual coercion are common throughout the animal kingdom, and humans are no different. We strongly advocate for clinical intervention in situations in which people are engaging in self-destructive behavior as part of the pursuit of indirect fitness interests. We also think that it is likely to help the patient to identify the evolutionary origins of seemingly maladaptive behaviors, such as rumination and suicide. Not all evolved adaptations need to be implemented if they are not consistent with the patient's current interests (most reproductively capable adults practice birth control from time-to-time). Making treatment more efficacious will require differentiating psychological phenomena that result from some malfunction in the brain from those mechanisms that evolved to maximize inclusive fitness. Any effective and efficient treatment must fit an accurate model of human nature and depression.

Brain-computer interface for generating personally attractive images

Brain-computer interface for generating personally attractive images. Michiel M Spapé et al. IEEE Transactions on Affective Computing PP(99):1-1. February 2021. DOI: 10.1109/TAFFC.2021.3059043

Abstract: While we instantaneously recognize a face as attractive, it is much harder to explain what exactly defines personal attraction. This suggests that attraction depends on implicit processing of complex, culturally and individually defined features. Generative adversarial neural networks (GANs), which learn to mimic complex data distributions, can potentially model subjective preferences unconstrained by pre-defined model parameterization. Here, we present generative brain-computer interfaces (GBCI), coupling GANs with brain-computer interfaces. GBCI first presents a selection of images and captures personalized attractiveness reactions toward the images via electroencephalography. These reactions are then used to control a GAN model, finding a representation that matches the features constituting an attractive image for an individual. We conducted an experiment (N=30) to validate GBCI using a face-generating GAN and producing images that are hypothesized to be individually attractive. In double-blind evaluation of the GBCI-produced images against matched controls, we found GBCI yielded highly accurate results. Thus, the use of EEG responses to control a GAN presents a valid tool for interactive information-generation. Furthermore, the GBCI-derived images visually replicated known effects from social neuroscience, suggesting that the individually responsive, generative nature of GBCI provides a powerful, new tool in mapping individual differences and visualizing cognitive-affective processing.

Genetic factors associated with early smoking, early sexual debut and teenage pregnancy are (to some extent) shared; signals are driven by genetics of reproductive biology & externalising; key genes related to FSHB, infertility, spermatid differentiation

Identification of 371 genetic variants for age at first sex and birth linked to externalising behaviour. Melinda C. Mills, Felix C. Tropf, David M. Brazel, Natalie van Zuydam, Ahmad Vaez, eQTLGen Consortium, BIOS Consortium, Human Reproductive Behaviour Consortium, Tune H. Pers, Harold Snieder, John R. B. Perry, Ken K. Ong, Marcel den Hoed, Nicola Barban & Felix R. Day. Nature Human Behaviour, Jul 1 2021. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-021-01135-3

Abstract: Age at first sexual intercourse and age at first birth have implications for health and evolutionary fitness. In this genome-wide association study (age at first sexual intercourse, N = 387,338; age at first birth, N = 542,901), we identify 371 single-nucleotide polymorphisms, 11 sex-specific, with a 5–6% polygenic score prediction. Heritability of age at first birth shifted from 9% [CI = 4–14%] for women born in 1940 to 22% [CI = 19–25%] for those born in 1965. Signals are driven by the genetics of reproductive biology and externalising behaviour, with key genes related to follicle stimulating hormone (FSHB), implantation (ESR1), infertility and spermatid differentiation. Our findings suggest that polycystic ovarian syndrome may lead to later age at first birth, linking with infertility. Late age at first birth is associated with parental longevity and reduced incidence of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Higher childhood socioeconomic circumstances and those in the highest polygenic score decile (90%+) experience markedly later reproductive onset. Results are relevant for improving teenage and late-life health, understanding longevity and guiding experimentation into mechanisms of infertility.