When and Why Does Gossip Increase Prosocial Behavior? When it is accurate rather than inaccurate; when targets are dependent on receivers rather than independent; when it is anticipated rather than actually experienced

When and Why Does Gossip Increase Prosocial Behavior? Annika S. Nieper et al. Current Opinion in Psychology, November 12 2021. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2021.10.009

Highlights

• We review research on the effects of gossip on prosocial behavior.

• Empirical evidence shows that gossip can increase and decrease prosocial behavior.

• Gossip increases prosociality: 1) when it is accurate rather than inaccurate.

• 2) when targets are dependent on receivers rather than independent.

• 3) when it is anticipated rather than actually experienced.

Abstract: Understanding when people behave prosocially is integral to solving many challenges in groups and society. Gossip – the exchange of information about absent others – has been proposed to increase prosocial behavior, but findings are mixed. In this review, we illuminate the relationship between gossip and prosocial behavior, reconcile disparate findings, and suggest new directions for research. Our review reveals that gossip increases prosocial behavior to the degree that 1) it is accurate rather than inaccurate, 2) targets are interdependent with, rather than independent from, gossip receivers, and 3) targets anticipate that they might be gossiped about, rather than actually experience negative gossip. We discuss implications of our reviewed findings for understanding when gossip serves to uphold desirable behavior and when it inadvertently engenders undesirable behavior.

5. Conclusions and suggestions for future research

We reviewed empirical research on the link between gossip and prosocial behavior to illuminate when gossip promotes prosocial behavior and when gossip undermines it. Our review revealed three moderating factors that help to reconcile disparate findings: the accuracy of gossip, the interdependence structure between actors in the gossip triad, and whether gossip is actually experienced versus anticipated. The impact of these factors has so far been examined mostly in isolation. In future studies it would be interesting to investigate their joint impact as well as to identify further boundary conditions of the effects reviewed here. For example, we discussed how actually experiencing, rather than merely anticipating the possibility of, becoming the target of negative gossip lowers feelings of social inclusion in the group and thereby undermines prosocial behavior. Perhaps these effects are moderated by the perceived accuracy of gossip: If targets perceive the gossip about them to contain false information, they might feel that they have been wrongfully punished via gossip [38], which would reduce their prosocial behavior. Conversely, when targets perceive the gossip to be truthful, they might be inclined to attempt to repair their reputation by engaging in prosocial acts.

An additional moderator of the effect of actually experienced versus anticipated gossip might be the dependency on one's group members or the availability of alternative groups that gossip targets can join. If somebody learns that they have been gossiped about negatively by their group members, yet has no alternative groups to join, they may feel compelled to resolve the issues that sparked the gossip and restore their reputation rather than reduce their effort and detach from the group, which may result in targets increasing their prosocial behavior. In contrast, the presence of alternative groups might lead to reduced cooperation with the group in which one became the target of gossip and lead one to exit this group to join another group.

Another factor that might further influence the relationship between gossip and prosocial behavior is the visibility of prosocial behavior. If people want to restore their reputation or think they have been gossiped about negatively, they might be especially likely to decrease prosocial behaviors that are not very visible to others, while still trying to maintain visible prosocial behaviors that have reputational consequences. Future research could investigate such social dynamics to further understanding of how gossip influences prosocial behavior.

Going forward, we see a need for studies on gossip and prosocial behavior that combine experimental rigor with fine-grained analysis of gossip statements as they "naturally" occur. Such studies would allow researchers to examine how gossip senders construct gossip statements within different interdependence structures and provide insights into what elements of gossip statements lead recipients to be influenced by gossip, or rather, to discard it. As discussed earlier, to capture real-life gossip dynamics, researchers should additionally consider including a risk that gossip is transmitted to a relevant person when studying the consequences of gossip for the gossip target.

A final fruitful direction for future research is to examine what happens in situations in which prosocial behavior engendered by (the possibility of) gossip is harmful for society as a whole, for instance because it is unethical [[39], [40], [41]]. For example, in the case of corruption or "partnering in crime", helping another person has damaging effects for the broader collective. In such instances, gossip (or the threat thereof) could have adverse effects for society, because when gossip is present and people are therefore more concerned about their reputation [14,15], they are likely to act more in accordance with perceived social norms [21], potentially increasing prosocial unethical behavior. Furthermore, in terms of partner selection, gossip might enable corrupt people to find corrupt partners (e.g., when the Mafia seeks new members, gossip might inform them that someone is the right fit for their organization). Future research in those directions will help to further understand when gossip increases prosocial behavior and when it has adverse effects.

In closing, we have shown that gossip can but does not always stimulate prosocial behavior. Whether it does depends on gossip accuracy, the interdependence structure of the parties in the gossip triad, and whether gossip is actually experienced versus anticipated. We hope our review and research directions will spark new investigations that will further our understanding of when gossip increases prosocial behavior and when it does not.

We trace the origins of porn hypnosis, both in early cinema’s theorization of the hypnotic screen and also in mid-twentieth-century brainwashing paranoia, examining the ways that the evil hypnotist mythos built up during this period

Hypnosis and pornography: a cultural history. James Mackay & Polina Mackay. Porn Studies, Nov 11 2021. https://doi.org/10.1080/23268743.2021.1978312

Abstract: A major form of porn creativity in the digital age has been the ‘hypno video’: a user-generated film mashing up short clips from various porn sources, accompanied by hypnotic imagery and sound, often designed with the overt intent to alter the viewer’s gender, racial or sexual preferences. These videos are highly popular, judging from view counts, although in most cases their effectiveness as hypnotic inductions is dubious at best. In this article, we discuss the science of hypnosis, and the reasons why ‘reprogramming’ videos are unlikely to have any basis in hypnotic practice. To understand the prevalence of this form, therefore, we trace the deep connections between hypnosis and pornography, showing that the highly subjective practice of hypnosis has consistently been associated with the erotic over at least the last two centuries. We trace the origins of porn hypnosis, both in early cinema’s theorization of the hypnotic screen and also in mid-twentieth-century brainwashing paranoia, examining the ways that the evil hypnotist mythos built up during this period and then became a staple of hardcore cinema. Finally, we discuss the function of hypnosis in porn, and the ways that porn hypnosis enables the viewer to overcome shame.

Keywords: Hypnosispornographymicropornographyshamemind controltransgender

Behavior causes: Phylogeny, natural selection, & genomics (ultimate causes); maturation, sensitive period effects, & routine environmental effects (intermediate); & hormonal/metabolic processes, neural circuitry, and eliciting stimuli (proximate)

Nine Levels of Explanation — A Proposed Expansion of Tinbergen’s Four-Level Framework for Understanding the Causes of Behavior. Melvin Konner. Human Nature, Nov 5 2021. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs12110-021-09414-8

Abstract: Tinbergen’s classic “On Aims and Methods of Ethology” (Zeitschrift für Tierpsychologie, 20, 1963) proposed four levels of explanation of behavior, which he thought would soon apply to humans. This paper discusses the need for multilevel explanation; Huxley and Mayr’s prior models, and others that followed; Tinbergen’s differences with Lorenz on “the innate”; and Mayr’s ultimate/proximate distinction. It synthesizes these approaches with nine levels of explanation in three categories: phylogeny, natural selection, and genomics (ultimate causes); maturation, sensitive period effects, and routine environmental effects (intermediate causes); and hormonal/metabolic processes, neural circuitry, and eliciting stimuli (proximate causes), as a respectful extension of Tinbergen’s levels. The proposed classification supports and builds on Tinbergen’s multilevel model and Mayr’s ultimate/proximate continuum, adding intermediate causes in accord with Tinbergen’s emphasis on ontogeny. It requires no modification of Standard Evolutionary Theory or The Modern Synthesis, but shows that much that critics claim was missing was in fact part of Neo-Darwinian theory (so named by J. Mark Baldwin in The American Naturalist in 1896) all along, notably reciprocal causation in ontogeny, niche construction, cultural evolution, and multilevel selection. Updates of classical examples in ethology are offered at each of the nine levels, including the neuroethological and genomic findings Tinbergen foresaw. Finally, human examples are supplied at each level, fulfilling his hope of human applications as part of the biology of behavior. This broad ethological framework empowers us to explain human behavior—eventually completely—and vindicates the idea of human nature, and of humans as a part of nature.

I review, replicate and extend the analysis from seven econometric papers studying how events that happened to and values held by our ancestors affect their descendants several generations afterwards (intergenerational persistence)

Persistence - A critical review [abridged]. Jaime Sevilla. Nov 10 2021. https://forum.effectivealtruism.org/posts/wWGi4jTNNMhz2pHhJ/persistence-a-critical-review-abridged. Full form: Persistence - A critical review

In short: I review, replicate and extend the analysis from seven econometric papers studying how events that happened to and values held by our ancestors affect their descendants several generations afterwards (intergenerational persistence). I argue that together the papers provide moderate evidence of the existence of long term causal effects mediated by parentage.

Keywords: persistence, cultural persistence, economic history, multiple hypothesis testing, post design power analysis, spatial autocorrelation bias, causality, natural experiments, instrumental variables.

Intergenerational persistence is an important topic for Effective Altruism, because it can help us understand how our actions today can affect many generations after. I undertook this research to help us shed light on whether cultural interventions (like increasing the degree at which present people value truth and cooperation) can be an effective way of affecting the long-term future.

The papers I review are:

• The long term effects of Africa’s slave trades (Nunn, 2008) 
• The slave trade and the origins of mistrust in Africa (Nunn & Wantchekon, 2011)
• On the Origins of Gender Roles: Women and the Plough (Alesina et al., 2013)
• The Church, intensive kinship, and global psychological variation (Schulz et al., 2019)
• Persecution perpetuated: The Medieval Origins of Anti-Semitic Nazi Violence (Voigtländer & Voth, 2012)
• Trade, Institutions, and Ethnic Tolerance: Evidence from South Asia (Jha, 2013)
• Long-term persistence (Guiso et al., 2016)

Highlights:

. I discuss a gold standard for cultural persistence studies, covering how to (1) identify robust long term correlations via regression studies under different sets of controls, (2) identify causal effects via natural experiments and (3) identify whether culture is a significant mediator via children-of-immigrant studies.

.  I find that many of the papers manage to find statistically significant results. A naive aggregation of the estimated correlation effect sizes suggests that future correlational studies might find effects of around β ≈ 0.28 (0.13) standard deviations per standard deviation of exposure variation. That is, future studies in similar topics should expect to find that one standard deviation of variation on an event would predict ~28% of variation in long term outcomes. However it is hard to rule out spurious correlations due to issues such as spatial autocorrelation or outliers.

.  Some of the papers attempt to study causation via natural experiments. While a couple of such papers arguably succeed in identifying a causal effect, we cannot discard that subsequent robustness checks will cast doubt on the results. We need better tools to study long term persistent effects. A naive aggregation of the estimated correlation effect sizes suggests that future causal studies might find effects of around β ≈ 0.11 (0.02) standard deviations per standard deviation of exposure variation. That is, future studies in similar topics should expect to find that one standard deviation of difference on an event would cause ~11% of variation in long term outcomes.

.  I find that children-of-immigrant analysis suggests the possibility of long term persistence of variation mediated by parentage. The authors of the papers tend to explain this persistence in terms of cultural variation, relying mostly on historical accounts as evidence.

.  Whether long term persistence of variation usually stays constant, wanes or increases with time is an open question. Studying better these dynamics of persistence would be critical to understand the very long-term impact of cultural interventions today.

These results suggest the possibility of sustained AI innovation under the Chinese regime: AI innovation entrenches the regime, and the regime’s investment in AI for political control stimulates further frontier innovation

AI-tocracy. Martin Beraja, Andrew Kao, David Y. Yang & Noam Yuchtman. NBER Working Paper 29466, November 2021. DOI 10.3386/w29466

Abstract: Can frontier innovation be sustained under autocracy? We argue that innovation and autocracy can be mutually reinforcing when: (i) the new technology bolsters the autocrat’s power; and (ii) the autocrat’s demand for the technology stimulates further innovation in applications beyond those benefiting it directly. We test for such a mutually reinforcing relationship in the context of facial recognition AI in China. To do so, we gather comprehensive data on AI firms and government procurement contracts, as well as on social unrest across China during the last decade. We first show that autocrats benefit from AI: local unrest leads to greater government procurement of facial recognition AI, and increased AI procurement suppresses subsequent unrest. We then show that AI innovation benefits from autocrats’ suppression of unrest: the contracted AI firms innovate more both for the government and commercial markets. Taken together, these results suggest the possibility of sustained AI innovation under the Chinese regime: AI innovation entrenches the regime, and the regime’s investment in AI for political control stimulates further frontier innovation.

Musical tastes fluctuate throughout the day: "By integrating an artificial neural network with Spotify’s API, we show a general awareness of diurnal preference in playlists"

Diurnal fluctuations in musical preference. Ole Adrian Heggli, Jan Stupacher and Peter Vuust. Royal Society Open Science, November 10 2021. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.210885

Abstract: The rhythm of human life is governed by diurnal cycles, as a result of endogenous circadian processes evolved to maximize biological fitness. Even complex aspects of daily life, such as affective states, exhibit systematic diurnal patterns which in turn influence behaviour. As a result, previous research has identified population-level diurnal patterns in affective preference for music. By analysing audio features from over two billion music streaming events on Spotify, we find that the music people listen to divides into five distinct time blocks corresponding to morning, afternoon, evening, night and late night/early morning. By integrating an artificial neural network with Spotify's API, we show a general awareness of diurnal preference in playlists, which is not present to the same extent for individual tracks. Our results demonstrate how music intertwines with our daily lives and highlight how even something as individual as musical preference is influenced by underlying diurnal patterns.

Statement of relevance: Today, most music listening happens on online streaming services allowing us to listen to what we want when we want it. By analysing audio features from over two billion music streaming events, we find that the music people listen to can be divided into five different time blocks corresponding to morning, afternoon, evening, night and late night/early morning. These blocks follow the same order throughout the week, but differ in length and starting time when comparing workdays and weekends. This study provides an extremely robust and detailed understanding of our daily listening habits. It illustrates how circadian rhythms and 7-day cycles of Western life influence fluctuations in musical preference on an individual as well as population level.

3. Discussion

In this work, we have shown that the rhythms of daily life are accompanied by fluctuations in musical preference. We show that the diurnal patterns of audio features in music can be treated as five distinct subdivisions of the day, with the musically meaningful distinction between them found in the range and distribution of the musical audio features. Our follow-up studies indicate that individuals hold a general awareness and agreement of diurnal musical preference in playlists consisting of multiple tracks, but that single tracks do not necessarily elicit the same diurnal associations. Taken together, this points to the circadian rhythms governing life being reflected in the highly individualized and often subjective preference for music.

The next step in this line of research would be to examine the degree to which the diurnal patterns documented herein reflect universal psychological phenomena in music perception. As previously discussed, some types of music often occur at a specific time of the day and often with a clear link to activities, with perhaps lullabies being a prime example. As lullabies are intended to ease falling asleep, they tend to occur at night and have been found to have partly universal features such as reduced tempo [40–42]. If similar time-dependent songs could be collected into a database, it would then be highly interesting to investigate if the audio features of such songs match up with the features that drive the time-of-day preferences uncovered herein. Here, the Spotify API's ability to search user-made playlists for name and description is a highly productive approach, as shown in a recent study uncovering a large amount of variation in sleep music [43].

While the diurnal patterns in musical audio features uncovered in this work are robust and consistent with previous research, there are nonetheless limitations to highlight. In particular, our analysis has not addressed demographical and geographical influence on the results. In part, this is due to the lack of both demographical and individual-level information in the MSSD, and due to our data being based on Spotify, biasing the findings towards the population with access to the service. This means that our results are inherently biased towards Western culture, and we are unable to investigate factors such as age and occupation which have previously been found to impact listening behaviour [44,45]. We would encourage future research to work on combining datasets from multiple providers, such as QQ Music, Gaana and Boomplay, to ensure a wider geographical and cultural representation. Collating such datasets would require collaboration with the music streaming industry and work on harmonizing the many approaches to calculating musically meaningful audio features [46,47]. In addition, the audio features may miss out on nuances in high-level understanding of musical behaviour such as the behavioural functions of the music, and aspects of emotional content [48,49].

As a final note, we would highlight that this project has been carried out using open-source software and publicly available data, with all analysis and programming performed on laptop computers, and that the data collection processes in this work were undertaken without incurring any direct costs. This shows how the availability of digital traces from online activity can be used to investigate human behaviour by scientists both affiliated and independent alike [50].

Microbiome differences in autism spectrum disorder may reflect dietary preferences that relate to diagnostic features, and we caution against claims that the microbiome has a driving role in ASD

Autism-related dietary preferences mediate autism-gut microbiome associations. Chloe X. Yap et al. Cell, Nov 11 2021. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cell.2021.10.015

Highlights

• Limited autism-microbiome associations from stool metagenomics of n = 247 children

• Romboutsia timonensis was the only taxa associated with autism diagnosis

• Autistic traits such as restricted interests are associated with less-diverse diet

• Less-diverse diet, in turn, is associated with lower microbiome alpha-diversity

Summary: There is increasing interest in the potential contribution of the gut microbiome to autism spectrum disorder (ASD). However, previous studies have been underpowered and have not been designed to address potential confounding factors in a comprehensive way. We performed a large autism stool metagenomics study (n = 247) based on participants from the Australian Autism Biobank and the Queensland Twin Adolescent Brain project. We found negligible direct associations between ASD diagnosis and the gut microbiome. Instead, our data support a model whereby ASD-related restricted interests are associated with less-diverse diet, and in turn reduced microbial taxonomic diversity and looser stool consistency. In contrast to ASD diagnosis, our dataset was well powered to detect microbiome associations with traits such as age, dietary intake, and stool consistency. Overall, microbiome differences in ASD may reflect dietary preferences that relate to diagnostic features, and we caution against claims that the microbiome has a driving role in ASD.

Discussion

In this large ASD stool metagenomics study in which confounders were carefully considered, we found negligible evidence for direct associations between the stool microbiome and ASD diagnostic status, which was also the case for other neurodevelopmental traits (e.g., IQ-DQ, sleep problems). For ASD, there was limited evidence for associations with taxonomic diversity or microbiome-association index (b2; Figure 2), and only one differentially abundant species was robustly identified (Figure 3). These results were striking when compared to strong associations of microbiome composition with age, diet, and stool consistency (Figure 2). Importantly, we failed to replicate previously reported ASD-microbiome associations from human studies. Instead, we found evidence linking behaviors associated with the autism spectrum (e.g., repetitive-restricted behaviors or interests, sensory preferences, and social affect) to reduced dietary diversity, which, in turn, was associated with reduced microbiome diversity and looser stool consistency (Figure 4J). This putative model challenges suggestions from animal studies that the microbiome may be causally related to ASD-related traits (

Buffington et al., 2016

; 

Hsiao et al., 2013

; 

Sharon et al., 2019

). Our findings also stand at odds to the proliferation of experimental interventions and early clinical trials that propose to “treat” ASD by targeting the microbiome (

Kang et al., 2019

; 

Kang et al., 2017

).

In contrast to measures of microbiome composition, ASD was robustly and significantly linked to dietary variables, irrespective of covariates (Table S3). We found (1) that significant variance in ASD diagnosis was associated with diet but not the microbiome in the b2 analysis (Figure 2), (2) reduced meat intake in the ASD group (Figure S5), and (3) reduced dietary diversity in the ASD group despite significantly higher variance in dietary diversity (Figure 4A), which is consistent with the dietetics literature (

Panossian et al., 2020

; 

Schreck and Williams, 2006

) and some smaller ASD microbiome studies with dietary data (

Berding and Donovan, 2018

).

One rationale for the interest in the ASD microbiome is the frequent co-occurrence of gastrointestinal complaints (

Chaidez et al., 2014

; 

Kohane et al., 2012

; 

McElhanon et al., 2014

). In the absence of complete gastrointestinal complaint reporting, we analyzed stool consistency scores, with the caveat that it is unclear how this single-time point data reflects chronic conditions. Stool consistency appeared to be more proximal to taxonomic than dietary diversity, although we acknowledge that it is difficult to distinguish between a top-down (i.e., dietary and taxonomic diversity influencing downstream stool consistency) versus bottom-up (i.e., stool consistency being an upstream proxy) relationship. For the former, dietary restrictedness could plausibly affect gut ecology and taxonomic diversity, which in turn affects stool consistency. In relation to a bottom-up model, looser stool may indicate underlying food allergies or intolerances, which may be associated with deliberate (parental) dietary restriction to identify causative agents. Additionally, looser stool consistency reflects reduced gastrointestinal transit time and reduced colonic water reuptake (

Vandeputte et al., 2016

), which affects taxonomic diversity. As the narrow-sense heritability of gastrointestinal conditions that affect stool consistency (e.g., irritable bowel syndrome) are small (

Wu et al., 2021

), environmental contributions likely predominate over genetics (

Rothschild et al., 2018

).

Our results have important implications for understanding the role of the gut microbiome in ASD and other psychiatric traits. First, in relation to medical care, food selectivity among children on the autism spectrum is an important clinical concern. Food selectivity is related to avoidant/restrictive food intake disorder (ARFID; which is likely underdiagnosed despite affecting over 20% of autistic children [

Koomar et al., 2021

]) and can cause nutritional deficiencies among autistic children (

Zimmer et al., 2012

) to the extent that hospitalization and invasive measures such as enteral feeding are required (

Tang et al., 2011

). Our results also suggest that dietary quality is poorer in children on the spectrum (Methods S1). Given that elevated microbial diversity is robustly associated with improved health outcomes (

Valdes et al., 2018

), the association of ASD with poorer dietary quality and reduced dietary and taxonomic diversity underlines the importance of dietary and nutritional interventions in this population. Second, our results have implications for the interpretation of cause and effect in relation to diet in microbiome analyses in psychiatric conditions. There is growing interest in the contribution of diet and the microbiome to psychiatric traits (e.g., depression [

Dash et al., 2015

; 

Molendijk et al., 2018

]), but our results emphasize the need to consider the (arguably more intuitive) impact of behavior on the microbiome (

Jacka et al., 2015

). These results add to other reports of diet driving microbiome associations with health (

Claesson et al., 2012

).

For future microbiome studies, we emphasize the importance of collecting detailed dietary data (recent examples [

Asnicar et al., 2021

; 

Wang et al., 2021

]), particularly for ASD and other neuropsychiatric traits with plausible co-variation of diet with diagnosis or treatment. We advocate for larger sample sizes to ensure that results are robust to sampling effects and to identify subtler microbiome associations. We also recommend higher-resolution metagenomics technology and expanded databases since more granular taxonomic measures of microbiome composition were more sensitive (Table S1), gene-level ORMs explained more variance for some traits (Table S1), power to detect associations was weaker with the MetaPhlAn2/NCBI pipeline (Methods S1), and because taxonomic and functional datasets may capture complementary aspects of the microbiome (Figures S1 and S3).

In conclusion, we found negligible direct associations between ASD and the gut microbiome in contrast to strong associations with other phenotypes such as age, dietary variables, and stool consistency. Instead, we find evidence that restricted dietary diversity and poorer quality—which is associated with specific ASD features such as restrictive-repetitive behaviors—is a significant mediator of taxonomic diversity, and in turn, stool consistency. Our results are consistent with an upstream role for ASD-related behaviors and dietary preferences on the gut microbiome and are contrary to claims of the microbiome having a major (or causal) role in ASD.

 Limitations of the study

First, this study did not have a longitudinal design, so we cannot rule out microbiome contributions prior to ASD diagnosis. Second, although this is to our knowledge the largest metagenomics study of the ASD stool microbiome to date, there may nonetheless be sampling biases that require larger studies to overcome (

Rothschild et al., 2020

). Third, this study used stool samples as a gut microbiome proxy, which may not accurately represent the more difficult-to-access mucosal microbiome (

Shanahan et al., 2016

). Fourth, data on antibiotic intake in this cohort were not systematically collected and so could not be rigorously accounted for other than through exclusion in sensitivity analyses. Fifth, the gold-standard differential abundance analysis relied on per-feature tests that do not reflect the interactions and non-independence that occurs within an ecological or metabolic context. Finally, we await the emergence of datasets with comparable study design, consideration of confounders, and depth of phenotypic and metagenomics data for replication of these results.

Individuals with higher self-esteem had more lifelike and accurate images of themselves in their mind's eye

The Self in the Mind’s Eye: Revealing How We Truly See Ourselves Through Reverse Correlation. Lara Maister et al. Psychological Science, November 11, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1177/09567976211018618

Abstract: Is there a way to visually depict the image people “see” of themselves in their minds’ eyes? And if so, what can these mental images tell us about ourselves? We used a computational reverse-correlation technique to explore individuals’ mental “self-portraits” of their faces and body shapes in an unbiased, data-driven way (total N = 116 adults). Self-portraits were similar to individuals’ real faces but, importantly, also contained clues to each person’s self-reported personality traits, which were reliably detected by external observers. Furthermore, people with higher social self-esteem produced more true-to-life self-portraits. Unlike face portraits, body portraits had negligible relationships with individuals’ actual body shape, but as with faces, they were influenced by people’s beliefs and emotions. We show how psychological beliefs and attitudes about oneself bias the perceptual representation of one’s appearance and provide a unique window into the internal mental self-representation—findings that have important implications for mental health and visual culture.

Keywords: self-representation, body, appearance, reverse correlation, personality, self-face, open data

Discussion

We investigated how we see ourselves in our mind’s eye by creating visual images of individual participants’ mental representations of both their faces and their body shapes in a data-driven, unconstrained way, minimizing participant biases and experimenter assumptions. This technique produced rich, holistic, and multidimensional visual representations of the face and body, which we found not only carried accurate information about physical appearance but also provided novel insights into the way in which participants’ thoughts and feelings about themselves can color their self-image.

We observed clear interactions between the physical and psychological aspects of the self: Self-portraits of both the face and the body were significantly related to higher level, more abstract self-beliefs and attitudes. In Experiment 1, representations of one’s facial appearance were influenced by beliefs regarding one’s personality traits; for example, if a participant believed that they were highly extraverted, they also held an internal representation of their face that had exaggerated stereotypically extraverted facial features compared with their true appearance. In Experiment 2, we demonstrated similar results for perceptual representations of body shape: Participants with negative attitudes toward their bodies also held visual representations of their body’s physical appearance as wider and typical peers as slimmer, compared with participants who had more positive attitudes.

Until now, there has been little investigation of the interaction between physical and psychological selves, and most of the work that has been done has focused on the bottom-up effects of multisensory and sensorimotor contingencies on higher-level psychological self-representations (Preston & Ehrsson, 2014). Our work uniquely focuses on self-representations stored in long-term memory to point to a close, interactive relationship between physical and psychological representations of the self, consistent with an interactive hierarchical model of self-representation (as proposed by Sugiura, 2013). Higher level self-beliefs and attitudes may influence the perceptual quality of the self-portraits (via a top-down modulation during the reconstruction of these images; see Kosslyn, 2005), but conversely, the perceptual features of the physical self-representation might also lead to congruent inferences about one’s self-beliefs and attitudes. Indeed, evidence from studies on social perception supports a bidirectional causal relationship for our representations of others (Dotsch et al., 2008; Todorov et al., 2015); therefore, a similar bidirectional relationship with regard to self-representations may also be likely.

Although the results with regard to the relationship between physical and psychological self-representations were similar for faces and bodies, there were interesting differences. Participants’ representations of their facial appearance were clearly related to their real facial characteristics, showing a significant level of self-specificity. Classification studies, both using human participants and simulated using a face-recognition algorithm, confirmed that identity could be correctly classified from the self-portraits at well-above-chance levels. In contrast, participants’ perceptual representations of their bodies were less related to real body characteristics (e.g., actual body size) and were more strongly influenced by affective attitudes toward the self. This is consistent with previous evidence using single-dimension measures of body parts (Ben-Tovim et al., 1990) and brings into question the wide literature attempting to characterize perceptual body representations in eating disorders in terms of overestimation or underestimation biases (for a review, see Mölbert et al., 2017). However, it will be important to replicate the findings of both experiments using larger samples of more diverse participants before drawing conclusions. The generalizability of the present study may be limited. In Experiment 1, only young Caucasian adults were tested, and therefore it is necessary to follow up with studies using a wider range of ethnicities. Furthermore, in Experiment 2, only young adult women were tested, and their body size may have been relatively homogeneous compared with the general population.

Interestingly, individual differences in objective accuracy of the facial self-portraits were correlated with self-esteem, specifically with regard to social confidence. The higher an individual’s social self-esteem, the more objectively accurate their self-portrait was. This raises interesting considerations regarding the causal role of social interaction in the development and maintenance of self-representations. Social interactions are an important source of information about our appearance, via feedback on our appearance and via social comparisons (Cash et al., 1983). Therefore, individuals with higher social self-esteem may have engaged in more frequent, close social interactions and thus received more social input about their appearance, leading to more accurate self-perception. Alternatively, individuals with more accurate perception of their appearance may also have smoother, more reciprocal, and more predictable social relationships, leading to greater social confidence. For example, having an accurate perception of one’s own attractiveness may lead to more successful romantic interactions and a lower chance of being rebuffed by someone poorly matched (see Le Lec et al., 2017), leading to higher social self-esteem. Both of these potential explanations appeal to a long-term relationship between self-esteem and the development of an accurate self-face representation. However, it is important to note that in our study, we assessed state self-esteem rather than trait self-esteem. Although it is likely that state and trait self-esteem measures are highly correlated (e.g., see Heatherton & Polivy, 1991), future research may explore whether this finding holds for more stable aspects of self-esteem.

Our results are consistent with the findings of a very recent study, which also used the reverse-correlation technique to create visual self-face representations (Moon et al., 2020). In this study, links were found between the valence of the self-face representations generated, as rated by external observers, and various self-reported traits. Self-esteem, explicit self-evaluation, and extraversion were found to be linked to more positive or pleasant-appearing self-portraits, and social anxiety was related to more negative or unpleasant-appearing self-portraits. The authors concluded that the valence of self-face representations created in this manner was able to reflect the attitude toward self. In the present study, consistent with Moon et al.’s findings, our results also showed a significant association between self-reported psychological traits and the physical features of the self-face representation. However, our results further refine our understanding of this relationship by demonstrating that self-reported personality traits were not merely linked with the perceptual valence of self-face representations, as in Moon et al.’s study, but that individual personality traits were linked to specific facial configurations in the self-portraits that were recognizable as such by independent raters.

Our study further extends existing knowledge in several key ways. First, although Moon et al. (2020) measured participants’ perceptions of self-similarity with their own self-portraits, no work has yet been done to explore the actual accuracy of self-representations or to provide a well-controlled, unbiased assessment of their links to self-beliefs and attitudes. Here, we confirmed the validity of the reverse-correlation method in self-face representation research, demonstrating that the resulting images contain enough visual information to support recognition using subjective ratings from an independent sample of raters as well as objectively using simulated experiments implementing a face-recognition algorithm. Furthermore, when exploring whether these self-face representations are influenced by higher level self-processing, we controlled for real facial features, which is crucial to avoid confounds and to provide a valid, strict test of our hypothesis. Finally, we extended our investigation to consider not only face representations but also body shapes, which enriched and generalized our findings to lend support to a broader mechanism whereby beliefs and attitudes influence perceptual body representations.

In this study, we used a combination of objective, algorithm-based techniques and subjective personality ratings from human observers to analyze both the self-portraits and real photographs. It is possible that the human ratings of the real photographs may have been informed by superficial features of the faces, such as makeup, facial hair, and grooming habits, despite the participants providing the ratings being instructed to ignore such features. However, it is important to note that the effects of this potential source of information could not explain the key results reported here. Such effects would serve only to increase the correlation found between the personality ratings of participants’ real faces and their self-reported personalities. Importantly, it could not alter the relationship between the personality ratings of the self-portraits and the self-reported personality ratings, which is key for our hypothesis, because superficial features such as facial hair and makeup were not represented in the reverse-correlation images. This issue further reiterates the importance of carefully controlling for participants’ real facial ratings, which we ensured was done in each key analysis.

Both the approach we used to produce the self-portraits and our findings are highly relevant to our understanding of clinical disorders of body image, such as anorexia nervosa and body dysmorphia. Previous studies into these disorders have normally focused on online perception of the body or have used distorted images of the patients’ own bodies as stimuli, which did not allow for unbiased measurement (Smeets et al., 1999). Our approach could be used as a unique, direct method of assessing distortions in visual memory in these patients, allowing us to reveal whether they stem from higher level self-beliefs and attitudes or even a disorder in the link between these attitudes and the physical self-representation. This approach will also allow us to compare the effects of different treatments (e.g., those targeting perceptual distortions and those targeting emotional or cognitive aspects of the disorder) as well as assess the effects of treatment across time.

In conclusion, we present a novel way to visually depict how people see themselves in their mind’s eye and, in doing so, revealed visual clues to people’s deeply held self-beliefs and attitudes. Our mental images of our own appearance are fundamental to our understanding of some of the most severe mental disorders that are clustered under the term of body-image disorders. In addition, at a time when our culture is powered by images at an unprecedented level, and our obsession with our own image is evidenced in our social media use (Storr, 2018), our approach and the novel insights presented here pave the way for future explorations, in a data-driven, unconstrained, and richly detailed way, of how we mentally see ourselves.

Novel projects of scientific & tech innovation: We found causal evidence of a negativity bias, where evaluators lower their scores by more points after seeing scores more critical than their own rather than raise them after seeing more favorable scores

Conservatism Gets Funded? A Field Experiment on the Role of Negative Information in Novel Project Evaluation. Jacqueline N. Lane , Misha Teplitskiy , Gary Gray, Hardeep Ranu, Michael Menietti , Eva Guinan , Karim R. Lakhani. Management Science, Oct 28 2021. https://doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2021.4107

Abstract: The evaluation and selection of novel projects lies at the heart of scientific and technological innovation, and yet there are persistent concerns about bias, such as conservatism. This paper investigates the role that the format of evaluation, specifically information sharing among expert evaluators, plays in generating conservative decisions. We executed two field experiments in two separate grant-funding opportunities at a leading research university, mobilizing 369 evaluators from seven universities to evaluate 97 projects, resulting in 761 proposal-evaluation pairs and more than $250,000 in awards. We exogenously varied the relative valence (positive and negative) of others’ scores and measured how exposures to higher and lower scores affect the focal evaluator’s propensity to change their initial score. We found causal evidence of a negativity bias, where evaluators lower their scores by more points after seeing scores more critical than their own rather than raise them after seeing more favorable scores. Qualitative coding of the evaluators’ justifications for score changes reveals that exposures to lower scores were associated with greater attention to uncovering weaknesses, whereas exposures to neutral or higher scores were associated with increased emphasis on nonevaluation criteria, such as confidence in one’s judgment. The greater power of negative information suggests that information sharing among expert evaluators can lead to more conservative allocation decisions that favor protecting against failure rather than maximizing success.

There is a general gender difference in paraphilic interests, such that men report more interest (and greater engagement) in a variety of paraphilic behaviors

Sex Drive as a Possible Mediator of the Gender Difference in the Prevalence of Paraphilic Interests in a Nonclinical Sample. Enya Levaque, Samantha J. Dawson, Cynthia Wan & Martin L. Lalumière . Archives of Sexual Behavior, Nov 8 2021. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-021-02074-w

Abstract: There is a general gender difference in paraphilic interests, such that men report more interest (and greater engagement) in a variety of paraphilic behaviors. Using a nonclinical sample, Dawson et al. (Sexual Abuse, 28(1):20–45, 2016, https://doi.org/10.1177/1079063214525645) found that the gender difference in paraphilic interests was eliminated when scores on measures of sex drive were used as mediators. However, their measures of sex drive were about more than just sex drive and included a measure of hypersexuality (i.e., distress, perceived lack of control, and problematic consequences of one’s sexuality). This study had two aims: to replicate Dawson et al.’s mediation results (using the same measures and scoring methods), and to discern the effect of sex drive itself (by replacing their measure of hypersexuality with a measure of sex drive). A nonclinical sample of 517 men and 615 women completed an online questionnaire. As expected, men reported less repulsion than women for most paraphilic themes. The gender difference in paraphilic interests was reduced (but not eliminated) both when reproducing Dawson et al.’s analysis and when examining a mediation model focused on sex drive specifically. The same results were obtained when examining the paraphilic interest with the largest gender difference (i.e., voyeurism). A full mediation effect was obtained in an unplanned supplementary analysis using a factor score (derived from eight measures) putatively assessing sex drive. While the main findings are consistent with Dawson et al.’s conclusions that sex drive is a possible mediator, they also suggest that other factors need to be considered to help explain the gender difference in the prevalence of paraphilic interests.

55 cultural groups from 33 nations: Those who saw themselves as more connected to others and those who emphasized commitment to others above self-interest were more likely to endorse the value of looking after the environment

Self-Construals and environmental values in 55 cultures. Hamish Duff et al. Journal of Environmental Psychology, November 7 2021, 101722. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jenvp.2021.101722

Highlights

• Past research has noted similarities between self–other and self–nature relations.

• We report correlations among seven self-construal dimensions and environmental values.

• Cross-cultural findings confirmed reliable interdependence–environmentalism relations.

• Greater connection and commitment to others linked to environmental values.

• Consistency versus variability was the only independent pole with positive correlation.

• Self-reliance versus dependence on others was unrelated to environmental values.

• Other ways of being independent/interdependent showed inconsistent correlations.

Abstract: Environmentalism is influenced by views of the self. In past research, individuals who saw themselves as more interdependently connected to others expressed greater environmental concern than those who saw themselves as more independent from others. Yet, cross-cultural evidence is limited. In this pre-registered study, we tested how seven ways of being interdependent or independent correlated with environmental values among 7279 members of 55 cultural groups from 33 nations. Supporting our predictions, environmental values were strongly associated with several forms of interdependent self-construal, supporting parallels between self–other and self–nature relations. Specifically, two interdependent forms of self-construal showed consistent cross-cultural correlations: those who saw themselves as more connected to others and those who emphasized commitment to others above self-interest were more likely to endorse the value of looking after the environment. Extending previous conceptions, one way of being independent correlated consistently with environmental values: those who saw themselves as consistent across contexts were also more likely to endorse environmental values. Multilevel moderation analysis indicated that commitment to others had stronger correlations with environmental values in nations with greater environmental performance and national development. We conclude that improving social connectedness and cohesion, alongside the protection of natural ecosystems, may be imperative for tackling the global climate crisis.

Keywords: Self-construalEnvironmentalismEnvironmental valuesCross-cultural

Men more highly value same-sex friends who are physically formidable, possess high status, possess wealth, & afford access to potential mates; women more highly value friends who provide emotional support, intimacy, & useful social information

Sex differences in friendship preferences. Keelah E.G. Williams et al. Evolution and Human Behavior, November 10 2021. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2021.09.003

Abstract: Friendships can help us solve a number of challenges, increasing our welfare and fitness. Across evolutionary time, some of the many challenges that friendships helped to solve may have differed between men and women. By considering the specific and potentially distinct recurrent problems men's and women's friendships helped them solve, we can derive predictions about the qualities that would have made men's and women's same-sex friends ideal partners. This logic leads to several predictions about the specific friend preferences that may be differentially prized by men and women. Across three studies (N = 745) with U.S. participants—assessing ideal hypothetical friends, actual friends, and using a paradigm adapted from behavioral economics—we find that men, compared to women, more highly value same-sex friends who are physically formidable, possess high status, possess wealth, and afford access to potential mates. In contrast, women, compared to men, more highly value friends who provide emotional support, intimacy, and useful social information. Findings suggest that the specific friendship qualities men and women preferred differed by sex in ways consistent with a functional account of friendship.

Keywords: FriendshipSex differencesEvolutionary psychologyFriend preferences

Adaptation to incentives: Proposed Child Tax Credit Expansion would lead 1.5 million workers (2.6% of all working parents) to exit the labor force; child poverty would only fall by 22% (instead of estimated 34pct) & deep child poverty would not fall at all

Corinth, Kevin and Meyer, Bruce and Stadnicki, Matthew and Wu, Derek, The Anti-Poverty, Targeting, and Labor Supply Effects of the Proposed Child Tax Credit Expansion (October 7, 2021). University of Chicago, Becker Friedman Institute for Economics Working Paper No. 2021-115. SSRN: http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3938983

Abstract: The proposed change under the American Families Plan (AFP) to the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA) Child Tax Credit (CTC) would increase maximum benefit amounts to $3,000 or $3,600 per child (up from $2,000 per child) and make the full credit available to all low and middle-income families regardless of earnings or income. We estimate the anti-poverty, targeting, and labor supply effects of the expansion by linking survey data with administrative tax and government program data which form part of the Comprehensive Income Dataset (CID). Initially ignoring any behavioral responses, we estimate that the expansion of the CTC would reduce child poverty by 34% and deep child poverty by 39%. The expansion of the CTC would have a larger anti-poverty effect on children than any existing government program, though at a higher cost per child raised above the poverty line than any other means-tested program. Relatedly, the CTC expansion would allocate a smaller share of its total dollars to families at the bottom of the income distribution—as well as families with the lowest levels of long-term income, education, or health—than any existing means-tested program with the exception of housing assistance. We then simulate anti-poverty effects accounting for labor supply responses. By replacing the TCJA CTC (which contained substantial work incentives akin to the EITC) with a universal basic income-type benefit, the CTC expansion reduces the return to working at all by at least $2,000 per child for most workers with children. Relying on elasticity estimates consistent with mainstream simulation models and the academic literature, we estimate that this change in policy would lead 1.5 million workers (constituting 2.6% of all working parents) to exit the labor force. The decline in employment and the consequent earnings loss would mean that child poverty would only fall by 22% and deep child poverty would not fall at all with the CTC expansion.

Caveats

A few caveats are in order. While our baseline estimate is that employment will decline by 1.5 million adults based on the midpoint of ranges used in past simulations and the central tendency of literature surveys, both lower and higher changes are predicted by other elasticities in the literature. Since we rely on elasticities from the literature rather than estimate a full structural model, we would need other information to allocate the average tendencies implied by elasticities to particular individuals. For example, we do not know whether a one percent decline in average hours implies a ten percent decline for one in ten people or a one percent decline for every worker.

Similarly, we would need a more sophisticated model than the one we employ to consider the separate incentives of both spouses in a couple. These complications are avoided in our modeling of the work/nonwork decisions for single worker families since average tendencies imply probabilistic choices that are easily modeled. As a result, we focus only on the work/nonwork decision, not incorporating the reduction in hours that would be expected for those who remain in the workforce due to the increase in marginal tax rates along the previous phase-in and over the new phase-out of the CTC. This understatement of the work response is likely offset to some extent by our simplified work decision of couples, taking them both to stop working or neither to stop working. In fact, the employment response for couples should be spread across a larger number of families, some of whom would have only one spouse leave the labor market. Since the loss of one out of two low-income earners from a family is likely to lead a family to be below the poverty line but not the deep poverty line, the implication of our simplification is that the child poverty reduction of the AFP CTC has likely been overstated, but the deep child poverty reduction understated. As the large majority of our response comes from single worker families, even assuming no response of dual-earner couples as an extreme would leave intact the large majority of the behavioral response we estimate. At least 83 percent of the families that experience a drop in earnings in our simulations have only one worker and are unaffected by this issue.39F 40

Long-Run Effects

Potential long-run effects of the CTC expansion are important to consider alongside shortrun effects. Increased support for low-income children could improve their long-run outcomes. Children’s access to food stamps in the 1960s and 1970s led to improved outcomes when they became adults, including higher earnings (though not increased employment), better health, less incarceration and less dependence on welfare programs (Hoynes, Schanzenbach, and Almond 2016; Bitler and Figinski 2019; Bailey et al. 2020). Much of this evidence comes from a period when other safety net programs were much less generous than current aid, so the marginal effects might be lower today. Larger EITC payments for children have increased their educational attainment and their employment and earnings as adults (Bastian and Michelmore 2018). In that case, the policy being examined is a combination of more income and higher employment. The incremental CTC could also affect behavior in less favorable ways, for example by changing rates of marriage or divorce. Some of the most methodologically sound research on this topic has found large effects of unconditional aid on single parenthood (Grogger and Bronars 2001). Consistent with this microdata evidence, the share of children with a single parent stabilized and then reversed after welfare reform, reversing a more than thirty-year trend.40F 41 Single parenthood has been found to lead, for example, to lower levels of educational attainment and higher incarceration rates of children in the long run (Hoffman and Maynard 2008).  

Resting heart rate as biological correlate of antisocial spectrum behavior: Effect sizes are largest for the most violent offenders & for psychopathy, while they are smaller for physical aggression, laboratory aggression, & antisocial personality disorder

Heart Rate and Skin Conductance Associations with Physical Aggression, Psychopathy, Antisocial Personality Disorder and Conduct Disorder: An Updated Meta-Analysis. Peter C. de Looff et al. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, November 10 2021. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2021.11.003

Highlights

• Resting heart rate remains the best replicated biological correlate of antisocial spectrum behavior.

• Physiological measures of heart rate and skin conductance might be used to differentiate between (and within) types of antisocial spectrum behavior based on the experimental task and analysis type (rest, task, and reactivity).

• Physiological measures of heart rate and skin conductance might be used to aid in diagnosing subtypes of mental health disorders as was evident from the differential effect sizes found for psychopathy and antisocial personality disorder for these are typically represented as similar constructs.

• Effect sizes are largest for the most violent offenders and for psychopathy, while they are smaller for physical aggression, laboratory aggression, and antisocial personality disorder.

Abstract: The associations between physiological measures (i.e., heart rate and skin conductance) of autonomic nervous system (ANS) activity and severe antisocial spectrum behavior (AB) were meta-analyzed. We used an exhaustive partitioning of variables relevant to the ANS–AB association and investigated four highly relevant questions (on declining effect sizes, psychopathy subscales, moderators, and ANS measures) that are thought to be transformative for future research on AB. We investigated a broad spectrum of physiological measures (e.g., heart rate (variability), pre-ejection period) in relation to AB. The search date for the current meta-analysis was on January 1st, 2020, includes 101 studies and 769 effect sizes. Results indicate that effect sizes are heterogeneous and bidirectional. The careful partitioning of variables sheds light on the complex associations that were obscured in previous meta-analyses. Effects are largest for the most violent offenders and for psychopathy and are dependent on the experimental tasks used, parameters calculated, and analyses run. Understanding the specificity of physiological reactions may be expedient for differentiating between (and within) types of AB.

Keywords: autonomic nervous systemantisocial behavioraggressive behaviorpsychopathymeta-analysisheart rateelectrodermal activity