Physical Disability Affects Women’s but Not Men’s Perception of Opposite-Sex Attractiveness

Physical Disability Affects Women’s but Not Men’s Perception of Opposite-Sex Attractiveness. Farid Pazhoohi, Francesca Capozzi and Alan Kingstone. Front. Psychol., Dec 7 2021. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2021.788287

Abstract: Physical appearance influences our perceptions, judgments, and decision making about others. While the current literature with regard to the perceptions and judgments of nondisabled people’s attractiveness is robust, the research investigating the perceived physical attractiveness and judgments of physically disabled individuals is scarce. Therefore, in the current study, we investigated whether people with physical disabilities are perceived by the opposite sex as more or less attractive relative to nondisabled individuals. Our results, based on over 675 participants, showed a positive effect for women’s attractiveness ratings of men with physical disabilities, but not men’s attractiveness ratings of physically disabled women. Moreover, social desirability bias was positively associated with attractiveness ratings of physically disabled individuals, meaning those with higher tendency to be viewed favorably by others rated physically disabled individuals more attractive. Finally, our results revealed that attractiveness ratings of individuals with physical disabilities are positively associated with extroversion and empathy in both men and women, and positively with agreeableness and negatively with neuroticism in women. In conclusion, our study showed women rate men with physical disabilities as higher on attractiveness than nondisabled men, which is also influenced by their social desirability bias.

Discussion

Previous research has considered physical attractiveness mainly from an evolutionary perspective using nondisabled individuals. However, for the first time, the current research investigated the perception of attractiveness in individuals of the opposite sex with physical disabilities. Personality traits, interpersonal empathic reactivity, and social desirability bias were also measured to test for the potential contribution of individual differences on perception. Our results revealed that women considered physically disabled men as more attractive than nondisabled men, while no difference was found for men’s attractiveness ratings of women as a function of physical disability.

Results of the analysis of a subsample that answered the social desirability scale showed a similar effect for men and women’s ratings, as well as a positive association with social desirability bias (SDB), indicating social desirability played a role in the ratings of attractiveness.

Collectively, the results show that women rate physically disabled men more attractive than nondisabled men and suggest that women’s tendency to inaccurately report on sensitive topics (e.g., judgment of physically disabled individuals), as was measured using SDB, was positively associated with their higher attractiveness ratings of men. This is in line with previous findings showing a positive attitude toward physical disabilities, as well as a sex difference in such an attitude, with women holding a more favorable attitude compared to men (Fonosch and Schwab, 1981; Olkin and Howson, 1994; Satchidanand et al., 2012). However, it should be noted that the previous studies mainly tested healthcare workers or school-age children’s attitudes toward physical disabilities (e.g., Ten Klooster et al., 2009; Satchidanand et al., 2012; Bustillos and Silván-Ferrero, 2013; Yorke et al., 2017), but not in an interpersonal attraction context. The finding that women rate disabled men more attractive is counterintuitive from an evolutionary perspective. From an adaptive perspective, the predication is that both men and women would consider nondisabled individuals more attractive compared to disabled individuals, as such characteristics might trigger disease-avoidance mechanism (Park et al., 2003). Our results suggest that individual differences in personality and empathy override the influence of such a mechanism in the perception of attractiveness.

Attractiveness ratings of physically disabled individuals were positively associated with extraversion personality in both men and women. The positive association of extraversion and attractiveness ratings is in line with previous research finding a positive relationship between extraversion personality and preference for attractive faces (Fink et al., 2005; Pound et al., 2007; Welling et al., 2009). However, our finding of a positive association between physical disability attractiveness ratings and extraversion suggests that individuals who happen to be more outgoing and energetic consider physically disabled individuals of the opposite sex as more attractive. For female participants, agreeableness (positively) and neuroticism (negatively) were associated with ratings of physically disabled male attractiveness. This suggests that more friendly and compassionate women consider physically disabled men more attractive, as do women who score lower on measures of neuroticism. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first investigation on the association between personality traits and attractiveness ratings of individuals with physical disabilities.

Similarly, no previous research has tested the relationship between personality traits and overall perception of individuals with physical disabilities. Clearly, more research is warranted to explore the relationship between personality traits of nondisabled individuals and their perception of people with physical disabilities.

As for measures of empathy, male and female participants’ ratings of attractiveness were positively associated with their empathic concern and perspective taking tendencies; though male’s attractiveness ratings were also associated with the fantasy aspect of empathy. In other words, in general, both male and female participants’ tendency to spontaneously adopt the psychological point of view of others and their ability in assess feelings of sympathy and concern for others was correlated with their attractiveness ratings of physically disabled individuals. While no previous study has tested the association of empathy and perception of attractiveness in physically disabled individuals, previous research has shown a similar positive relationship between empathy with regard to stigmatized groups (Batson et al., 1997, 2002). Moreover, a cross-cultural study provided evidence that individuals with a disability are often rated higher on perceived warmth, but not competence, than individuals without a disability (Cuddy et al., 2009). While we did not consider the characteristics of warmth and competence, our results show that women attributed more positive characteristics (i.e., attractiveness) to physically disabled individuals of the opposite sex.

Future Remarks and Conclusion

In the current study, we were interested in investigating the effect of perception of attractiveness as a function of physical disability in an interpersonal attraction context, in which individuals consider and rate individuals of the opposite sex. However, future research can test for the potential interactions regarding the sex of the participants’ and the stimuli, as well as the effect that other variables, such as ethnicity and age, have on one’s attractiveness ratings. For example, it is an open question whether women view women with physical disabilities with the same positive bias as they view men, or participants view older individuals with physical disabilities similar as young people. Moreover, future research may assess the degree to which participants’ prior experiences in interacting with people with physical disabilities affect their ratings of attractiveness of physically disabled individuals. Previous research has shown that prior contact with individuals with disabilities can lead to more favorable and positive attitudes toward children, adolescents, and adults with disabilities (McDougall et al., 2004; Kalyva and Agaliotis, 2009; Seo and Chen, 2009; Perenc and Pęczkowski, 2018). Therefore, future research should consider such contact experiences on perception of attractiveness. Moreover, we used diverse categories of stimuli as the disability group (e.g., amputated legs, amputated arms, either with prosthetics or without), which might have influenced participants’ ratings. While our study lacks the statistical power to address this issue definitively, further studies could consider effect of each category separately on perception of attractiveness. Additionally, women’s attractiveness ratings of physically disabled men do not necessarily indicate they would actually want to date these men, a point that is reinforced by the social desirability data. Therefore, future research could investigate women’s level of interest in a short-term relationship as well as a long-term relationship with disabled men. It might be the case that women judge men with a disability hindered in their ability to secure and provide resources – a quality important in mate selection for women – thereby potentially reducing their interest in a long-term relationship with disabled men. Future research could also test the effect of attractiveness as a function of the cause of a disability. For example, pairing photos of a man’s disability with a story to explain the origin of the disability, either a story of an altruistic act (e.g., through military or police service) or a story about a reckless accident (e. g., car crash from driving drunk) might result in different attractiveness perception. For instance, in light of the fact that women find war heroes sexually attractive (Rusch et al., 2015), women may infer a disability resulting from an altruistic act as attractive. Finally, although we excluded the possibility of the visual images biasing the responses to the questionnaires by always presenting the questionnaires first, future research might choose to ensure that there was no effect of the questionnaires on the attractiveness ratings by inserting a distracting task between the two experimental procedures.

In summary, in the current study, we sought to examine if people with physical disabilities are perceived by the opposite sex as more or less attractive relative to nondisabled individuals. We also examined whether attractiveness ratings of physically disabled individuals are influenced by observers’ personality, empathy, and social desirability bias. Our results indicate that women rate men with physical disabilities as higher on attractiveness than nondisabled men. Such ratings were positively influenced by participants’ SDB, meaning those with higher tendency to be viewed favorably by others rated physically disabled individuals more attractive. Physical disability, however, does not appear to play a role in male perception of female attractiveness. Finally, our results reveal that ratings of individuals with physical disabilities are positively associated with extroversion and empathy in both men and women, and associated positively with agreeableness and negatively with neuroticism in women. These findings suggest that individual differences in personality and empathy can offset or override the influence of disease-avoidance mechanisms as predicted by an evolutionary perspective.

At school entry, girls are rated by teachers as more competent on measures of social skills than boys; it is less clear if this higher rating is stable or grows over time

Gender differences in children’s social skills growth trajectories. Daniel B. Hajovsky, Jacqueline M. Caemmerer & Benjamin A. Mason. Applied Developmental Science, Mar 3 2021. https://doi.org/10.1080/10888691.2021.1890592

Abstract: At school entry, girls are rated by teachers as more competent on measures of social skills than boys. It is less clear if this higher rating is stable or grows over time. To address this question, multiple group curve of factors models investigated gender-specific growth trajectories across seven waves of measurement in a large, longitudinal sample (N = 1024, NICHD SECCYD). Results showed that girls’ social skills were consistently rated higher from kindergarten to sixth grade, and the effect size was moderate (latent Cohen’s d = .37 to .62). Boys demonstrated greater heterogeneity in social skills at nearly every grade with the gender difference in variability stable after second grade. An examination of gender differences in growth trajectories showed that boys demonstrated a linear decrease over time, whereas girls’ social skills did not significantly change over time after accounting for initial level of social skills in kindergarten.

Creative Environments, Conditions, and Settings

Creative Environments, Conditions, and Settings. David M Harrington, University of California, Santa Cruz. In Encyclopedia of Creativity 3rd ed. Prinzter, Runco eds. Elsevier 2020.

[Excerpts]

Introduction

Creative Environments

Creative environments help people function more creatively than they would in less creative environments. Because other entries in this Encyclopedia describe environmental factors which influence the creative functioning of people working within organizations and groups, this article will focus on environmental factors which often facilitate the efforts of autonomously creative people such as writers, visual artists, designers, and garage or basement inventors, who carry out much of their relatively solitary creative work without the support, supervision, or resources which organizations typically provide. [...]

Working Assumptions

This article is organized around the assumption that creative activities and projects present a variety of challenges to people who attempt to carry them out and to the environments in which they attempt to do so. It is also assumed and implicitly predicted that environments which help people meet such challenges will tend to support higher levels of creativity than environments which do not. For example, because some (but not all) people require periods of uninterrupted focus while engaged in certain phases of their creative activities, environments which make it easier to maintain sustained focus during those phases would be expected to support higher levels of creativity than environments which do not.

As this hypothetical example suggests, however, creative agents are not uniformly sensitive to or affected by any given project entailed challenge such as the need for sustained periods of uninterrupted focus. [...]

Creative Episodes: Common Elements, Features, and Associated Challenges

This section was constructed by (1) compiling a list of widely-cited and presumably relatively common features of creative activities, (2) drawing inferences about the challenges those features present to people engaged in them and to the environments in which they work, and (3) drawing inferences about the functional characteristics of environments that would tend to help autonomous creators meet those challenges.

Motivation. People are motivated to initiate and carry out creative activities by a variety of anticipated and experienced pleasures and satisfactions. Some of these pleasures and satisfactions flow directly from the activities themselves, and others are contingent upon anticipated and actual reactions of the outside world to the created products. The first category would include, for example, the pleasures people often derive from using their own imaginations, from physically manipulating their projects’ materials, or from creating some new in the world. The second category would involve matters such as the recognition and praise the creative agents receive from their peers, as well as evidence that their work products have informed, given pleasure to, or in some way benefitted those who come in contact with them. Most professionally creative adults who are financially responsible for themselves and others are also motivated by the hope that their creative work will enhance their financial well-being.

The nature of these motivations poses three challenges to the environments in which autonomous creators work. (1) Creative environments should contain or make possible the creation of workplaces in which process pleasures can be fully experienced. (2) They should contain relevant “audiences” who are able to derive or create value from the agent’s products and are capable of rewarding those who produce them with praise, recognition, monetary support, and opportunities for future work. (3) They should also contain people, social systems, and infrastructure (e.g. agents, editors, publishers, bookstores, and galleries) that help bring new products to the attention of such audiences. Environments which serve these functions well should support higher levels of creative activity than environments that do not.

Creative Seeds. Creative activity is sometimes triggered when creatively-inclined people come in contact with creative seeds. Seeds sometimes take the form of invitations, competitions, or commissions relevant to a creatively-inclined person’s creative interests. In other cases, creators decide to undertake projects which are available in the social or artistic-intellectual milieu as tasks and which are considered to be interesting and important tasks. Examples include writing the “Great American Novel,” writing an essay explaining in convincing detail how consciousness arises from activities of the brain, or producing a piece of art that captures the essence of the times.

More commonly, however, independent creators construct their own projects from what may be thought of as creative “seeds” which re-ignite and are assimilated to their ongoing creative interests. Seeds may come in the form of new ideas, images, sounds, objects, materials, processes, tools, and ways of thinking which are encountered in the outside world. The impact of Picasso’s contact with African art and masks nicely illustrates this phenomenon.

As a more prosaic example, a snippet of conversation overheard on a busy sidewalk or in a check-out line might become the seed for a new song, detective novel, piece of art, or nothing at all, depending upon whether it was overheard by a singer-songwriter, a writer of detective novels, a visual artist, or by someone who is not at all creatively-inclined. Creatively-inclined people also sometimes experience seeds emerging in the form of dream fragments or compelling feelings, ideas, or feelings which suddenly manifest themselves in consciousness. In other instances, creative seeds emerge from explorations and playful manipulations of the materials with which people are working.

The importance of seeds presents creatively inclined people with three challenge: (1) to place themselves in informationally and sensorially rich situations where they are apt to encounter new seeds; (2) to place themselves in or create settings in which internal seeds are apt to arise; (3) to place themselves in or create settings in which they are able to engage in the goal-free explorations and playful manipulations of the materials from which seeds often arise.

The corresponding challenges for environments are (1) to contain a rich panoply of seeds and (2) to contain settings or situations conducive the emergence of “internal” seeds, and (3) to provide settings in which goal-free explorations and playful manipulations of their materials are possible and permitted.

Spaces and Places. The creative activities being considered in this article must take place in 3-dimensional spaces. In some cases these spaces may involve little more than a place to sit and write, although in other cases these spaces may involve larger and more complex spaces in which special materials and equipment can be stored and used. The challenge to creative environments is to contain such spaces and to make them available or to make it possible for people to construct them. The challenge to autonomous creators is to locate or construct them.

Some people and some creative activities (e.g., plein-air artists, certain writers) require or prefer outdoor spaces in which to work.  Such spaces are often relatively quiet and solitary, frequently contain visually interesting vistas, are often located in appealing natural settings, and typically permit sustained and un-interrupted absorption in the task at hand.

Time. Creators typically would like to spend as much time as necessary on their projects and often wish to exercise considerable control over how their work time is configured. For example, some creators can or must work effectively in many short blocks of time whereas others need long periods of time. Some creators also have very strong preferences regarding the time of day, week, or even year and, in which to work. Some creatively-engaged people want to be able to plunge quickly into their creative work in response to suddenly emerging ideas or to a strong sense that they are really ready to work.  The challenge to these people is to find or “make” such time for their work and to find ways to control the configurations and availability of that time.

The corresponding challenge to creative environments is to help people find or make adequate work time and give them the freedom to configure and access that time as needed.

Reliance Upon Easily-Disrupted Concentration

I find it is very important to work intensively for long hours when I am beginning to see solutions to a problem. At such times atavistic competencies seem to come welling up. You are handling so many variables at a barely conscious level that you can’t afford to be interrupted. If you are, it may take a year to cover the same ground you could cover otherwise in sixty hours.

                  —Edwin Land, inventor of the Polaroid camera, quoted in Bello (1959), p. 158.

As illustrated by Edwin Land’s comment above, and as echoed by many others, some creators need protracted and uninterrupted periods of time during which they can become totally absorbed in their work without fear of being disrupted. The challenge to people who have such needs is to create or locate time and space in which such uninterrupted absorption and concentration is possible. The corresponding challenge to creative environments is to provide the space and time necessary for such periods of uninterrupted concentration.

Reliance Upon Experimentation, Exploration, and Partially-Guided Trial and Error

People in many fields often find themselves relying upon experimentation and partially-guided trial-and-error during certain phases of their creative activities. Although some creators enjoy these processes, others are made anxious or embarrassed by their uncertain effectiveness. As a result, some creatively-engaged people are very resistant to having people looking over their shoulders as they work.  The challenge for creative people is to understand and manage such feelings and fears sufficiently that they do not disrupt their work. The corresponding challenge for creative environments is to help creators understand and manage such feelings and help protect them from unwanted observation.

Reliance upon non-conscious cognitive processes. Creators sometimes experience their work as being dependent upon the functioning of cognitive processes which are largely beyond their conscious awareness or control and which may or may not produce useful ideas. In some instances the products of these non-conscious processes appear unexpectedly in consciousness while people are engaged in relatively mindless and often relaxing everyday actions such as taking showers, napping, or falling asleep.

Creatively active people have sometimes found leisurely strolls, especially those taken after lengthy or intense periods of creative work, useful in this regard. In other cases, people have attempted to consciously access these rather elusive processes by establishing what they consider to be particularly helpful external conditions which are often characterized by lack of distractions and a sense of peace and quiet. Reliance upon these marginally-controllable and unpredictably effective processes can also stir feelings of anxiety and self-doubt similar to those elicited by reliance upon experimentation and guided trial and error.

The challenge to creative people is to arrange external and internal conditions which facilitate conscious contact with the products of these non-conscious processes and to understand and manage the anxieties sometimes associated with reliance upon them.  The corresponding challenge to those who manage creative environments is to help make such times and places available and to help people understand and manage the feelings of anxiety and self-doubt sometimes associated with dependence upon these processes.

Physical materials and tools. Many forms of creative activity require the use of certain physical materials, tools, and instruments such as specialized paints and brushes, appropriate clay and glazes, potters wheels, and kilns. The challenge to creative environments is to contain and provide access to such materials and tools and the challenge to creative people is to gain access to them.

Assistants. Creative activities initially undertaken as one-person projects sometimes require more knowledge and specialized skills than one person can provide. The resulting challenge to the creative agents is to accept their need for assistants and to locate and recruit them. The corresponding challenge to creative environments is to help people identify and accept their need for assistance, to contain and provide easy access to relevant assistants.

Solitary activity. Many autonomous creators work in settings in which they have little or no contact with other people for several hours at a time. Although this solitariness suits some people very well, and may in fact be one reason they have gravitated to these activities, the solitariness may be problematic for more extraverted people. The challenge to creative environments is to provide opportunities for solitary creators to engage in social interactions as desired.

Tentative completion. Creative projects must eventually be brought to initial completions despite the imperfections and undeveloped possibilities that are often disturbingly evident to those who created them. The challenge to creative people is to complete their projects despite uncertainties as to whether they are good enough to submit to the wider world. The corresponding challenge to creative environments is to contain peers or experts who can help creators make good decisions about when to consider a project finished.

Projection into and reception by the outside world. If creative products are to provide those who create them with the sociallycontingent benefits they need and desire and if the products are to benefit people for whom they were created (their intended audiences) they must be projected into the outside world and made visible to audiences that are capable of recognizing, rewarding, and responding to them in motivationally satisfying and practically valuable ways. The challenge to autonomous creators is to find ways by which their finished projects can be brought to the attention of such audiences. The challenge to extended creative environments is to: (1) contain audiences which are able to derive or create value from those new products and are able and willing to direct psychological, social, and monetary resources back to the original creative agents and to those who helped bring the products to the attention of the relevant audiences, and (2) contain intermediaries (e.g., agents, publishers, gallery owners) and social systems that help bring new products to the attention of such audiences, and (3) contain social mechanisms by which appreciative audience members are able to directly or indirectly reward those who created the valued products and to those who brought the products to their attention.

The challenge to creators is to be flexible and extremely persistent in trying to push their work into the world. It is worth noting that J. K. Rowling’s efforts to solicit interest in her initial Harry Potter drafts were rejected by 12 publishers before finding one that was receptive. Books and online columns directed to artists, especially young artists, consistently recommend persistence in the face of rejections by juried shows, galleries, and other gatekeepers that are preventing their work from being seen.

Characteristics of Sought-Out and Constructed Environments

The actions taken by autonomously creative people to seek out and construct creative environments for themselves constitute another interesting source of information regarding the nature of creative environments. Descriptions of those actions and the nature of the sought-out and constructed environment have been reported by autonomously creative people themselves as well as by journalists, biographers, sociologists, and historians. The following topics are frequently mentioned in these descriptions:

1. Designated and protected workspaces.

2. Socially permeable and familiar workspaces.

3. Writers and artists groups, clubs, collectives and cooperatives.

4. Artists and writers colonies and retreats

5. Creative cities and neighborhoods.

6. Supportive spouses, partners, and friends.

Designated and protected workspaces. Many autonomously creative people involved in relatively solitary activity construct or seek out primary places of work which may be described as “designated and protected” workspaces. These spaces take many forms, including that of tables, desks, offices, backyard studios, garages, basements, lofts, work-live spaces, barns, re-purposed warehouses, and secluded cabins. These spaces are “designated” in the sense that they are intended to be used primarily or exclusively as the person’s central place of creative work. They are “protected” in the sense that those who use them often make clear to other people that the spaces are not to be intruded upon, re-arranged, or “cleaned up” without permission. The “protected” quality of these spaces certainly calls to mind Virginia Woolf’s famous suggestion to aspiring young women writers that they should manage to obtain rooms of their own “with a lock on the door” (Wolf, 1929).

Some creators also try to make these work-spaces quickly accessible by establishing them within or very near the structures in which they live, though others find it easier to maintain the designated and protected quality of these workspaces if they work elsewhere.  Ideally these spaces can be equipped and arranged to suit the user’s work style and preferences for such matters as décor, lighting, and the presence or absence of background music. Such workspaces serve many functions in the process of supporting their users’ creative activities.

Help sustain uninterrupted work. For many creators, the most valuable aspect of such spaces is the fact that they provide the physical and psychological space needed to engage in the uninterrupted and undistracted periods of absorbed, concentrated, and sometimes meditative thought which are so often crucial to their creative work.

Encourage and support self-imposed work schedules. The existence of designated and easily accessible workspaces also appears to encourage some creators to begin their work on self-imposed schedules, a function which organizations often provide people working within them but which autonomous creative agents must provide themselves.

Preserve work-in-progress. By permitting people to leave work-in-progress (e.g., unfinished canvases, pages ending in mid-sentence, partially completed gadgets, etc.) safely undisturbed between periods of work, these work-spaces reduce set-up time, but more importantly, help people quickly re-enter their previous frames of mind and easily pick up threads of thought which were laid to rest at the end of their last period of work.

Safe space for small “failures”. Such settings also function as psychologically “safe” spaces in which it is possible to engage in the frequently unsuccessful experiments, explorations, and partially-guided trials-and-errors so often characteristic of creative work without fear of having others witness these many small “failures”.

Motivational support. Such workspaces sometimes provide modest motivational support and encouragement in at least three ways. Because they can be arranged to meet the creative worker’s individual tastes, they can enhance the pleasure experienced while working within them. In addition, if such spaces are used almost exclusively for creative work, the simple act of entering them may sometimes trigger the kind of focused creative work that has come to be associated with that space. Furthermore, if these spaces have been the site of previously successful work, they may reduce project-related anxieties by eliciting memories of those earlier successes.  Accessible materials and tools. Such work-spaces facilitate creative work by making the necessary materials and tools and often specialized information easily accessible.

Exceptions; It should be noted, that some very fortunate and flexible writers have reported that they can work anywhere they can physically write and therefor need no special places in which to do their work. 

Socially permeable and familiar workspaces. Designated and protected work settings do not meet the needs of people whose circumstances prevent their using them such as parents who must work within sight and sound of people who they caretaker. J. K.  Rowling, for instance, famously wrote parts of her first Harry Potter novels sitting in a neighborhood cafe with her infant resting in a nearby stroller, and a coffee machine moments away.

Familiar coffee shops, cafes, restaurants, and local libraries. Designated and protected workspaces also don’t meet the social needs of people who find them too isolating. As a result autonomously creative writers who need to work in more social settings often turn to familiar and accommodating coffee shops, cafes, restaurants, and local libraries as places to work near other people. For decades, autonomously creative people in Europe and the United States have used cafés, bars, and restaurants as places to work as well as places to meet and mingle with one another, typically at the end of their frequently solitary workdays. The café life of Vienna and Paris, for example, has often been cited as an important factor in sustaining the creative ferment of these two cities. Historians and sociologists of art and literature have also cited the roles played by particular bars in the emergence and development of bebop jazz in Harlem in the 1940s, the New York School of artists and poets in the 1940s and 1950s, and the development of the beat poets in San Francisco’s North Beach in the 1950s. In such settings creative people are able to satisfy some of their needs for social contact. Here, too, they are able to participate in conversations and creative interactions with other creatively-active and intellectually-lively people who expose them to new and, perhaps, the very newest, ideas, perspectives and methods in their field of work. Valuable information about possible venues and outlets for their work and about intermediaries who might help project their work into the larger world is also sometimes exchanged and in these conversations. Within such gathering places, autonomously creative people also sometimes experience implicit affirmations regarding the importance and ultimate value of the kind of work in which they are engaged as well as more personally-directed expressions of encouragement and advice.

Co-working spaces and writers rooms. Recent years have seen the emergence of increasing numbers of co-working spaces which serve some of the physical and social needs of autonomously creative people. These co-working spaces, (or “writers rooms” in the case of those exclusively serving writers) typically offer private and semi-protected workspaces as well as communal spaces that can be used to socialize and exchange information relevant to their work. Some co-working spaces include communal spaces that have been specifically designed or configured to facilitate potentially synergistic exchanges of information and possible collaborations between creatively-active people working in different fields.

Informal groups and clubs. Autonomously creative people also seek creative support and stimulation by creating or joining local writing or artists groups in which they can share work-in-progress, explore thoughts regarding possible future projects, and receive constructive critiques in supportive environments.

Collectives and cooperatives. Autonomously creative artists sometimes attempt to facilitate their own work by affiliating with artists’ collectives and co-operatives. In such settings artists are able to share space, materials, equipment, ideas, perspectives, and experience what they often describe as “good energy”.

Artists and writers colonies. Every year, thousands of autonomous artists and writers apply to attend one of the hundreds of artists and writers colonies located in the United States. The qualities of some of the most prestigious of these colonies such as Yaddo in New York and MacDowell in New Hampshire, reveal much about the kind of working environments which many, though not all, independent writers and artists desire. In both of these colonies artists enjoy 24-h access to designated and protected work-spaces in the form of appropriately-equipped studios. Lunches are typically delivered to the individual cabins or studios in ways designed not to interrupt work. Relieved of almost all non-work-related responsibilities and distractions and provided with designated, protected, and well-equipped workspaces, residents are able to focus essentially all of their energy and attention upon their creative work. Communal dinners and gatherings in the evenings provide opportunities for residents to socialize, exchange ideas, and share work in progress. Though such colonies do not fit the needs of all autonomously creative people, due in large part to the separation from family they require, and though access to such colonies is sharply limited, the appeal they hold for many autonomously creative people is instructive.

Creatively-active cities and neighborhoods. In seeking creative environments in which to live and work, autonomously creative artists and writers are sometimes drawn to cities and neighborhoods that are heavily and often unusually densely populated with people involved in creative activities similar to their own. As mentioned earlier, Paris, New York, San Francisco, and Los Angeles are famous examples of such cities, although they are certainly not alone in this respect. The following reasons explain why certain cities function as magnets for creatively ambitious people as well as serving as incubators and sustainers of their creative work.

Populous, culturally diverse, and historically and contemporaneously supportive of the arts. Such cities typically contain:

• large numbers of other creators with whom ideas and enthusiasms can be shared,

• affordable spaces in which to live and work

• rich supplies of necessary and sometimes specialized materials

• potential assistants who have specialized skills

• patrons, benefactors, and sponsors who are interested in supporting autonomous creators.

• diverse and sophisticated audiences eager for new creative products.

• sophisticated intermediaries such as critics, talent scouts, and agents who are interested in identifying producers of new and creative work and connecting them and their work with relevant audiences

• numerous outlets and venues such as galleries, bookstores, exhibition halls, and public readings by which new creative work can be displayed to relevant audiences and potential patrons;

Informationally-and-sensorially rich cross-roads. These unusually creative cities also tend to be cross-roads through which people from many countries, cultures, and traditions frequently pass and destinations and to which they sometimes come to live and work. In so doing such people bring steady streams of creativity-relevant information and creative seeds in the form of new ideas, values, knowledge, images, colors, sounds, tastes, tools, and ways of thinking and doing things.

Attractors of creatively talented and ambitious people. Because of their creativogenic qualities, these cities tend to continue attracting creatively-talented and ambitious people from across continents and oceans, thus swelling the numbers of creatively-inclined people living and working in relatively close proximity to one another. Such increased numbers and densities tend to increase the likelihood that creative neighborhoods emerge, that planned and unplanned interactions among creatively-active people occur, and that ideas, enthusiasms, materials, work-spaces, and gathering places might be shared. As a result of these processes, of course, such cities tend to foster ever higher levels of creativity and become even more attractive to creatively ambitious people who might gravitate toward them. At certain points, however, such cities may become so saturated with people engaging in certain types of creativity that their capacity to support and attract new creators in certain fields wanes.

Creative cities not for all and not necessary. Autonomously creative people certainly do not need to live and work in creative cities to do their creative work. In the first place, many people simply do not like cities as places to live or are prohibited by practical considerations from doing so. In addition, many creative people do not wish to lose their sense of place, comfort, and belonging by moving to a city. Others do not want to be distracted from their work by the many seductive possibilities that cities offer, to become overly influenced by the highly visible and much-talked-about creative work of other people, or to experience themselves as little fish in big ponds.

Autonomously creative people have also begun reporting that new modes of communication and new ways of displaying and advertising their work made possible by the latest technologies are diminishing some of the creative advantages previously afforded by physical proximity to creative colleagues, potential patrons, audiences, and intermediaries. Many autonomously creative people are able to find and establish good working environments and creatively supportive local environments in smaller cities and towns.  For example, writers groups and artists co-operatives can be established almost anywhere that a few similarly-intentioned writers and artists reside.

It should also be noted that many creative people who are attracted by some of the benefits of unusually creative cities but deterred by others, resolve their dilemmas by locating themselves outside of but within easy reach of such cities.  Supportive spouses, partners, and friends. In any location, supportive spouses, partners, and friends often play important roles in the lives and work of autonomously creative people For example, autonomously creative people often acknowledge the important role played by people with whom they live in helping to establish and protect their workplaces. Spouses and partners are also often thanked for tolerating work patterns that sometimes deviate substantially from the social norm, by occasionally freeing up work time by relieving the creatively active person of some household obligations, and by tolerating problematic behaviors and mental states sometimes associated with intense involvement in creative activity. Spouses, partners and friends are also frequently identified as influential sources of personal encouragement and as people who affirm the fundamental value and importance of the kind of creative work being done. In some cases spouses and partners also serve as sounding-boards, first audiences, helpful critics, and friendly editors.

Caveats

Variability among good creative environments. Creatively-inclined people differ from one another in many respects. As a consequence, the environments and settings within which they will flourish creatively undoubtedly differ in ways that reflect those individual differences. As noted earlier in this chapter, for example, the conditions preferred by easily and not easily distractible people or by relatively extraverted and relatively introverted people may differ in substantial ways. Furthermore, the conditions, settings, and environments supportive of one type of creative activity, such as writing a novel, may not be most supportive of other types of creativity, such as producing a series of thematically related canvases or pieces of pottery. As a consequence, the environmental conditions most helpful to any particular creator working on any particular project may not be the most helpful to other people working on other projects. This suggests that the ideal macro-environment for creative people is probably one within which autonomously creative people have the freedom to migrate to or construct whatever particular environments best suit their individualand project-specific needs.

Many of the varied environments constructed or sought out by autonomous creators would exhibit at least some of the environmental features and functions described here. The degree to which this proposition is true for autonomous writer and artists, of course, remains to be seen, as does the degree to which the analyses presented here generalize to other types of creative activity.

Creative Environments Helpful but Not Necessary

It is extremely important to recognize and emphasize the fact that very good environments are neither necessary nor sufficient for creativity to occur. As history shows, acts of creativity can and do emerge from very difficult or even hostile conditions, and as history also shows, creative efforts undertaken in highly supportive environments often fail. [...]

References

Bello, F., 1959. The magic that make Polaroid. Fortune 59, 124–129.

Woolf, V., 1929. A Room of One’s Own. Houghton Mifflen, New York, NY.

Further Reading

Ghiselin, B. (Ed.), 1985. The Creative Process. University of California Press, Berkeley, CA.

Hall, P., 1998. Cities in Civilization. Pantheon, New York, NY.

Krementz, J., 1996. The Writer’s Desk. Random House, New York, NY.

MacNeal, R., 2005. Artists Communities: A Directory of Residencies that Offer Time and Space for Creativity, third ed. Allworth Press, New York, NY.

Rosenberg, B., Fliegel, N., 1965. The Vanguard Artist. Quadrangle Books, Chicago, Ill.

Relevant Websites

312 Famous Artists and Their Studios. https://www.boredpanda.com/famous-artists-and-their-muses-in-their-studios

Brief introduction and portal to hundreds of Artists colonies in the United States as of 2019. https://www.artistcommunities.org/residencies.

The perfect artist studio. What does your art studio look like? Your ideal studio would have? https://www.pinterest.com/mdfineart/artists-studios/?lp¼true.

Yaddo colony. http://yaddo.org/.

MacDowell colony. http://www.macdowellcolony.org/.

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Glossary

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The recent drought events (e.g., 2003, 2015, and 2018), are within the range of natural variability and they are not unprecedented over the last millennium

Past megadroughts in central Europe were longer, more severe and less warm than modern droughts. M. Ionita, M. Dima, V. Nagavciuc, P. Scholz & G. Lohmann. Communications Earth & Environment volume 2, Article number: 61 (2021). Mar 19 2021. https://www.nature.com/articles/s43247-021-00130-w

Abstract: Megadroughts are notable manifestations of the American Southwest, but not so much of the European climate. By using long-term hydrological and meteorological observations, as well as paleoclimate reconstructions, here we show that central Europe has experienced much longer and severe droughts during the Spörer Minimum (~AD 1400–1480) and Dalton Minimum (~AD 1770–1840), than the ones observed during the 21st century. These two megadroughts appear to be linked with a cold state of the North Atlantic Ocean and enhanced winter atmospheric blocking activity over the British Isles and western part of Europe, concurrent with reduced solar forcing and explosive volcanism. Moreover, we show that the recent drought events (e.g., 2003, 2015, and 2018), are within the range of natural variability and they are not unprecedented over the last millennium.

Conclusions

By using different independent data sets (e.g., observations, paleo reanalysis, documentary evidence, and proxy records) in this study we provide a comprehensive assessment of past megadroughts in central Europe and their underlying drivers. Moreover, we have shown that the recent droughts (e.g., 2003, 2015, and 2018, among others) are within the historical variability and they are not unprecedented over the last millennium. Future climate projections indicate that Europe will face substantial drying, even for the least aggressive pathways scenarios (SSP126 and SSP245)49. Although the greenhouse gases and the associate global warming signal will substantially contribute to future drought risk49, our study indicates that future drought variations will also be strongly influenced by natural variations. A potential decrease of TSI in the next decades could result in a higher frequency of drought events in central Europe, which could add to the drying induced by anthropogenic forcing. The potential manifestation of record extreme droughts represents a possible scenario for the future and it would represent an enormous challenge for the governments and society. Thus, determining future drought risk of the European droughts requires further work on how the combined effect of natural and anthropogenic factors will shape the drought magnitude and frequency.

Becoming a physician increases the use of antidepressants, opioids, anxiolytics, and sedatives, especially for female physicians

The Effects of Becoming a Physician on Prescription Drug Use and Mental Health Treatment. D. Mark Anderson, Ron Diris, Raymond Montizaan & Daniel I. Rees. NBER Working Paper 29536, Dec 2021. https://www.nber.org/papers/w29536

Abstract: There is evidence that physicians disproportionately suffer from substance use disorder and mental health problems. It is not clear, however, whether these phenomena are causal. We use data on Dutch medical school applicants to examine the effects of becoming a physician on prescription drug use and the receipt of treatment from a mental health facility. Leveraging variation from lottery outcomes that determine admission into medical schools, we find that becoming a physician increases the use of antidepressants, opioids, anxiolytics, and sedatives, especially for female physicians. Among female applicants towards the bottom of the GPA distribution, becoming a physician increases the likelihood of receiving treatment from a mental health facility. 

[Based on data from the 2019 National Survey on Labor Conditions.]

Men and women primed with mate scarcity held a more positive attitude toward mate poaching relative to those primed with mate abundance, and this link was mediated by an induced fear of being single & intrasexual competitiveness

Perceived Mate Scarcity Leads to Increased Willingness to Mate Poach. Larissa McKelvie et al. The Journal of Sex Research, Dec 3 2021. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2021.2005762

Abstract: Mate poaching, where an individual attempts to attract a pair-bonded individual, is a risky mating tactic. Yet, it is surprisingly common. Although many studies have investigated individual differences in mate poaching, few have examined potentially relevant ecological factors, such as mate availability. In this study, 254 unmated North American adults were primed with either perceived mate scarcity or abundance, and subsequently completed measures of fear of being single, intrasexual competitiveness, and attitudes toward mate poaching. Results from a sequential mediation model revealed that men and women primed with mate scarcity held a more positive attitude toward mate poaching relative to those primed with mate abundance, and that this link was mediated by an induced fear of being single and intrasexual competitiveness. Our results suggest that mate poaching is a facultative adaptation of human mating psychology driven by intrasexual competitiveness that is activated in response to environments of low mate availability. It highlights the need for researchers to consider ecological cues when studying individual variation in mate poaching behavior.

In more gender-equal countries, differences between men and women are larger for innate preferences and smaller for socially constructed interests

The Gender Gap in Preferences: Evidence from 45,397 Facebook Interests. Ángel Cuevas, Rubén Cuevas, Klaus Desmet & Ignacio Ortuño-Ortín. NBER Working Paper 29451, November 2021. https://www.nber.org/papers/w29451

Abstract: This paper uses information on the frequency of 45,397 Facebook interests to study how the difference in preferences between men and women changes with a country's degree of gender equality. For preference dimensions that are systematically biased toward the same gender across the globe, differences between men and women are larger in more gender-equal countries. In contrast, for preference dimensions with a gender bias that varies across countries, the opposite holds. This finding takes an important step toward reconciling evolutionary psychology and social role theory as they relate to gender. 

The demographic transition (he move from a high fertility/high mortality regime into a low fertility/low mortality regime) in 186 countries for more than 250 years

Demographic Transitions Across Time and Space. Matthew J. Delventhal, Jesus Fernandez-Villaverde, Nezih Guner. November 6, 2021. https://www.sas.upenn.edu/~jesusfv/Demographic_Transitions.pdf

Abstract: The demographic transition –the move from a high fertility/high mortality regime into a low fertility/low mortality regime– is one of the most fundamental transformations that countries undertake. To study demographic transitions across time and space, we compile a data set of birth and death rates for 186 countries spanning more than 250 years. We document that (i) a demographic transition has been completed or is ongoing in nearly every country; (ii) the speed of transition has increased over time; and (iii) having more neighbors that have started the transition is associated with a higher probability of a country beginning its own transition. To account for these observations, we build a quantitative model in which parents choose child quantity and educational quality. Countries differ in geographic location, and improved production and medical technologies diffuse outward from Great Britain. Our framework replicates well the timing and increasing speed of transitions. It also produces a correlation between the speeds of fertility transition and increases in schooling similar to the one in the data.

Keywords: Demographic transition, skill-biased technological change, diffusion.

JEL codes: J13, N3, O11, O33, O40

Workplace premiums associated with teams of professionals have increased, while premiums for previously high-paid blue-collar workers have been cut

Consolidated Advantage: New Organizational Dynamics of Wage Inequality. Nathan Wilmers, Clem Aeppli. American Sociological Review, December 1, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1177/00031224211049205

Abstract: The two main axes of inequality in the U.S. labor market—occupation and workplace—have increasingly consolidated. In 1999, the largest share of employment at high-paying workplaces was blue-collar production workers, but by 2017 it was managers and professionals. As such, workers benefiting from a high-paying workplace are increasingly those who already benefit from membership in a high-paying occupation. Drawing on occupation-by-workplace data, we show that up to two-thirds of the rise in wage inequality since 1999 can be accounted for not by occupation or workplace inequality alone, but by this increased consolidation. Consolidation is not primarily due to outsourcing or to occupations shifting across a fixed set of workplaces. Instead, consolidation has resulted from new bases of workplace pay premiums. Workplace premiums associated with teams of professionals have increased, while premiums for previously high-paid blue-collar workers have been cut. Yet the largest source of consolidation is bifurcation in the social sector, whereby some previously low-paying but high-professional share workplaces, like hospitals and schools, have deskilled their jobs, while others have raised pay. Broadly, the results demonstrate an understudied way that organizations affect wage inequality: not by directly increasing variability in workplace or occupation premiums, but by consolidating these two sources of inequality.

Keywords: wage inequality, stratification, organizations, workplaces, occupations

A Polygenic Score for Educational Attainment Partially Predicts Voter Turnout

A Polygenic Score for Educational Attainment Partially Predicts Voter Turnout. Christopher T. Dawes et al. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, December 5, 2021. http://users.econ.umn.edu/~rusti001/Research/Genetics/VotingPNASAll.pdf

Abstract: Twin and adoption studies have shown that individual differences in political participation can be explained in part by genetic variation. However, these research designs cannot identify which genes are related to voting or the pathways through which they exert influence, and their conclusions rely on possibly restrictive assumptions. In this study, we use three different US samples and a Swedish sample to test whether genes that have been identified as associated with educational attainment, one of the strongest correlates of political participation, predict self-reported and validated voter turnout. We find that a polygenic score capturing individuals’ genetic propensity to acquire education is significantly related to turnout. The strongest associations we observe are in second-order midterm elections in the US and EU Parliament elections in Sweden, which tend to be viewed as less important by voters, parties, and the media and thus present a more information-poor electoral environment for citizens to navigate. A within-family analysis suggests that individuals’ education-linked genes directly affect their voting behavior but for second-order elections, it also reveals evidence of genetic nurture. Finally, a mediation analysis suggests that educational attainment and cognitive ability combine to account for between 41% and 63% of the relationship between the genetic propensity to acquire education and voter turnout depending on the type of election.

Sexual and romantic relationships among people experiencing homelessness: A scoping review

Czechowski, K., Turner, K. A., Labelle, P. R., & Sylvestre, J. (2021). Sexual and romantic relationships among people experiencing homelessness: A scoping review. American Journal of Orthopsychiatry, Dec 2021. https://doi.org/10.1037/ort0000583

Abstract: Homelessness is widely recognized as a pervasive issue. Despite increasing research on factors affecting the health and well-being of people who are homeless, one that remains relatively understudied is the role of romantic and sexual relationships. Given that this population has the same needs for intimacy and closeness as anyone else, it is important to understand how these relationships occur, what barriers exist in developing and maintaining them, and what is their impact. This scoping review aimed to (a) characterize the nature of research that has examined sexual and romantic relationships among people who are homeless and (b) identify and synthesize the findings of studies that examined romantic and sexual relationships among people who are homeless. Of 539 studies that examined sexual or romantic relationships among people who are homeless, 88.87% examined sexual health risk, 11.13% examined sexual victimization, 5.57% examined survival sex, and 2.41% examined consensual sexual or romantic relationships. Of the studies that examined consensual sexual or romantic relationships substantially (n = 13) all used qualitative methods and identified common themes such as love, romance, and emotional support; partner relationships as transactional; barriers to partner relationships; and casual sex and pleasure. Despite the possible benefits of sexual and romantic relationships in the context of homelessness, researchers instead have primarily focused on possible risks associated with sex. We introduce how sexual citizenship can be applied to understand how current practices and policies limit people’s civic participation when homeless. 

Predictions shape our perception: fMRI and multivoxel pattern analysis show that non-stimulated regions of early visual areas contain information about the conscious perception of an ambiguous visual stimulus

Non-stimulated regions in early visual cortex encode the contents of conscious visual perception. Bianca M. van Kemenade, Gregor Wilbertz, Annalena Müller, Philipp Sterzer. Human Brain Mapping, December 3 2021. https://doi.org/10.1002/hbm.25731

Abstract: Predictions shape our perception. The theory of predictive processing poses that our brains make sense of incoming sensory input by generating predictions, which are sent back from higher to lower levels of the processing hierarchy. These predictions are based on our internal model of the world and enable inferences about the hidden causes of the sensory input data. It has been proposed that conscious perception corresponds to the currently most probable internal model of the world. Accordingly, predictions influencing conscious perception should be fed back from higher to lower levels of the processing hierarchy. Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging and multivoxel pattern analysis to show that non-stimulated regions of early visual areas contain information about the conscious perception of an ambiguous visual stimulus. These results indicate that early sensory cortices in the human brain receive predictive feedback signals that reflect the current contents of conscious perception.

4 DISCUSSION

Our findings show that the current perceptual state during bistability can be decoded from fMRI signal patterns not only in stimulated early visual regions, which is in line with previous studies (Haynes & Rees, 2005), but crucially also in non-stimulated retinotopic visual cortex, which did not receive any bottom-up input. This suggests that non-stimulated regions of early visual cortex contain information not only about visual stimulation in the surrounding context, as previously shown (Smith & Muckli, 2010), but even about conscious perception independent of visual stimulation per se. This is in line with current theories that model bistable perception within the framework of predictive processing (Brascamp, Sterzer, Blake, & Knapen, 2018; Hohwy et al., 2008). According to this view, ambiguous stimuli (such as the bistable moving plaids used here) provide equally strong sensory evidence for two different percepts, but the currently dominant percept establishes an implicit prediction regarding the cause of the sensory input. This prediction is thought to stabilize the current perceptual state through feedback from higher to lower hierarchical levels, while sensory evidence for the currently suppressed perceptual interpretation elicits prediction errors that act to destabilize the current percept, eventually leading to a perceptual change (Weilnhammer et al., 2021; Weilnhammer, Stuke, Hesselmann, Sterzer, & Schmack, 2017). Here, we provide evidence supporting the notion of feedback signalling of predictions in bistable perception.

There have been other studies that showed neural activity in visual areas that were not directly stimulated. These include studies on object perception (Williams et al., 2008), feature-based attention (Serences & Boynton, 2007), visual scene perception (Smith & Muckli, 2010), and illusions like the Kanizsa triangle (Kok, Bains, van Mourik, Norris, & de Lange, 2016), apparent motion (Chong, Familiar, & Shim, 2016; Muckli, Kohler, Kriegeskorte, & Singer, 2005), or the bistable Gestalt illusion (Grassi, Zaretskaya, & Bartels, 2017). Our study is in line with this earlier work, which underlines the idea that long-range connections carry feedback signals from higher areas back to early visual cortex. However, it is distinct from these findings in the key aspect that it shows that such feedback signals in non-stimulated visual areas carry information about the subjective interpretation of an ambiguous stimulus, where the physical properties of the stimulus are stable, while the conscious perception of the participant alternates between two alternative interpretations. Bistable motion quartets inducing apparent motion also show activity along the non-stimulated motion path depending on conscious interpretation, but this activity underlies the reconstruction of an illusory percept, that is, of a stimulus that is not actually there. In our study, the activity reflected feedback signals about a stimulus that was always physically present, but was interpreted in different ways over time. As such, our results do not only support the general idea that predictions are sent back to early visual cortex, but importantly that they are involved in the subjective interpretation of an ambiguous stimulus.

Our univariate results showed significantly more activation for patterns than components in non-stimulated early visual areas. Increased activation for patterns in early visual cortex has been reported in previous studies as well (Grassi et al., 2018; Wilbertz, Ketkar, Guggenmos, & Sterzer, 2018). We observed this pattern only in non-stimulated areas, which resembles the results by Grassi et al. (2017) that a global Gestalt percept induced more activity in the illusory percept regions in early visual cortex than a local Gestalt percept. The fact that we observed this effect in non-stimulated regions only seems to support the hypothesis that it is driven by feedback mechanisms, as indicated by findings from Kok et al. (2016) who found enhanced activity for illusory percepts only in deep cortical layers that process feedback signals. As such, our univariate results support our multivariate results. Since it has been shown that attentional mechanisms can also drive perceptual effects in non-stimulated areas (Serences & Boynton, 2007), it is possible that attention to the current percept might have contributed to the results. However, since we found opposite univariate patterns in early visual cortex (more activity for pattern percepts) and area hMT+/V5 (more activity for component percepts), feedback mechanisms seem a more likely explanation. On a similar note, it has been reported that people blink more during pattern perception compared to component perception (Brych, Murali, & Händel, 2021), which could be an alternative explanation for the increased BOLD response in visual cortex (Hupé et al., 2012). However, again the opposite pattern in early visual cortex versus hMT+/V5 seems to rather point at the involvement of feedback mechanisms.

We suggest that the percept-related information that we found in non-stimulated regions of early visual areas most likely arises from feedback signalling that originates from higher-level areas concerned with the computation of component vs. pattern motion perception, such as area hMT+/V5 (Castelo-Branco et al., 2002; Duarte, Costa, Martins, & Castelo-Branco, 2017; Grassi et al., 2018). Research on bistable plaid motion has shown that hMT+/V5 is concerned with the disambiguation of bistable plaids into pattern and component motion (Castelo-Branco et al., 2002), and that it sends information back to early visual cortex during this process (Duarte et al., 2017). Furthermore, effective connectivity analyses have shown that apparent motion induced activation of non-stimulated visual regions along the illusory apparent motion path is associated with enhanced feedback signalling from area hMT+/V5 (Sterzer, Haynes, & Rees, 2006), which has been shown to be causally involved in such apparent motion perception in a later TMS study (Vetter, Grosbras, & Muckli, 2015). Considering these studies, it seems plausible that area hMT+/V5 is also involved in predictive feedback signalling to non-stimulated areas during bistable plaid motion perception, and that our results thus reflect predictive feedback signalling coming from this area. Our significant decoding results in hMT+/V5 support the idea that this area generates the predictions that are sent back to early visual areas during bistable perception, though future studies will have to provide direct causal evidence. There are other potential origins of feedback signalling in bistable plaid perception, as several studies have shown involvement of frontoparietal areas in bistable perception (Brascamp et al., 2018; Grassi et al., 2018; Weilnhammer et al., 2021). Recent evidence suggests that hMT+/V5 might signal perceptual conflict to and receive signals from frontal areas to resolve this conflict, making hMT+/V5 a hub for receiving and relaying feedback signals from and to frontal cortex (Weilnhammer et al., 2021). As our study was focused on visual cortex, we were unable to verify the involvement of areas outside visual cortex. However, our results support the idea of hMT+/V5 as a source of feedback signals to early visual cortex in bistable perception.

In conclusion, our current results provide compelling support for the notion that conscious perception reflects an internal model that generates predictions about the current state of the world, and that these predictions are fed back to the lowest levels of sensory processing to enable inferences regarding the sensory input.

Advancing mathematics by guiding human intuition with AI

Advancing mathematics by guiding human intuition with AI. Alex Davies, Petar Veličković, Lars Buesing, Sam Blackwell, Daniel Zheng, Nenad Tomašev, Richard Tanburn, Peter Battaglia, Charles Blundell, András Juhász, Marc Lackenby, Geordie Williamson, Demis Hassabis & Pushmeet Kohli. Nature volume 600, pages70–74, Dec 1 2021. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41586-021-04086-x

Abstract: The practice of mathematics involves discovering patterns and using these to formulate and prove conjectures, resulting in theorems. Since the 1960s, mathematicians have used computers to assist in the discovery of patterns and formulation of conjectures1, most famously in the Birch and Swinnerton-Dyer conjecture2, a Millennium Prize Problem3. Here we provide examples of new fundamental results in pure mathematics that have been discovered with the assistance of machine learning—demonstrating a method by which machine learning can aid mathematicians in discovering new conjectures and theorems. We propose a process of using machine learning to discover potential patterns and relations between mathematical objects, understanding them with attribution techniques and using these observations to guide intuition and propose conjectures. We outline this machine-learning-guided framework and demonstrate its successful application to current research questions in distinct areas of pure mathematics, in each case showing how it led to meaningful mathematical contributions on important open problems: a new connection between the algebraic and geometric structure of knots, and a candidate algorithm predicted by the combinatorial invariance conjecture for symmetric groups4. Our work may serve as a model for collaboration between the fields of mathematics and artificial intelligence (AI) that can achieve surprising results by leveraging the respective strengths of mathematicians and machine learning.

Daily Memory Lapses and Affect: Mediation Effects on Life Satisfaction

Daily Memory Lapses and Affect: Mediation Effects on Life Satisfaction. Jennifer R. Turner, Jacqueline Mogle, Nikki Hill, Sakshi Bhargava & Laura Rabin. Journal of Happiness Studies, Dec 02 2021. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10902-021-00481-3

Abstract: Memory lapses are a type of daily challenge that are common to most people and are associated with negative mood outcomes. How daily challenges are associated and linked to broad domains, like life satisfaction and well-being, has been underexamined. Life satisfaction is often assessed from a macro-level that emphasizes average differences over longer timeframes, yet daily experiences (i.e., micro-level) may accumulate to shape these characteristics. In the current study, we examined if daily memory lapses (e.g., difficulties with word-finding or forgetting a meeting) were associated with life satisfaction, and whether this relationship was mediated by the associated changes in positive and negative affect due to daily memory lapses. In a coordinated analysis of two datasets (N = 561, ages 25–93 years), we used multilevel structural equation modeling to assess how daily memory lapses may influence the broader outcome of global life satisfaction. The pattern of results was similar across datasets: memory lapses were associated with reduced positive affect and increased negative affect. Further, the daily affect associated with daily memory lapses significantly mediated the relationship between lapses and life satisfaction, while the direct relationship between memory lapses and life satisfaction was non-significant. This study provides support for the role of daily challenges, specifically memory lapses, influencing broader constructs such as psychological well-being by identifying the key factor of affective responses. Future work should identify other salient daily challenges, as well as explore if reducing the affective response to challenges through targeted interventions would mitigate impacts on distal functioning.

What does your favourite colour say about your personality? Not much

Jonauskaite, D., Thalmayer, A. G., Müller, L., & Mohr, C. What does your favourite colour say about your personality? Not much. Personality Science, [Accepted Manuscript]. Dec 2021. http://dx.doi.org/10.23668/psycharchives.5256

Abstract: The claim that favourite colours reveal individuals’ personalities is popular in the media yet lacks scientific support. We assessed this claim in two stages. First, we catalogued claims from six popular websites, and matched them to key Big Six/HEXACO trait terms, ultimately identifying 11 specific, systematic, testable predictions (e.g., higher Extraversion among those who prefer red, orange, yellow, pink, or turquoise). Next, we tested these predictions in terms of Big Six trait scores and reports of favourite and least favourite colours from 323 French-speaking participants. For every prediction (e.g., red-extraversion), we compared trait scores between participants who chose or did not choose the predicted colour using Welch's t-tests. We failed to confirm any of the 11 predictions. Further exploratory analyses (MANOVA) revealed no associations between colour preferences and personality trait. Favourite colours appear unrelated to personality, failing to support the practical utility of colour-based personality assessment.