Children have initially a good view of the rich but with age that preference decreases; also have an increasing view as unfair of the wealth gap between the wealthy and the poor; have a developing understanding of the link between wealth & power

Yang, Xin, and Yarrow Dunham. 2021. “Emerging Complexity in Children's Conceptualization of the Wealthy and the Poor.” OSF Preprints. December 22. doi:10.31219/osf.io/fp9xq

Abstract: Past work suggests that children have an overly rosy view of rich people that stays consistent across childhood. However, adults do not show explicit pro-rich biases and even hold negative stereotypes against the rich (e.g., thinking that rich people are cold and greedy). When does this developmental shift occur, and when do children develop more complex and differentiated understandings of the wealthy and the poor? The current work documents the developmental trajectory of 4- to 12-year-old primarily American middle-class children’s conceptualizations of the wealthy and the poor (total N = 164). We find: 1) age-related decreases in pro-rich preferences and stereotypes relative to the poor; 2) domain-sensitive stereotypes across prosociality, talent, and effort; 3) resource-specific behavioral expectations such that with age children increasingly expect the wealthy to contribute more material resources but not more time than the poor; 4) an increasing recognition of the unfairness of the wealth gap between the wealthy and the poor; and 5) a developing understanding of the link between wealth and power. In sum, this work illuminates the emergence of more complex understandings of wealth, poverty, and inequality.

When a conspiracy theory goes mainstream, people feel more positive toward conspiracy theorists

When a conspiracy theory goes mainstream, people feel more positive toward conspiracy theorists. Curtis Bram. Research & Politics, December 21, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1177/20531680211067640

Abstract: This paper uses an experiment and a follow-up survey immediately before and after the publicly revealed results of the Department of Defense’s 2021 report on unidentified flying object (UFO) origins to test how public opinion changes when government leaders across the political spectrum take an issue that had been on the margins of respectability seriously. In both studies, I find that when politicians acknowledge the possibility that UFOs are extraterrestrial visitors, people report more positive attitudes toward those who believe in conspiracies in general. Implications are that when government leaders publicly walk back a long-held consensus that a particular issue is not worth serious consideration, they may cause people to feel more favorable toward those perceived to hold other fringe views.

Keywords: Conspiracy theories, partisanship, American politics, unidentified flying objects

Discussion

This study demonstrates that when political elites take seriously a possibility that had been ridiculed, and associated with those who believe in conspiracies, people feel more positive toward conspiracy theorists. To be sure, conspiracy theorists do not make up a cohesive group, and many who hold such beliefs do not identify as such. Furthermore, many conspiracy theories outside the UFO case are pushed by partisan actors, potentially limiting the generalizability of these results. That said, a recent review argued that “there is surprisingly little research into how people who espouse conspiracy theories are viewed” (Douglas et al., 2019, 23) and this result motivates further work on the spillover effects of cases where something was previously seen as outside the mainstream, such that people who believed it were considered to be on the margins of respectability, and then this changed rapidly. Past work also finds that people hide some opinions because they fear social consequences (Lantian et al., 2018), suggesting that increasingly positive attitudes toward those who believe in conspiracies will increase the willingness of those who engage in conspiracy thinking to reveal those beliefs.

Future work will benefit from expanding this approach beyond the UFO case and evaluating how support for conspiracy theories themselves change as elite opinion changes. New information may also emerge, as former President Barack Obama said: “what is true – and I’m actually being serious here – is that there is footage and records of objects in the skies that we don’t know exactly what they are.”

Recent work has shown that body distortions are common in healthy individuals; there is a general bias to overestimate body width compared to length/height; this distorsion appear to be linked to aspects of psychological well-being, including body satisfaction and self-esteem

Distortion of mental body representations. Matthew R. Longo. Trends in Cognitive Sciences, December 21 2021. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tics.2021.11.005

Highlights

*  Distortions in the representation of the body are a conspicuous feature of several clinical disorders, including eating disorders and chronic pain.

*  Recent work has shown that distortions are also common in healthy individuals, including in tasks assessing tactile spatial perception, proprioception, and the conscious body image.

*  Across a range of tasks, there is a general bias to overestimate body width compared to length/height.

*  Distorted body representations in conditions such as anorexia nervosa and chronic pain appear to be exaggerated forms of the distortions that occur in healthy individuals.

*  Distorted body representations appear to be linked to aspects of psychological well-being, including body satisfaction and self-esteem.

Abstract: Our body is central to our sense of self, and distorted body representations are found in several serious medical conditions. This paper reviews evidence that distortions of body representations are also common in healthy individuals, and occur in domains including tactile spatial perception, proprioception, and the conscious body image. Across domains, there is a general tendency for body width to be overestimated compared to body length. Intriguingly, distortions in both eating disorders and chronic pain appear to be exaggerations of this baseline pattern of distortions, suggesting that these conditions may relate to dysfunction of mechanisms for body perception. Distortions of body representations provide a revealing window into basic aspects of self-perception.

Keywords: selfbody imagetouchproprioceptionpaineating disorders

The cartesian folk theater: People conceptualize consciousness as a spatio-temporally localized process in the human brain

Forstmann, M., & Burgmer, P. (2021). The cartesian folk theater: People conceptualize consciousness as a spatio-temporally localized process in the human brain. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Dec 2021. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001108

Abstract: The present research (total N = 2,057) tested whether people’s folk conception of consciousness aligns with the notion of a “Cartesian Theater” (Dennett, 1991). More precisely, we tested the hypotheses that people believe that consciousness happens in a single, confined area (vs. multiple dispersed areas) in the human brain, and that it (partly) happens after the brain finished analyzing all available information. Further, we investigated how these beliefs are related to participants’ neuroscientific knowledge as well as their reliance on intuition, and which rationale they use to explain their responses. Using a computer-administered drawing task, we found that participants located consciousness, but not unrelated neurological processes (Studies 1a and 1b) or unconscious thinking (Study 2) in a single, confined area in the prefrontal cortex, and that they considered most of the brain not involved in consciousness. Participants mostly relied on their intuitions when responding, and they were not affected by prior knowledge about the brain. Additionally, they considered the conscious experience of sensory stimuli to happen in a spatially more confined area than the corresponding computational analysis of these stimuli (Study 3). Furthermore, participants’ explicit beliefs about spatial and temporal localization of consciousness (i.e., consciousness happening after the computational analysis of sensory information is completed) are independent, yet positively correlated beliefs (Study 4). Using a more elaborate measure for temporal localization of conscious experience, our final study confirmed that people believe consciousness to partly happen even after information processing is done (Study 5).

Content in which emotions are more prevalent than argument quality is more likely to be shared; content in which positive emotions are more prevalent than negative emotions is more likely to be shared

What makes people share political content on social media? The role of emotion, authority and ideology, Jason Weismueller et al. Computers in Human Behavior, December 20 2021, 107150. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2021.107150

Highlights

• Emotionality is more important than argument quality in fostering user engagement.

• Positive political content receives more engagement than negative content.

• Ideological extreme users are less likely to engage with positive content.

• Politicians may use influential users in the political sphere for political campaigning.

• Social media platforms should emphasize a greater focus on critical thinking.

Abstract: In this paper, we examine which content characteristics lead to increased sharing of political information on social media, and which role political ideology has in user sharing behavior. More specifically, we investigate the impact of emotions and authority on sharing, as well as the moderating role of political extremity of social media users. We analyzed 10,141 political tweets, sent by 527 influencers between July 2019 and June 2020. The results reveal that content in which emotions are more prevalent than argument quality is more likely to be shared than content in which argument quality is prevalent. Perhaps surprisingly, we also show that content in which positive emotions are more prevalent than negative emotions is more likely to be shared than content in which negative emotions are prevalent. Moreover, authority (i.e., a dominant language style and a high number of followers) can lead to increased shares. Finally, we find that content in which positive emotions are more prevalent than negative emotions is less effective in increasing shares when users are located at the ideological extreme compared to the ideological center. On the one hand, we provide insights into how influencers in social media networks can be utilized for political campaigning. On the other hand, we provide insights into what makes users engage with political content from influencers that might contribute to political polarization on social media.

Keywords: InfluencersUS PoliticsSharingIdeologySocial network analysisTwitter

People form face impressions based on a conceptual understanding of personality structure that they have come to learn from their regional environment

Personality across world regions predicts variability in the structure of face impressions. DongWon Oh, Jared D. Martin, and Jonathan B. Freeman. Psychological Science, accepted. Dec 2021. https://files.cargocollective.com/c860495/OhMartinFreeman_PersonalityAcross.pdf

Abstract: Research on face impressions has often focused on a fixed and universal architecture, treating  regional variability as noise. Here, we demonstrate a crucial yet neglected role of cultural  learning processes in forming face impressions. In Study 1, we found that variability in the  structure of perceivers’ face impressions across 42 world regions (n=287,178) could be  explained by variability in the actual personality structure of people living in those regions. In  Study 2, data from 232 world regions (n=307,136) revealed that perceivers use the actual  personality structure learned from their local environment to form lay beliefs about personality,  which in turn scaffold the structure of perceivers’ face impressions. Together, these results  suggest that people form face impressions based on a conceptual understanding of personality  structure that they have come to learn from their regional environment. The findings call for greater attention on the regional and cultural specificity of face impressions.

Keywords: person perception, face processing, social cognition, semantic memory, cultural psychology

Adolescent close friendship quality was a significantly better predictor of adult peer and romantic outcomes, work performance, and depressive symptoms than parental reports of the parent–teen relationship

When friendships surpass parental relationships as predictors of long-term outcomes: Adolescent relationship qualities and adult psychosocial functioning. Joseph P. Allen, Meghan Costello, Jessica Kansky, Emily L. Loeb. Child Development, December 6 2021. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.13713

Abstract: Perceptions of adolescent–parent and adolescent–peer relationship qualities, and adolescents’ attachment states of mind were examined as predictors of adult social and romantic relationship quality, depressive symptoms, and work performance. Adolescents (86 male, 98 female; 58% White, 29% African American, 8% mixed race/ethnicity, 5% other groups) were followed from age 13 to 24 via observational, self-, parent-, and close friend-reports. Adolescent close friendship quality was a significantly better predictor of adult peer and romantic outcomes, work performance, and depressive symptoms than parental reports of the parent–teen relationship; attachment security was also a strong predictor of numerous outcomes. Results are interpreted as reflecting the difficulty for parents judging parent–teen relationship quality and as reflecting the growing importance of close friendships during this period.

Assessment of Romantic Relationship Quality

Ribotta, B., Silan, M. A., Dujols, O., Bellemin, R., & IJzerman, H. (2021, December 15). Lack of Construct Validity and Item-Content Overlap in the Assessment of Romantic Relationship Quality. https://doi.org/10.31234/osf.io/w32dc

Abstract: Central to interventions to improve the quality of romantic relationships is its measurement. Yet, to what degree is the concept of relationship quality well-defined, and, importantly, well-measured? In the present article, the authors conducted a comprehensive search of instruments measuring relationship quality in ProQuest, Web of Science, and Scopus finding a total of 599 scales, with 26 meeting our definition of romantic relationship quality. When the authors investigated the 26 scales’ overlap of item-content, they identified 25 distinct categories among 754 items (with our database of items on the OSF: https://osf.io/v964p/). The mean overlap between scales was weak (Jaccard Index correlation coefficient = 0.39), indicating that these scales were very heterogeneous. The authors then assessed to what extent researchers reported internal validity in 43 scale development-validation articles. They found that Cronbach’s Alpha was most often reported (in 91% of the articles). Other aspects were reported far less often, with 55% reporting exploratory factor analyses, 26% reporting confirmatory factor analyses, 23% reporting test-retest reliability, 7% reporting measurement invariance. The heterogeneity of measures and lack of reported general validity of romantic relationship quality points to the need for concept-driven work on the assessment of romantic relationship quality.

Fifty-nation study: Values better predict alcohol consumption; traits better predict obesity

Using Public Datasets to Understand the Psychological Correlates of Smoking, Alcohol Consumption, and Obesity: A Country-Level Analysis. Paul H. P. Hanel, Sara M. G. da Silva, Richard A. Inman. Cross-Cultural Research, December 16, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1177/10693971211062130

Abstract: In the present research, we investigate whether cultural value orientations (CVOs) and aggregate personality traits (Big-5) predict actual levels of alcohol consumption, smoking, and obesity across 50 countries using averages derived from millions of data points. Aggregate traits explained variance above and beyond CVOs in obesity (particularly neuroticism and extraversion), while CVOs explained variance beyond aggregate traits in alcohol consumption (particularly harmony and hierarchy). Smoking was not linked to aggregated traits or CVOs. We conclude that an understanding of the cultural correlates of risky health behaviors may help inform important policies and interventions for meeting international sustainable development goals.

Keywords: public data, smoking, obesity, alcohol, health, personality traits, cultural value orientations

Discussion

Few studies have investigated the psychological predictors of risky health behaviors at an aggregated country level. The present study addressed this gap in the literature by obtaining reliable estimates of health and psychological variables from big publicly available datasets comprising millions of individuals, and using them to test theoretical predictions.

How Do Country-Level Values and Traits Relate to Risky Health Behaviors?

Cultural values: A recent study using similar datasets has demonstrated that cultural values show a particular pattern of association with alcohol consumption across countries (Inman et al., 2017). Specifically, alcohol consumption was greater in countries that value harmony and autonomy, and lower in countries that value embeddedness and hierarchy. Given that the present study used the same data for cultural values, it was unsurprising that the partial correlations in the present study replicated those of Inman et al. Specifically, significant correlations were observed for harmony (positive) and embeddedness (negative), although the effect sizes were small.

Beyond alcohol, the present study was interested in how values would be associated with smoking and obesity. The pattern of partial correlations for these health indicators suggested some similarity with alcohol consumption. For example, the direction of the associations between alcohol, smoking, and obesity were the same for hierarchy (negative) and mastery (negative). There were, however, some clear differences. Alcohol and smoking were positively correlated with harmony, but obesity appeared to be unrelated. Inman et al. (2017) explained that harmony may be positively correlated to alcohol consumption at the country level because cultures high in harmony regulate how their members relate to the social world via an emphasis on appreciation and “fitting in” (Schwartz, 2006). Such an emphasis may promote “having a good time” as a social motive and thus encourage individuals to engage in risky social behaviors such as drinking, smoking, and illicit drug use. In contrast, obesity may be unrelated to harmony values as its associated risky behaviors are less social in nature.

A second finding was that hierarchy was negatively associated with alcohol consumption. On the other hand, obesity appeared unrelated to embeddedness, and smoking had a positive correlation. Cultures that value hierarchy emphasize responsible behavior in line with rules assigned to their respective roles (Schwartz, 2006). Alcohol has long been considered a threat to public order (Mold, 2018), and contemporary evidence links alcohol consumption to socially undesirable behaviors and health problems (World Health Organization, 2014), both of which are threatening hierarchies. Smoking and obesity, on the other hand, are not linked to disinhibited social behaviors in the same manner as alcohol (e.g., intoxicated behavior) and thus may not be considered as threatening to authorities.

Finally, egalitarianism had a significant negative association with smoking but was unrelated to alcohol, and obesity. This can be understood by considering that egalitarian cultures socialize their populations to feel concern for everyone’s welfare and to act for the benefit of others (Schwartz, 2006). Smoking may be negatively related to egalitarianism because it is a behavior that presents a risk to others, via secondhand smoke, as well as the individual. Indeed, there are a wide range of risks associated with passive smoking including heart disease, stroke and cancer (U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, 2006), and studies within individual countries, such as the U.S.A, have shown that a large proportion of people perceive secondhand smoke as being harmful (Kruger et al., 2016). In short, egalitarian populations may be less likely to smoke because their members try and act in a manner that does not risk the health of others.

Big-5 traits: The study expands on Inman et al. (2017), Mackenbach (2014) and others by also considering country-level aggregates of personality traits. Firstly, it was evident that neither alcohol consumption nor smoking was linked to aggregate personality. Partial correlations did, however, hint that countries with high aggregated scores for openness to new experiences had increased alcohol consumption (although this correlation fell short of being statistically significant, p = .052).

Unlike smoking and alcohol, obesity did present a clear pattern of associations with aggregate personality traits. Specifically, obesity had a strong positive association with extraversion, and a moderate negative association with neuroticism. These findings add to a growing body of evidence that links extraversion to obesity at a country level (McCrae & Terracciano, 2008) and concur with those of several studies that have linked extraversion to increased BMI (Armon et al., 2013; Kakizaki et al., 2008). A clear question that emerges from these results is: why is a personality trait linked to descriptors such as “outgoing” and “energetic” linked to increased obesity? Indeed, some studies at the individual level have linked extraversion to healthier eating habits (Mõttus et al., 2012). To account for this, some authors have argued that the positive mood state linked to high extraversion leads individuals to perceive themselves as less vulnerable to negative health conditions and thus to engage in behaviors, such as overeating, that can lead to obesity (Grant & Schwartz, 2011).

Interestingly, our findings only partly replicate those on an individual level. For example, we found that harmony is positively associated with alcohol consumption, whereas Rudnev & Vauclair (2018) have not found a significant relation on an individual level; we found no association between conscientiousness and obesity, whereas a range of other studies found a negative association (e.g., Allen et al., 2015; Gerlach et al., 2015; Kim, 2016; cf. Table 1); we found a positive association between obesity and extraversion which is in line with the literature (e.g., Kim, 2016; Mõttus et al., 2012); however, we also found a negative association between neuroticism and obesity, whereas other studies either found no or positive associations (Kim, 2016; Mõttus et al., 2012).

We do not perceive a significant finding to be conflicting with a non-significant one because effect sizes can vary across studies: Assuming a statistical power of <1 (in many cases, the power is clearly below <.80; Brysbaert, 2019), a mix of significant and non-significant findings is expected (Lakens & Etz, 2017). Thus, our findings were mostly in line with the literature. However, the negative association between neuroticism and obesity requires further explanation because some previous research found positive associations between obesity and neuroticism (whereas some others found no association, cf. Table 1). This might indicate to an ecological fallacy: The pattern of association is reversed on the aggregated level as opposed to an individual level. Alternatively, neuroticism might have a different meaning on a country level than on an individual level. The effects of a neurotic person might be different than those of a neurotic large group of people (here: country). Future research is needed to explore this possibility. Importantly, since our findings are overall consistent with the literature, it is unlikely that the ecological fallacy is an issue.

Which Is a Better Predictor of Country-Level Risky Health Behaviors: Values or Traits?

The present study tested theoretical predictions regarding the relative importance of value and traits for understanding risky health behaviors. Our finding was that values and traits were differentially important for different behaviors. In line with our predictions, cultural values were a better predictor of alcohol consumption than traits. Alcohol consumption has always been rooted in a social context and in many societies (excluding “abstinent” societies that expressly forbid alcohol consumption for religious reasons; Room & Mäkelä, 2000) alcohol consumption is a common occurrence at social events (Galea et al., 2004). In other words, drinking alcohol is a social behavior. Because values are more important for guiding social interactions than traits (Boer et al., 2011), they were also the better predictors.

Also in line with our predictions, B5-traits were a better predictor of obesity than cultural values. Obesity can be a result of by poor eating habits and a lack of physical exercise (Prentice & Jebb, 1995). In other words, it is caused by behavior that lies in the past. Thus, obesity is conceptually closer to traits, which measure how a person is in the present (Saucier, 1994), in contrast to values, which are better able to capture future behavior (Eyal et al., 2009).

Finally, the results did not support our third hypothesis that values explain variance beyond traits in smoking. Initially, we predicted that values would be better at explaining smoking than traits because values are more relevant for social interactions (Boer et al., 2011). However, in retrospect, we believe that smoking might have a weaker social component than alcohol consumption. Indeed, the number of cigarettes daily smokers consume on average per hour varies little between 10 a.m. and midnight (Shiffman et al., 2014). If smoking was mostly social, it would be higher in the late afternoons and evenings when people are more likely to be in social situations. Note however that our data does not allow us to distinguish between social smokers and “full-time” smokers. We assume that values are better predictors for social smokers, a prediction that can be investigated by future research.

Limitations

One potential limitation pertains to differences in sample types across the measures. While smoking, obesity, and alcohol consumption were based on official representative data, not all of our traits and values data was based on representative samples. However, the value importance and structure remains mainly the same across sample types such as representative, student, or teacher samples (Hanel et al., 2018; Schwartz & Bardi, 2001), indicating that the sample type barely matters.

Another possible limitation pertains to the sample size of only 50 countries. However, the term “sample size” is misleading here: The numerical value of each country for each variable consists of hundreds to thousands of participants (traits and values) or even millions (smoking, obesity, and alcohol consumption), making our analysis very robust. Moreover, a sample of 50 countries is more representative of the total “population” of around 200 countries than, for example, a sample of even 1,000,000 Americans to the total US population of around 300, 000, 000. Finally, with 50 countries, we included more countries than many previous studies which often included 20–30 countries (see Introduction, for example). It is important to acknowledge, however, that countries from geographical regions other than Europe, and particularly the East Mediterranean and Africa regions, were underrepresented in our sample.

Finally, the trait data we used were measured with two different questionnaires, the NEO-PI-R (McCrae, 2001) and the BFI (Schmitt et al., 2007), which show on a country level relatively low convergence, rs ≤ .45 (Schmitt et al., 2007). However, both trait measures are reliable and valid, which makes it unlikely that the combination of trait measures impacted the results.

Implications

A current UN goal for sustainable development by 2030 includes ensuring healthy lives and well-being for all at all ages (United Nations General, 2015). This includes specifically, reducing by one-third premature mortality from noncommunicable diseases through prevention and treatment and promoting well-being. This study adds to a growing body of research that suggests information about cultural-level psychological characteristics, including dimensions and profiles of cultural values and aggregate personality, may be useful for informing policies and interventions aimed at meeting these goals. Campaigns promoting healthy behaviors, for example, may be differentially effective across populations with distinct cultural values or personality characteristics. Future research is, however, required to further understand the causal mechanisms between country-level psychological characteristics and risky health behaviors.

Many publicly available datasets, and particularly those including health-related variables, have data for most countries. Unfortunately, datasets including national indices of psychological variables typically have smaller samples. Moreover, while national health indicators are abundant and easily accessible, it is currently more difficult to find and obtain national indices of psychological variables. The present study demonstrates that public datasets can be useful to researchers who wish to test theoretical predictions about country-level psychological characteristics and their relations to indicators of health or well-being. Given that such research findings may have important implications for meeting international goals for sustainable development (e.g., the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development), a clear implication of our study is that an effort is required to construct public datasets that outline the psychological characteristics of all countries globally.

Monkeys vs Dogs: It is claimed that over 200 puppies were dropped to their deaths by vengeful simians... Hyenas can also show this avenging behavior...

Monkeys vs Dogs: Over 200 puppies dropped to their deaths by vengeful simians. Pritha Paul. MEAWW Dec 18 2021. https://meaww.com/horrifying-monkey-vs-dog-war-over-200-puppies-dropped-to-their-deaths-by-angry-simians

After a few dogs killed an infant monkey a month ago, the angry monkeys have been snatching up pups to drop them from a height to their grisly deaths

A blood-thirsty gang of monkeys are waging a war with dogs in a small village in India. The village's canine population is being terrorized by the group of primates after a few dogs killed an infant monkey.

The monkeys' "revenge" saw around 250 dogs being dragged and dropped from the tops of buildings and trees. Not a single dog has survived the purge by the raging primates. All of this has been going down in Maharashtra’s Beed district, about 300 miles east of Mumbai, in the nearby Lavool village. The killing began a month ago after a few dogs killed a monkey's baby, the villagers told News 18. The moment a dog is spotted, the simians snatch up the pups, drag them somewhere high to drop them to their deaths. 

Video captured by the outlet showed a tiny dog in the clutches of a primate near the edge of a building. Residents contacted forest department officials to catch the monkeys after all of the dogs were killed in the village. But in Lavool, which has a population of about 5,000, the officials weren’t able to catch a single monkey, when they tried, the outlet reported. Some have even been attacked. 

When all else failed, the villagers took it upon themselves to take action and tried to tackle the monkey problem. However, the simians then turned their sights on the people as they tried to rescue the dogs. As a result, some have been injured after falling from buildings while trying to save the dogs, the outlet said. The monkeys still haven’t stopped and are now targeting small children en route to school, the outlet said. 

According to Stephanie Poindexter, an assistant professor at SUNY Buffalo whose research focuses on primate behavioral ecology, monkeys can take revenge. "We've seen that when an individual is attacked in some way, the likelihood of them attacking someone related to their aggressor is higher," Poindexter told Gizmodo. "Typically there's a preference for attacking a third-party associated with the original aggressor, as opposed to the actual aggressor... for the most part, these acts of 'revenge' take place shortly after the attack." Poindexter also explained that hyenas also have been known to seek revenge by hurting the aggressor's relatives instead of the actual aggressor.

Other instances of monkey rage

This is not the only instance of monkeys taking revenge. A wild monkey captured a puppy and held it hostage at the top of a tree for three days in Malaysia. The macaque reportedly kidnapped the puppy when it was two weeks old. 

Some locals have also complained about the monkeys raiding their pantries, snatching clothes, and going through fridges. The increasing number of complaints led to Malaysia's Department of Wildlife and National Parks begin mass cullings of thousands of macaques a year.

Psilocybin microdosing: In a pre-registered, double-blind, placebo-controlled, within-subject crossover design study, they found not affect emotion processing or symptoms of anxiety and depression compared with placebo

Psilocybin microdosing does not affect emotion-related symptoms and processing: A preregistered field and lab-based study. Josephine Marschall et al. Journal of Psychopharmacology, December 17, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1177/02698811211050556

Abstract

Background: Microdoses of psychedelics (i.e. a sub-hallucinogenic dose taken every third day) can reduce symptoms of depression, anxiety and stress according to anecdotal reports and observational studies. Research with medium to high doses of psilocybin points towards potential underlying mechanisms, including the modulation of emotion and interoceptive processing.

Aims: In this preregistered study, we investigated whether psilocybin microdoses alter self-reported interoceptive awareness and whether repeated microdosing over 3 weeks modulates emotion processing and reduces symptoms of anxiety and depression.

Methods: We used a double-blind, placebo-controlled, within-subject crossover design. Participants completed the Multidimensional Assessment of Interoceptive Awareness Questionnaire 1½ h after self-administering their second dose (or placebo), and the emotional go/no-go task and the shortened Depression Anxiety Stress Scale 1½ h after self-administering their seventh dose.

Results: Our confirmatory analyses revealed that psilocybin microdosing did not affect emotion processing or symptoms of anxiety and depression compared with placebo. Our exploratory analyses revealed that psilocybin microdosing did not affect self-reported interoceptive awareness, that symptoms of depression and stress were significantly reduced in the first block compared with baseline, that participants broke blind in the second block and that there was no effect of expectations. Further research in a substance-naïve population with clinical range anxiety and depressive symptoms is needed to substantiate the potential beneficial effects of microdosing.

Keywords: Psilocybin, microdosing, psychedelics, emotion processing, interoceptive awareness, anxiety, depression, symptoms

Discussion

We conducted this study to investigate the effect of repeated psilocybin microdosing on depression and anxiety symptoms, emotion processing and interoceptive awareness. We hypothesized that psilocybin microdosing would reduce symptoms of anxiety and depression, increase the processing time needed to identify negative emotions and increase interoceptive awareness. Our results suggest that the psilocybin microdose did not affect interoceptive awareness, but that there was an effect of the block-order variable. In block 1, the psilocybin-first block-order group had a lower average on two subscales scores of the MAIA compared with the Placebo-first block-order group, but this difference was no longer significant in block 2. We explored the possibility that the psilocybin-first block-order group’s interoceptive awareness increased due to repeated psilocybin microdosing after block 1 and therefore achieved higher scores in block 2 which were more similar to the placebo-first group. However, although there was an increase in average score, this change was not significant. It could well be that the block-order groups already differed in interoceptive awareness at baseline and became more similar in their scores over time regardless of condition assignment – however as we did not assess baseline scores on interoceptive awareness, this possibility cannot be verified.

The effect of repeated microdosing on emotion processing, as measured using an emotion go/no-go task, and symptoms of anxiety, depression and stress also did not differ from placebo. Our finding that psilocybin microdosing does not affect symptoms of anxiety and depression contradicts previous survey studies which reported marked reductions in negative emotionality following the repeated microdosing of psychedelic substances (Anderson et al., 2019; Johnstad, 2018; Polito and Stevenson, 2019). This discrepancy may be due to four key elements in our method, including the mental well-being of our participants at baseline, the use of psilocybin only, the duration of the microdosing period and the inclusion of a placebo condition.

First, our participants were only admitted if our pre-trial screening deemed them as physically and mentally healthy, and their symptoms of anxiety and depression at baseline were within the normal range on average. Johnstad (2018) and Anderson et al. (2019) did not include this criterion within their designs, allowing for participants with clinical range symptoms at baseline. This creates the possibility that their significant reductions in negative emotionality were in part due to higher negative emotionality at baseline, whereas our participants may have experienced a ceiling effect; they were already mentally healthy prior to microdosing and could not show further improvement during the study. However, this argument is countered by Polito and Stevenson (2019) who did explicitly focus on a non-clinical population. They reported low DASS-21 scores at baseline, yet found marked reductions in depression and stress scores. Thus, although the baseline DASS-21 scores of our participants were in the same range as those of Polito and Stevenson (2019), we failed to see additional improvements in our participants’ depression scores after microdosing. However, Polito and Stevenson (2019) did not find a reduction in anxiety scores after microdosing, which does align with our findings. Moreover, post hoc analyses of the DASS-21 subscale scores in comparison with baseline scores did reveal significant reductions in the stress and depression subscales in block 1, but regardless of condition.

Second, previous results demonstrated by Johnstad (2018), Anderson et al. (2019) and Polito and Stevenson (2019) were based on psychedelic microdoses in general, while we chose to focus on specifically psilocybin. It is thus possible that previous results were driven by the effects of psychedelic substances other than psilocybin. However, Bershad and colleagues (2019) investigated the effect of three different microdoses of LSD (6.5, 13 and 25 μg) and also did not find a significant effect of these doses on emotion processing nor on negative emotionality. Relatedly, in our study, we had little control over the specific amount of psilocybin that participants consumed, due to natural variability in different batches of psilocybin-containing truffles. Next to that, it is possible that we also manipulated other active compounds found in the psilocybin-containing truffles and that these influenced our results.

Third, our participants consumed the microdoses for a shorter duration (3 weeks) compared with those in the research by Polito and Stevenson (2019; 6 weeks) and likely in the research by Johnstad (2018) and Anderson et al. (2019), although here the specific duration of microdosing was not reported. While the appropriate time necessary for the benefits of microdosing to take effect is unknown, it is known that serotonergic antidepressants can take up to 2 months before measurable effects arise (Harmer et al., 2009), potentially because their effects are due to certain downstream changes in brain structure and function (Erb et al., 2016; Hanson et al., 2011). The argument that effects of microdoses may also require a longer period of repeated dosing rests on two key findings: that depression and stress-related disorders are associated with neural atrophy in the prefrontal cortex (PFC; Christoffel et al., 2011) and that serotonergic psychedelics can increase structural and functional plasticity in the PFC (Ly et al., 2018; Olson, 2018), thereby potentially counteracting the neurobiological markers of these disorders. It is possible that a period of consistent microdosing which succeeds 3 weeks is required for such changes to develop and we can expect an effect on emotion processing and mood-related symptoms only after these changes have occurred.

Nevertheless, Cameron et al. (2019) administered microdoses of the serotonergic psychedelic DMT to rats every third day for 7 weeks and revealed no markers of increased neural plasticity. In fact, the researchers found a decrease in dendritic spine density in PFC of female rats. Important to note is that the original association between serotonergic psychedelics and neuronal plasticity is based on the effect of a single large serotonergic psychedelic dose. Single large doses of DMT and LSD were found to promote spinogenesis, synaptogenesis and neural plasticity in cortical neuron cultures of rats 24 h after administration (Ly et al., 2018). Taken together, this evidence, although limited in its generalizability to humans, may indicate that regardless of the duration of the dosing period, psilocybin microdoses are simply not potent enough to trigger structural changes in the cortex.

Another factor that could account for the apparent conflict with previous findings is our implementation of a placebo-control group. It is plausible that previous results were driven by participants’ expectations rather than the chemical components of the doses. This would mean that the sole act of taking doses improved participants’ mental health scores, regardless of whether the doses were placebos or psilocybin microdoses. Indeed, Kaertner et al. (2021) found that positive expectancy scores at baseline predicted changes in well-being after 4 weeks of microdosing. In our participants, we observed an overall decrease in the depression and stress scores from baseline to block 1, irrespective of the condition that the participants were assigned to. This effect, termed the ‘placebo effect’, is especially relevant in clinical and pharmacological research and refers to the situation when blinded participants in the placebo condition experience a reduction in symptoms either due to their positive expectations towards the treatment condition or due to previous conditioning of the treatment condition (Meissner et al., 2011). Especially in antidepressant research, placebo doses evoke reductions in symptoms comparable with the antidepressant (Kirsch, 2014). Such potent placebo responses may also be contributing to previous findings regarding the effects of psilocybin microdosing and make it difficult to assess whether psilocybin microdosing is effective beyond expectations and conditioning.

Of relevance, through an exploratory analysis of our participants’ condition guesses, we found that participants broke blind regarding their condition in the second block. This confound had the potential to further contribute to response expectancy effects. However, we found no difference between psilocybin and placebo conditions in our outcome measures in either block, which indicates that explicit expectations likely did not influence our results. Moreover, in contrast to Kaertner et al. (2021), we found no effect of expectation in further post hoc exploratory analyses. We propose two possible reasons for this lack of an effect of psilocybin microdosing on outcome measures: either the placebos and psilocybin microdoses were equally ineffective at influencing a change in response to the scales that we used (potentially the measures were not sensitive enough), or the placebo effect was equally as effective as the microdosing effect but was guided by processes other than explicit expectations, such as previous conditioning (e.g. as demonstrated by Amanzio and Benedetti, 1999). Previous experience with psychedelic substances could evoke a placebo effect based on conditioning. Most participants in this study had taken psychedelics before and may therefore have been subject to such conditioning. Thus, including a placebo condition may have dampened our effect of interest.

Finally, we need to consider the possibility that microdosing does not affect depression and anxiety at all, as our findings consistently indicate. Previously reported beneficial effects may be related to other confounding factors, as mentioned above, and experimental research thus far fails to show these hypothesized effects of microdosing on clinically relevant outcome measures (Bershad et al., 2019; Family et al., 2020).

Limitations

We note five key limitations of our study. First, our sample suffers from selection bias, since participants were self-selected from a microdosing workshop. As a result, most of our participants had tried psychedelics previously, which means that they may have broken blind easier or may have been desensitized to the microdosing effects. Second, the psilocybin doses were made by the participants using dried psilocybin truffles, meaning that we cannot be sure of the exact amounts of psilocybin in the individual doses that the participants consumed. It is possible that the degree of psilocybin content varied across participants and thereby obscured our results. Third, we encountered a large drop-out rate during this project and several participants did not sufficiently comply with the behavioural guidelines to be included in the analyses. This resulted in small sample size relative to existent observational studies and in a further selection bias (i.e. only motivated participants likely stayed in). Moreover, due to such sample size, our study may have been underpowered to detect true effects, particularly the interaction effect hypothesized for the emotional go/no-go task. Our post hoc power analysis suggested that our design, given our observed data, was insufficiently powered to detect this effect. Simulated data in the hypothesized direction, however, yielded sufficient power with a large effect size. Of course, as noted earlier, this analysis based on simulated data remains speculative and we encourage future studies to plan their sample size according to expected RT patterns. Fourth, we measured the effects in our study only after self-administration of a dose, and not between doses or after each block. Thus, our results may be confounded by the acute effect of the psilocybin dose, which may differ from its persistent effect after the acute chemical-induced symptoms have subsided. However, Szigeti et al. (2021) did assess both acute and post-acute effects and found no significant microdose vs placebo differences in psychological outcomes when accounting for participants breaking blind. Last, our study is a combined field and lab-based study, meaning that the results may not be readily generalizable or replicable, for example, in a more clinical setting.

The psychologists with tattoos were viewed as less professional, but the ones with provocative tattoos were seen as more competent in interventions, empathy, ability to practice in a forensic setting, & as more confident, interesting, likable, & less lazy

Zidenberg, A. M., Dutrisac, S., & Olver, M. (2021). “No ragrets”: Public perceptions of tattooed mental health professionals. Professional Psychology: Research and Practice, Dec 2021. https://doi.org/10.1037/pro0000441

Abstract: Clinical psychology students and practitioners are conventionally advised to “cover up” their tattoos, as they may be deemed unprofessional by clients and risk hindering the working alliance. While this may seem reasonable on the surface, the only research available on the topic has focused on psychologists’ self-perceptions and perceptions of tattooed colleagues, which seem to be negative, rather than exploring client perceptions of tattooed clinicians themselves. The present study explored the perceptions of a fictional clinical psychologist profile, including one of three photos (no tattoo, neutral tattoo, or provocative tattoo). Participants were asked to rate the competence of the clinical psychologist, and their feelings toward her. Results indicated that the psychologist with the provocative tattoo was viewed as more competent in the domains of interventions, empathy, ability to practice in a forensic setting, and with adult populations. The psychologist with the provocative tattoo was also rated as more confident, interesting, likable, and less lazy than the psychologist with the neutral tattoo or no tattoo. Although participants rated the two tattooed psychologists as appearing less professional than the psychologist with no tattoo, this did not appear to translate into negative feelings toward the tattooed psychologists or an unwillingness to seek services from them. The results suggest that, contrary to conventional wisdom, psychologists and their trainees may not need to take special precautions to conceal visible tattoos. Tattoos do not seem to impact perceptions of clinician competence among the general public and may even aid the formation of professional bonds with clientele.

Simulation of 100 000 years of evolution in hunter-gatherers: Evolutionary shifts in disgust as polygenic trait occurred (consequence of germ-cell mutations), but cultural transmission between generations operated more quickly & at greater magnitude

The human behavioural immune system is a product of cultural evolution. Edwin S. Dalmaijer, Thomas Armstrong. arXiv Dec 17 2021, https://arxiv.org/abs/2008.13211

Abstract: To avoid disease, humans show far greater contamination sensitivity and avoidance than their closest living relatives. This is driven by an increased propensity to experience disgust. There is broad agreement that uniquely sensitive disgust in humans is an evolutionary adaptation, which was previously thought to be fuelled by both cultural and genetic inheritance. However, current theories have centred biology and sidelined culture, despite surprisingly little empirical evidence to support this claim. Here, we simulated 100 000 years of evolution in human hunter-gatherers to directly compare genetic and cultural inheritance in a variety of scenarios. We modelled disgust avoidance as a trait that governed the extent to which individuals forewent potentially contaminated nutrition to avoid risking gastrointestinal illness. Our results confirmed natural selection for disgust, particularly as the level and cost of contamination in an environment increased. Evolutionary shifts in disgust as polygenic trait occurred as a consequence of germ-cell mutations, but were more prominent in populations with high initial genetic variance. Crucially, cultural transmission between generations operated more quickly and at greater magnitude, even if parental modelling was eliminated. Our computational work supports the hypothesis that cultural evolution outpaced its biological counterpart to select health-improving behaviours that benefited survival. This study serves not only as evidence of cultural evolution shaping the behavioural immune system, but is also an illustration of emerging theories that paint affective and cognitive mechanisms as socially transmitted rather than biologically determined functions.

Meat consumption: Health or environmental information has no main effect on attitude and no effect on intention or behavior

Can information influence meat consumption behaviour? An experimental field study in the university canteen. Nina Weingarten et al. Food Quality and Preference, December 17 2021, 104498. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.foodqual.2021.104498

Highlights

• The study combines an online survey with a field study in a university canteen.

• Aim of the study is to investigate the role of information on meat consumption.

• Health information has no main effect on attitude, intention, or behavior.

• Environmental information has no main effect on attitude, intention, or behavior.

• Subjective knowledge moderates the effect of environmental information on attitude.

Abstract: The present study investigates the effectiveness of health and environmental information provision as an intervention to reduce meat consumption behaviour. In an experimental online survey (n = 194), we tested how information about the negative effects of meat consumption on health or the environment influence attitude and intention to reduce meat consumption. In the following two weeks, we measured participants’ meat consumption behaviour in the university canteen, which we accessed through an individual purchase card. Contrary to our hypotheses, our results show that there is no direct effect of health or environmental information on attitude, intention, or meat consumption behaviour compared to the control group. However, our results indicate that for participants with low subjective knowledge, environmental information is effective in influencing attitude. Neither attitude nor intention mediates the relationship between information and behaviour. Our findings highlight that information provision has limited effectiveness in changing attitude, but does not influence intention or behaviour. We conclude that more research is needed that includes a direct measure of meat consumption behaviour to evaluate the effectiveness of information provision as an intervention.

Keywords: Meat consumptionBehaviourHealth informationEnvironmental informationUniversity canteenSubjective knowledge

Countries that became less wealthy and more morally polarized over time also became less trustful

Stavrova, O., Evans, A. M., & Brandt, M. J. (2021). Ecological dimensions explain the past but do not predict future changes in trust. American Psychologist, 76(6), 983–996. Dec 2021.  https://doi.org/10.1037/amp0000815

Abstract: Concerns about declining trust and rising cynicism are recurrent in academic research and the media. Yet, prior studies focused on explaining, rather than predicting, temporal changes in trust. We tested prediction models of trust change across (up to) 98 countries over six measurement waves (from 1981 to 2014). We tested whether different ecological predictors (e.g., pathogen prevalence, population diversity, inequality) explain the past and predict future trust levels across countries. We used societal growth curve models to disentangle between- from within-country effects and evaluated the accuracy of the models’ out-of-sample predictions using the train-test split method: We used data from 1981–2009 to “train” the models and obtain predictions of trust for the period of 2010–2014. None of our models was more accurate in predicting future trust than a simpler baseline model. Moreover, we did not observe a universal decline in trust. Instead, temporal changes in trust were country-specific, highlighting the locality of cultural change. Most ecological predictors were correlated with between-country differences in trust. Only resource availability and moral opinion polarization were associated with within-country changes in trust: Countries that became less wealthy and more morally polarized over time also became less trustful. These results highlight important differences between explanatory and predictive models and suggest that ecological theories of trust might be of limited use when predicting future cultural shifts.