Generalized tendency to make extreme trait judgements from faces

Generalized tendency to make extreme trait judgements from faces. Atsunobu Suzuki, Saori Tsukamoto and Yusuke Takahashi. Royal Society Open Science, November 23 2022. https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.220172

Abstract: People differ in their tendency to infer others' personalities and abilities from their faces. An extreme form of such face-based trait inference (FBTI) is problematic because of its unwarranted impact on real-world decision making. Evolutionary perspectives on FBTI suggest that its inter-individual variation would be trait-specific: e.g. those who make extreme face-based inferences about trustworthiness may not necessarily do so about dominance. However, there are several psychological variables that can increase the FBTI extremity across traits. Here, we show that there is a generalized individual tendency to make extreme FBTI across traits, in support of the latter view. We found that the degrees of extremity of face-based inferences about seven traits had high cross-trait correlations, constituting a general factor. This generalized FBTI extremity had good test–retest reliability and was neither an artefact of extreme nor socially desirable response biases. Moreover, it was positively associated with facial emotion recognition ability and tendencies to believe physiognomy and endorse stereotypes. Our results demonstrate that there are individuals who have a temporally stable disposition to draw extreme conclusions about various traits of others from facial appearance as well as their psychological characteristics.

4. General discussion

4.1. Summary of main findings

Studies 1 and 2 consistently showed that those who make extreme face-based judgements on a certain trait also tend to make extreme judgements on other traits, providing evidence for generalized FBTI extremity. The results are in contrast with the evolutionary perspectives on FBTI [22–24] that its inter-individual variation would be trait-specific. Instead, they are more compatible with psychology theory-based predictions that there are several variables that could enhance the FBTI extremity across traits. In partial accordance with our hypotheses, generalized FBTI extremity was positively associated with physiognomic belief, facial emotion recognition ability and stereotype endorsement, but not with cognitive miserliness. In short, we demonstrate that there are individuals who have a temporally stable disposition to draw extreme conclusions about various traits of others from facial appearance as well as their psychological characteristics. These findings and continued research into this issue will contribute to a better understanding of the nature of the excessive impact of face on social decision making, sometimes called face-ism [6], and to an identification of a prime target population for its intervention [15,16].

4.2. Generalized face-based trait inference extremity

Our analyses ensured that the generalized FBTI extremity reflects true individual differences in social cognition and is not merely a by-product of methodological artefacts. First, the well-established trustworthiness-by-dominance model of facial impressions [17,25,26] was reproduced from the present data, dismissing the possibility that our task format prompted participants to judge faces solely on a single dimension. Second, high cross-trait correlations of the FBTI extremity were demonstrated even after controlling for non-specific response biases such as extreme response style [51] and socially desirable responding [52]. Third, we showed that the generalized FBTI extremity had good test–retest reliability over a 2-month interval. Electronic supplementary material, text S2 also includes a complementary study we conducted to determine whether the temporal stability of the generalized FBTI extremity was explained by response biases. While this study exhibited a somewhat lower test–retest correlation of generalized FBTI extremity (r = 0.699, 95% CI [0.586, 0.786]) than Study 1, the value changed only slightly after controlling for extreme response style and socially desirable responding (r = 0.681, 95% CI [0.563, 0.772]). These results indicate that the generalized FBTI extremity is a temporally stable disposition.

Concerns may be raised if our attempts to rule out a response-bias account are sufficient. First, the extreme response bias when rating others' faces may not be well captured by the bias when rating self-descriptive verbal statements (i.e. Extreme Response Style Measure [51]). To address this issue, extreme response bias was quantified using data from the face-based trait-rating task. Taking trustworthiness as an example, 10 faces that were not classified as either stereotypically trustworthy- or untrustworthy-looking (i.e. whose mean trustworthiness rating ranked between 11 and 20 out of 30 faces) were selected separately from male and female faces. Then, for each participant, the ratings were recoded such that higher values reflected a greater tendency to choose extreme categories on the scale (i.e. ratings of 6, 5, 4, 3, 2 and 1 were recoded into 3, 2, 1, 1, 2 and 3, respectively), and the recoded ratings were averaged across the selected 20 faces. Bias scores for other trait judgements were defined in the same way, and the averages of trait-specific scores were treated as an overall index of extreme response bias in the face-based trait-rating task. Even when controlling for this additional measure of extreme responses, high cross-trait correlations of the FBTI extremity were reproduced. Moreover, while the association of generalized FBTI extremity with physiognomic belief was not significant, its associations with facial emotion recognition ability and stereotype endorsement were replicated. Second, it may be argued that, since the face-based trait-rating task had participants rate all traits at once for each face, lazy response behaviours, such as frequently choosing the same values on the rating scale, and/or strategic response behaviours, such as trying to provide a consistent (plausible) pattern of ratings, could have inflated cross-trait correlations of FBTI extremity. Regarding this point, we would like to note that in the face-based trait-rating task, desirable traits appeared almost evenly on the left and right sides (figure 1a)—in other words, there were reverse items for each face, and the order of the trait dimensions was randomized across trials. Therefore, it is unlikely that a lazy response leads to high cross-trait correlations. In addition, this counterbalanced and randomized setting would require significant effort when viewing the scale to provide a consistent pattern of ratings. Thus, we used survey completion times as viable measures of participant effort [58] and examined their correlations with the variables of interest in the present research. We found that the generalized FBTI extremity did not correlate positively with completion times, whereas it negatively correlated with squared completion times. Albeit a post hoc speculation, it is possible that participants finishing the survey at a moderate pace made the strongest effort, which might have elevated cross-trait correlations of FBTI extremity. This interpretation could explain the negative correlation between the squared completion times and generalized FBTI extremity. However, controlling for completion times (including their squares) did not change our main findings. Based on these additional analyses (see electronic supplementary material, text S3 for details), we believe that the generalized FBTI extremity would not be an artefact of the response bias.

It is also worthwhile to discuss the distinctions between explicit rating tasks akin to the one used in this study and those tasks measuring FBTI in a more indirect fashion. A seminal work proposing the trustworthiness-by-dominance model of facial impressions was based on the data of explicit trait ratings of faces [17]. Subsequent influential studies that replicated and extended the two-dimensional model ([23,25,34]; for a review, see [26]) and recent pursuits of perceiver effects on FBTI [3–5,21,59] also used explicit rating tasks. Therefore, our results indicating the presence of individuals who explicitly form extreme facial impressions across traits would be a valuable addition to the literature on FBTI, which relies heavily on data from explicit rating tasks. On the other hand, facial impressions have also been assessed by more indirect measures, such as the latency and dynamics of responses related to trait inference [60–62] and decision making in simulated social settings [53,63,64]. In general, explicit and indirect measures assess related but distinct constructs [65], and one measure is not necessarily superior to the other. For example, perceived trustworthiness of a given face is often measured using trust games in which participants are asked to decide how much money they are willing to entrust to the owner of the face [53,63,64]. Trust games may appear to provide a better indicator of trustworthiness impressions than explicit rating tasks given that money has an objective unit of measurement (e.g. British Pound), whereas the meaning of verbal anchors on a rating scale (e.g. very trustworthy) is subjective and may vary across participants. However, the relationship between monetary decisions in trust games and trustworthiness impressions of game partners is actually not straightforward and depends on participants, because those decisions are influenced by various factors, such as the participant's general trust, preference for fairness and betrayal aversion [66]. In addition, the use of indirect measures is usually recommended when explicit measures are likely to be biased by people's tendency to hide socially undesired responses [65]. Importantly, such social desirability bias was found to have a nearly null correlation with generalized FBTI extremity in the present study. Therefore, we suggest that the use of an explicit rating task does not significantly undermine our findings. Moreover, a fruitful direction for further research is to investigate individual differences in FBTI using indirect measures, since even their basic characteristics (e.g. how large and temporally stable the individual differences are) remain unknown.

4.3. Correlates of generalized face-based trait inference extremity

The positive association between the physiognomic belief and the generalized FBTI extremity means that those who believe that various traits can be inferred from faces tend toward extreme FBTI, which is in line with previous work [29]. This association was more clearly shown with the Physiognomic Belief Scale [29] than with the other questionnaire [53], perhaps because the former contains more items than the latter (14 versus 3) and, consequently, has higher scale reliability (Cronbach's α = 0.918 versus 0.817), and because the items of the former directly refer to the trait dimensions in the face-based trait-rating task, while those of the latter do not. In any case, the correlations were small, ranging from 0.104 to 0.171. The weak correlations may be reasonable considering that the questionnaires we used assessed the strength of the physiognomic belief without referring to any stereotypical facial cues to trait inference. It would thus be interesting in future research to measure the strength of explicit verbalizable beliefs about commonly held face–trait relations (e.g. ‘A kind-hearted person has big, round eyes’ [9]) and examine its links with the FBTI extremity.

It is noteworthy that we successfully demonstrated in an adult population that those who were adept at recognizing facial expressions tended toward extreme FBTI. While such a relationship is consistent with an emotion overgeneralization account of FBTI [17,22,30,31], a recent developmental study showed that emotion comprehension skills (including facial emotion recognition ability) covaried with the extremity of face-based trustworthiness inference only in 5-year-old children and not in 7-year olds [20]. The authors opined that covariation was absent in older children because their emotion comprehension skills were more developed and thus less variable. In the present study, the facial emotion-rating task scores were more variable than the facial emotion identification task scores, which approached a ceiling effect, and the former scores had a larger correlation with generalized FBTI extremity than the latter. These results indicate that if individual differences in facial emotion recognition are quantified using sensitive tests [35,36], their association with FBTI can be detected even in adulthood.

Our research partially supports the tendency toward extreme FBTI among people who endorse stereotypes. Specifically, the category-based trait-rating task scores moderately and positively correlated with generalized FBTI extremity, while the Acceptance of Stereotyping Questionnaire [39] scores hardly did. In addition, the two measures, which were assumed to reflect the same construct (i.e. stereotype endorsement), were almost entirely uncorrelated with each other. A critical difference between the two indices is that whereas the rating task explicitly deals with stereotypes about social categories that are closely connected with FBTI (i.e. smiling people [17,33], babies [37] and women [38]), the questionnaire does not specify any social categories. Thus, if participants who self-identified as White (i.e. the majority of the study participants) answered the questionnaire with stereotypes about racial outgroups in mind [67], it is natural that the answers showed little correlation with the FBTI extremity, considering the exclusive use of Caucasian faces (i.e. ingroup faces) in the face-based trait-rating task.

The fact that the hypothesized positive correlations between generalized FBTI extremity and cognitive miserliness were not observed may be taken as evidence of the cognitive impenetrability of FBTI [68]. However, a caveat is that the face is the only information available to perform the face-based trait-rating task. This could obscure possible facilitative effects of cognitive miserliness on FBTI, since even those participants who doubted the validity of their intuitive impression of the face—our measures of cognitive miserliness are supposed to assess such a tendency (not) to rely on intuition—had no choice but to make a face-based inference. Thus, it is important to examine whether cognitive miserliness boosts reliance on facial appearance in trait inference when more diagnostic but cognitively taxing cues (e.g. a record of previous cooperative and cheating behaviours [69]) are available.

4.4. Limitations

This study has some other limitations worthy of mention. First, a direct and more extensive investigation into the causal mechanisms of generalized FBTI extremity is important in future research. Our major contribution is the demonstration of high cross-trait correlations of the FBTI extremity, or the existence of a generalized FBTI extremity, providing new directions for and constraints on further studies and theorizing about FBTI. As an initial attempt to explain the generalized FBTI extremity, we proposed and examined several variables that can potentially foster it. However, those variables were a small subset of possible causal factors, and the present study provided only partial and correlational evidence for our hypotheses. Second, different researchers have adopted different methods to score FBTI performance [3,20,21,29,59]. For example, when agreement scores [21] (see the Introduction for a definition) were computed using the present data, they had high correlations (above 0.7) with extremity scores. However, the scatter plots between the two types of scores showed that there were larger variations in extremity scores when the agreement scores were higher (see electronic supplementary material, text S4 for details). In other words, individuals with higher agreement scores can have both low and high extremity scores. Thus, FBTI extremity is not only related to agreement scores but also contains distinct perceiver characteristics. Future investigations need to explore a set of quantifications that can efficiently and comprehensively capture individual differences in FBTI. Third, our surveys started with a block of socio-demographic questions, since collecting certain socio-demographic data (i.e. current residence, primary language and age) was necessary to confirm participants' eligibility to participate in the surveys. These questions might have directed participants' attention to their age, sex and ethnicity, which in turn could have influenced how they approached the subsequent social cognitive tasks. However, the participants' age and sex were controlled for in the statistical analyses presented here. In addition, the results remained virtually unchanged when we analysed the data of only White participants (i.e. a large majority of participants). Therefore, we suggest that even if participants' age, sex and ethnicity had been activated by socio-demographic questions, they should have exerted little impact on our findings. Finally, our studies only targeted native English speakers in the USA, given the availability of well-normed materials in English, leaving cross-cultural similarities and differences unexplored [25].

We know little about where users draw the line when it comes to offensive language, and what measures they wish to see implemented when content crosses the boundary of what is deemed acceptable

Pradel, Franziska, Jan Zilinsky, Spyros Kosmidis, and Yannis Theocharis. 2022. “Do Users Ever Draw a Line? Offensiveness and Content Moderation Preferences on Social Media.” OSF Preprints. November 22. doi:10.31219/osf.io/y4xft

Abstract: When is content on social media offensive enough to warrant content moderation? While social media platforms impose limits to what can be posted, we know little about where users draw the line when it comes to offensive language, and what measures they wish to see implemented when content crosses the boundary of what is deemed acceptable. Conducting randomized experiments with over 5,000 participants we study how different types of offensive language causally affect users' content moderation preferences. We quantify causal effects of uncivil, intolerant, and threatening language by randomly introducing these aspects into fictitious social media posts targeting various social groups. While overall there is limited demand for action against offensive behavior, the severity of the attack matters to the average participant. Amongst our treatments, violent threats cause the greatest support for content moderation of various types, including punishments that would be viewed as censorship in some contexts, such as taking down content or suspending accounts.

Aggressive and violent behavior: Analysis of topic popularity within a child sexual exploitation Tor hidden service

Analysis of topic popularity within a child sexual exploitation Tor hidden service. Jessica N. Owens et al. Aggression and Violent Behavior, November 21 2022, 101808. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.avb.2022.101808

Highlights

• Quantifies offender consumption of child sexual abuse material – i.e., preferences and frequency of access – in absence of saved collections on electronic devices.

• More interest and activity was observed among threads with hardcore child sexual abuse material, and the overt action of giving “thanks” served to reinforce and perpetuate the amount of hardcore content on the site.

• Threads containing visual material were viewed most frequently among the members of this Tor hidden service community.

• Thread titles relating to soft core/non-nude material or modeling visual material decreased the frequency of viewing.

• More egregious (hardcore) child sexual abuse material is viewed, downloaded, and “thanked” most often within Darkweb child sexual exploitation communities; despite a copious variety of child sexual abuse material available and equally advertised.

Abstract: Knowledge about the online bulletin board communities dedicated to child sexual exploitation (CSE) located on the Darkweb (Tor) has generally been limited to those that investigate and prosecute individuals participating in those sites, as accessing them and viewing the abuse material is a crime. This leaves many of those in the CSE field without a scientifically validated foundation of the behaviors typically demonstrated by members of these CSE online communities. The following research empirically examines topic popularity of one Darkweb CSE Tor hidden service that was seized by a federal law enforcement agency. Analyses reveal that some topics tend to be viewed significantly more often, and descriptors about specific sexual acts and the ages of children portrayed in the thread titles correlate with the frequency of viewing, approving and downloading of that material. Implications of these findings for professionals working in the CSE field will be discussed.

Keywords: Child sexual exploitation (CSE)Child sexual abuse material (CSAM)Child pornographyDarkwebTorOnline community

High intelligence is not linked to more mental health disorders, but is linked to less frequent general anxiety and PTSD

High Intelligence is Not Associated with a Greater Propensity for Mental Health Disorders. Camille Michèle Williams et al. European Psychiatry, Nov 18 2022. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/european-psychiatry/article/high-intelligence-is-not-associated-with-a-greater-propensity-for-mental-health-disorders/E101AE4EDBC8FBAEE5170F6C0679021C

Abstract 

38 Background: Studies reporting that highly intelligent individuals have more mental health 

39 disorders often have sampling bias, no or inadequate control group, or insufficient sample size. 

40 We addressed these caveats by examining the difference in the prevalence of mental health 

41 disorders between individuals with high and average general intelligence (g-factor) in the UK 

42 Biobank. 

43 

44 Methods: Participants with general intelligence (g-factor) scores standardized relative to the 

45 same-age UK population, were divided into 2 groups: a high g-factor group (g-factor 2 SD 

46 above the UK mean; N=16,137) and an average g-factor group (g-factor within 2 SD of the UK 

47 mean; N=236,273). Using self-report questionnaires and medical diagnoses, we examined 

48 group differences in prevalence across 32 phenotypes, including mental health disorders, 

49 trauma, allergies, and other traits. 

50 

51 Results: High and average g-factor groups differed across 15/32 phenotypes and did not 

52 depend on sex and/or age. Individuals with high g-factors had less general anxiety (OR=0.69, 

53 95%CI[0.64;0.74]) and PTSD (OR=0.67, 95%CI[0.61;0.74])), were less neurotic (β=-0.12, 

54 95%CI[-0.15;-0.10]), less socially isolated (OR=0.85, 95%CI[0.80;0.90]), and were less likely 

55 to have experienced childhood stressors and abuse, adulthood stressors, or catastrophic trauma 

56 (OR=0.69-0.90). They did not differ in any other mental health disorder or trait. However, they 

57 generally had more allergies (e.g., eczema; OR=1.13-1.33). 

58 

59 Conclusions: The present study provides robust evidence that highly intelligent individuals 

60 have no more mental health disorders than the average population. High intelligence even 

61 appears as a protective factor for general anxiety and PTSD. 

Key words: Intelligence; Psychopathology; Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder; Anxiety; Allergies 

In addition to homophily, people’s social tie decisions are driven by political acrophily, the tendency to associate with others who have more extreme political views (rather than more moderate)

Homophily and acrophily as drivers of political segregation. Amit Goldenberg, Joseph M. Abruzzo, Zi Huang, Jonas Schöne, David Bailey, Robb Willer, Eran Halperin & James J. Gross. Nature Human Behaviour, November 21 2022. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-022-01474-9

Abstract: Political segregation is an important social problem, increasing polarization and impeding effective governance. Previous work has viewed the central driver of segregation to be political homophily, the tendency to associate with others who have similar views. Here we propose that, in addition to homophily, people’s social tie decisions are driven by political acrophily, the tendency to associate with others who have more extreme political views (rather than more moderate). We examined this using a paradigm in which participants share emotions and attitudes on political policies, observe others’ responses and choose which others to affiliate with. In four studies (N = 1,235), both liberal and conservative participants’ social tie decisions reflected the presence of acrophily. We found that participants who viewed peers who expressed more extreme views as more prototypical of their political group also tended to engage in greater acrophily. These studies identify a previously overlooked tendency in tie formation.

Contrary to the deterioration hypothesis, we find that market-oriented societies have a greater aversion to unethical behavior, higher levels of trust, & are not significantly associated with lower levels of morality under any model specification

The moral costs of markets: Testing the deterioration hypothesis. Justin Callais, Colin Harris, Ben Borchard. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Volume 204, December 2022, Pages 200-220. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2022.10.007

Abstract: The expansion of markets has generated significant material benefits. Yet some worry that this increase in wealth has come at a significant moral cost. Markets may crowd out or even corrupt existing moral values, causing moral deterioration. We test this hypothesis using both fixed effects and matching methods to estimate the impact of market institutions on a society's moral values. Contrary to the deterioration hypothesis, we find that market-oriented societies have a greater aversion to unethical behavior, higher levels of trust, and are not significantly associated with lower levels of morality under any model specification. Furthermore, we find that becoming more market oriented does not cause a significant reduction in a society's moral values. Together, our results suggest that being or becoming more market oriented does not cause moral deterioration.

Introduction

The world is becoming more interconnected due in part to the expansion of markets. And while most people accept that markets generate significant material benefits, there remains debate “concerning whether the wealth that societies gain by embracing markets comes at too high a moral cost” (Storr and Choi 2019: 11). On one side of the debate is the position that markets crowd out or even corrupt existing moral values, resulting in moral deterioration (Rousseau [1754] 1984; Marx [1844] 2000; Radin 1987, 1989; Anderson 1993; Sandel 2012; Bowles 2016). On the other side is the claim that markets actually promote moral virtues, or at worst act as neutral spaces to be filled in by the existing values of the market participants (Mandeville [1714, 1732] 1988; Montesquieu [1748] 1989; Smith [1759] 1982, [1776] 1977; Friedman [1962] 2002; McCloskey 2006; Storr 2009; Storr and Choi 2019). Even though each position presents a testable hypothesis, the debate has largely remained one of philosophical conjecture. This is unsatisfying as the question of the moral costs of markets is “at root an empirical, rather than a philosophical, claim” (Storr and Choi 2019: 12). Do markets cause moral deterioration?

The most thorough attempt at addressing this question empirically comes from Storr and Choi (2019). Their aim is to assess the moral character of markets and the impact that market institutions have on morality, and in doing so provide a plausible retort to both the market's most stringent critics and its most tepid supporters.1 A major contribution of their work is in identifying empirical measures which either directly or indirectly measure morality.2 Indirect measures include variables like income, life expectancy, and infant mortality. These variables cannot directly address the empirical claim that markets cause moral deterioration, yet nonetheless have moral significance. If markets made people worse off on a variety of important margins, markets may be morally suspect regardless of their effect on moral values.

The direct measures capture moral values related to trust, tolerance, materialism, fairness, altruism, and the acceptance of unethical behavior using nationally representative surveys or behavioral variables like how much (and often) people give to charity. These measures capture at least part of the concern critics have over the deterioration of moral values, particularly as it relates to cosmopolitanism and integrity. Sandel (2012: 6) for example, a prominent moral critic of markets, suggests that the “appropriate way” to treat and value human beings is as “persons worthy of dignity and respect, rather than as instruments of gain and objects of use.” Being trustworthy and treating others as equals is a part of it means to treat people appropriately. If market institutions cause moral deterioration, we should expect lower levels of these measured moral values in market-oriented societies.

Storr and Choi (2019: 243) find the opposite: “Rather than being incompatible with morality, markets are not only consistent with morality but seem to promote morality.” Still, their empirical approach is limited, about which they are very forthright.3 We build on the foundation of their work using panel data. We first test the markets-cause-moral-deterioration hypothesis using both fixed effects and matching methods to estimate the impact of market institutions on a society's moral values. Contrary to the deterioration hypothesis, we find that market-oriented societies have a greater aversion to unethical behavior, higher levels of trust, and are not significantly associated with lower levels of morality, regardless of which measure is used for moral values or market orientation.

The results of these tests (section 5.1 and 5.2) are comparable to Storr and Choi's (2019) in that we find that being a market-oriented society is not associated with lower levels of moral values (and in some instances it is associated with higher levels). However, fixed effects and matching methods alone cannot address the problem of endogeneity. Market-oriented societies may have higher levels of moral values and yet the expansion of markets may still deteriorate morals. Thankfully, while our move to panel data reduces the number of countries in the sample compared to Storr and Choi's (2019) cross-section, the added time component allows us to investigate how changes in market orientation impacts moral values. By looking at instances of pro-market reform, we are able to employ differencing and matching to remove time-invariant factors and balance covariates, bringing our estimates closer to causal (An and Winship 2017). With this method, we find that becoming a more market-oriented society does not cause a significant reduction in a society's moral values. Together, our results suggest that being or becoming a more market-oriented society does not cause moral deterioration.

The rest of the paper proceeds as follows. Section two outlines the central claims of the deterioration hypothesis, including the mechanisms by which deterioration is believed to occur and the main moral values likely to be affected. Section three explains our data for market orientation and moral values. Section four outlines our empirical strategy for testing the deterioration hypothesis and section five presents our results. Section six concludes.

Men, but not women, in medium-status occupations report lower life satisfaction than those above or below when stuck in the middle

Occupational status and life satisfaction in the UK: The miserable middle? Yannis Georgellis et al. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Volume 204, December 2022, Pages 509-527. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2022.10.045

Abstract: We use British panel data to explore the link between occupational status and life satisfaction. We find puzzling evidence for men of a U-shaped relationship in cross-section data: employees in medium-status occupations report lower life satisfaction scores than those of employees in either low- or high-status occupations. This puzzle disappears in panel data: the satisfaction of any man rises as he moves up the status ladder. The culprit seems to be immobility: the miserable middle is caused by men who have always been in medium-status occupations. There is overall little evidence of a link between occupational status and life satisfaction for women, although this relationship for higher-educated women does look more like that for men.

Keywords: Occupational statusLife satisfactionOccupational mobility

JEL I31J24Z13

5. Discussion and conclusion

Our results have supplied one answer to the question of whether labour-market success paves the path to a happier life. This success can be defined in many ways, and we have here focused on occupational status (with and without controlling for labour income), as measured by the CAMSIS scale.

Occupational status is not the same thing as income, as there is (at least for men) a significant relationship between status and life satisfaction conditional on labour income;22 this status relationship is far weaker for women. Contrary to almost all of the existing literature, we allow for this occupational-status relationship to be non-monotonic, considering the correlation between life satisfaction and low-, medium- and high occupational-status jobs. In the cross-section (for men) this relationship does indeed turn out to be non-monotonic: medium-status men are less satisfied than are either those with low- or high-status jobs.

This finding might be thought to be in line with aspirations and frustration, as in the Silver-Medal effect (Medvec et al., 1995), where the dominant counterfactual for Silver Medallists is the Gold Medal, whereas that of the Bronze Medallist is no medal at all. In our context, individuals who move from low- to middle-status jobs may be frustrated not to have made the move up to high-status jobs. On the contrary, men who have always been low status do not experience this kind of frustration.

The data that we analyse is panel, and a number of individuals change from jobs with one occupational status to another over time. This allows us to address the Silver-Medal effect: Are men who rise from low to middle status less satisfied (as in the cross-section)? The panel estimation results tell a different story: following the same individual over time, those who move up the occupational-status ladder report higher levels of life satisfaction. Rather than frustration, moving up the status ladder produces satisfaction.

The panel and cross-section results are therefore contradictory. One interpretation of the perhaps surprising cross-section finding is that middle-status jobs have more unobserved unattractive features than do low-status or high-status jobs, and so are genuinely less attractive. But our panel findings of a positive relationship between life satisfaction and status run contrary to this argument. Another possibility is that there is something about individuals in medium-status jobs, rather than the characteristics of the jobs themselves: the men who end up in middle-status jobs may well be “unhappy types”. We check this by splitting the sample up into individuals who never change occupational status group and those who do change, and re-estimating cross-section regressions. The results are clear-cut: medium-status men who are (status-) mobile are more satisfied than low-status men; immobile medium-status men are less satisfied than low-status men.

The miserable middle does not then reflect the experience of men who move through medium-status jobs, but rather the experience of men who never leave them. Immobility in the middle is worse than immobility in low- or high-status jobs. This might be thought of as a dynamic version of the Silver-Medal hypothesis: these men have the Silver occupational medal, and even over time will never have any other type.

Following on from the heterogeneity analysis in Section 4.3, it is of interest to reflect on why some workers are observed to be immobile. Two possible barriers to job movements are family commitments and labour-market conditions. We have investigated the role of these barriers by first estimating separate regressions for male parents and male non-parents, finding only a very slight difference between the two, and no difference in the male cross-section status coefficients according to home-ownership. On the contrary, there does seem to be a role for labour-market health, with the miserable middle for men only being found in high-unemployment regions (see Table B10 in Online Appendix B).23 As such, the immobility that seems to lie behind our main results suggest that labour-market health may play a role in producing this specific type of immobility.

It is worth underlining the differences we find in the labour market between men and women. There is first a positive relationship between earnings and life satisfaction for both sexes, but one that is larger in size for men than for women. At the same time, there is little association between occupational status and life satisfaction for women, while that for men is U-shaped in the cross-section and positive in panel data. In the panel results, men gain more from both status and labour income than do women. This is consistent with men being more comparison-sensitive than women in the labour market, and with the notion of labour-market success being affected by social norms. Fortin (2005) notes that, across most OECD countries, these norms reinforce women's role as homemakers and men's role as breadwinners, corresponding to the observed patterns in labour-force participation. In this context, the stronger correlation between occupational status and life satisfaction for men may be unsurprising. There is however heterogeneity in this sex difference, and higher-educated women look more like men in terms of the relationship between occupational status and life satisfaction. With the sharp rise in women's education (which now exceeds that of men),24 occupational status may be poised to play an increasingly important role in the subjective well-being of all workers.

Why do storefronts remain empty for more than a year in some of the world’s highest-rent retail districts? Storefront vacancy in New York City

Option Value and Storefront Vacancy in New York City. Erica Moszkowski & Daniel Stackman. Nov 2022. https://www.ericamoszkowski.com/research

Abstract: Why do storefronts remain empty for more than a year in some of the world’s highest-rent retail districts? We construct and estimate a dynamic, two-sided model of storefront leasing to investigate possible explanations using data from New York City. The model incorporates salient features of the retail leasing market: heterogeneous tenant quality, high move-in costs, search frictions, asymmetric contract dissolution costs for landlords and tenants, and aggregate uncertainty in downstream retail demand. We estimate the model parameters by matching quarterly vacancy rates, lease-up rates, and tenant exit rates from a comprehensive, high-frequency storefront tracking service, combined with micro data on commercial leases. We find that tenant heterogeneity and move-in costs jointly explain long-run vacancy by generating dispersion in match surplus and therefore option value for landlords. In a counterfactual exercise, eliminating either feature results in vacancy rates of close to zero. Search frictions and aggregate uncertainty play much smaller roles. Finally, we use the estimated model to quantify the impact of a retail vacancy tax on long-run vacancy rates, average rents, and social welfare. Vacancies would have to generate negative externalities of $29.68 per square foot per quarter (about half of average rents) to justify a 1% vacancy tax on assessed property values.

Sexual arousal has a powerful effect on men’s short-term mating motivation, and that this effect is independent of intrasexual differences in personality, relationship status, and sociosexuality

In the Heat of the Short-Term Moment: Evidence that Heightened Sexual Arousal Increases Short-Term Mating Motivation Among Men. Arnaud Wisman & Andrew G. Thomas. Evolutionary Psychological Science, Nov 19 2022. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40806-022-00347-8

Abstract: Individual differences in men’s short-term mating interest are well studied, both at state and trait levels. Yet, the role of sexual arousal as a source of intra-individual variation has been neglected. This research represents the first attempt to integrate sexual arousal into the human mate plasticity literature. We argue that sexual arousal directly impacts the short-term mating motivation among men regardless of their personality, relationship status, and sociosexuality. Across four experiments, we found that heightened sexual arousal consistently increased men’s short-term mating motivation relative to participants in neutral and arousing control groups. Experiments 1 and 2 revealed that sexual arousal increased participants’ general short-term mating motivation and their preference for a short-term relationship over a long-term one. Experiment 3 replicated the findings of the first two experiments whilst also demonstrating that this effect was not moderated by personality (i.e., Dark Triad, Big Five) or relationship status. Heightened sexual arousal also led to decreased “state” long-term mating motivation. Finally, Experiment 4 showed that sexual arousal increased the participants’ preference for a short-term relationship over a long-term one, an effect that was not moderated by sociosexuality. Together, the results suggest that sexual arousal has a powerful effect on men’s short-term mating motivation, and that this effect is independent of intrasexual differences in personality, relationship status, and sociosexuality.

General Discussion

The present studies provide support for the novel hypothesis that sexual arousal increases a short-term mating motivation among men. All four experiments showed that brief exposure to sexual stimuli increased men’s desire for short-term mating across a variety of measures. Experiments 3 and 4 showed that this robust effect was not moderated by intrasexual differences in Big Five and Dark Triad personality traits or sociosexuality. Finally, across all experiments, it was found that relationship status did not moderate arousal-linked changes in short-term mating motivation. Taken together, the results of our four experiments suggest strong support for the idea that sexually aroused men show an increase in state desire for short-term mating, independent of a variety of dispositional traits and relationship status.

This research is among the first to highlight that sexual arousal may play a central role in human mating plasticity and strategy activation. Several studies have shown that short- and long-term mating motivations change in response to evolutionary relevant cues such as sex ratio (Arnocky et al., 2016), pathogen prevalence (Al-Shawaf et al., 2019), resource availability, and the need for parental care (Thomas & Stewart-Williams, 2018). However, none of these studies take into account the role of sexual arousal in mating strategy plasticity. Indeed, in these studies, participants are asked to make hypothetical mating decisions, or report on their desire to have uncommitted sex, in a clinical and detached manner rather than “in the heat of the moment”, as real-world mating decisions are often made. In this research, we have shown that merely sexual arousal alone is enough to enhance the short-term mating motivation of men. This has marked implications for the mating plasticity literature. For instance, based on previous research, it is tempting to conclude that some cues, such as resource abundance, have only a small effect on male mating psychology (e.g., d = 0.41 from Thomas & Stewart-Williams, 2018). However, these effects are observed completely divorced from sexual arousal. It is feasible that the effects of these cues may become enhanced when in a state of sexual arousal—that arousal effectively “greases the groove” of mating plasticity which in turn could lead to a stronger effect. This is, of course, an idea which needs to be tested.

Limitations and Future Directions

The current findings are consistent with a wide range of studies (Ariely & Loewenstein, 2006; Baumeister et al., 2001; Pfaus, 1999) that show indirect support for the thesis that sexual arousal can increase men’s motivation to engage in behaviour and cognitions associated with short-term mating motivation. Typically, in previous studies, participants were primed with a sexual and/or short-term mating context. Importantly, the current studies are the first to show that sexual arousal has a direct effect on men’s short-term mating motivation. However, they did not address specifically if priming a sexual context is qualitatively different from experiencing the physiological effects of sexual arousal. Moreover, our research relied on “subjective” self-report measurements of sexual arousal. Although future research could examine both subjective and physiological sexual arousal (e.g., Ciardha et al., 2018; Janssen et al., 2007), it is important to note that ample studies show that, at least among men, there is a strong association between (subjective) self-report sexual arousal and physiological sexual arousal (for a broad overview, Chivers et al., 2010). In a related vein, sexual arousal was manipulated exclusively by exposing participants to visual sexual stimuli. In view of this, we cannot exclude the possibility that our findings are specific to sexual arousal induced by visual sexual stimuli. We consider the latter unlikely because there is evidence that other forms of induced sexual arousal can increase cognitions and behaviours associated with short-term mating motivation (Ariely & Loewenstein, 2006). For instance, as previously discussed, sexual arousal induced by masturbation motivated men to show a greater willingness to engage in unprotected sex with strangers (Ariely & Loewenstein, 2006). Nevertheless, future research may wish to address whether the effect of sexual arousal on men’s short-term mating motivation varies depending on the method of arousal.

In addition, we have shown that relationship status did not moderate our findings. However, our research did not take into account the length and the quality of participants’ relationships (Schmitt et al., 2001a, b). It is possible that these factors play a role in men’s short-term mating motivation—the effect of arousal could be context-dependent in a similar fashion to ovulatory shifts in women’s extra-pair interest which can depend on factors such as relationship length and perceived partner quality (Haselton & Gangestad, 2006; Pillsworth et al., 2004). Thus, relationship satisfaction, length, partner quality, and frequency of intercourse represent key factors of interest for future research.

Finally, although we have shown that a wide range of personality variables do not moderate men’s short-term mating motivation when sexually aroused, it is possible that other individual differences (Figueredo et al., 2005), environmental cues (Wisman & Shrira, 2020), and/or cultural differences (Schmitt, 2003) that we did not account for play a role in mate choice and motivation.

If sexual arousal increases short-term mating motivation, and this occurs regardless of relationship status, then an obvious next step is to consider how sexual arousal affects relationship stability. It is clear that we do not live in a world where temporary increases in the preferences for short-term mating, driven by sexual arousal or otherwise, cause men to reflexively forgo their current relationships in search for uncommitted sex. Divorce rates would be much higher than we see in Western society, presuming marriages would even come to fruition in such a world. Instead, sexual arousal may form a single, but important, link in a causal chain towards infidelity. Evolutionary psychology points to the context-dependent nature of some psychological mechanisms. For example, people experience less relationship satisfaction when their partner fails to meet their ideals, but only when better alternatives exist (Conroy-Beam et al., 2016). Future research would benefit from examining the impact of arousal-linked increases in short-term mating desire on their thoughts towards their current relationships—such as the willingness to cheat or dissolve a relationship—and the contextual factors that mitigate against these thoughts.

Phantom phone signals are benign, not an indication of a messed-up mind

Phantom phone signals and other hallucinatory-like experiences: investigation of similarities and differences. Adrianna Aleksandrowicz, Joachim Kowalski, Łukasz Gawęda. Psychiatry Research, November 19 2022, 114964. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.psychres.2022.114964

Abstract: Phantom Phone Signals (PPS) and other hallucinatory-like experiences (HLEs) are perceptual anomalies that are commonly reported in the general population. Both phenomena concern the same sensory modality, but PPS are restricted to smartphone use. The current study aimed to assess similarities and differences between these types of anomalies in relation to general psychopathology, metacognitive beliefs about perception, smartphone dependence, and susceptibility to top-down influences on perception. We analyzed data from a Polish community sample (N = 236, aged 18–69). We used questions pertaining to PPS, a questionnaire pertaining to HLEs (Multi-Modality Unusual Sensory Experiences Questionnaire), and other variables of interest (Symptom Checklist-27-plus, Mobile Phone Problematic Use Scale, and the Beliefs about Perception Questionnaire). Additionally, a false-perception task manipulating cognitive expectancy (i.e., a visual cue associated with auditory stimuli vs. no visual cue) was devised to measure top-down influences on perception. Regression analyses showed that only top-down beliefs about perception predicted both PPS and HLEs. Smartphone dependency proved to be a stronger predictor of PPS than other measured variables, whereas for HLEs, general psychopathology was the strongest predictor. Current results suggest that despite sharing some mechanisms, PPS and HLEs may have independent underlying factors.

Introduction

Hallucinations are a key symptom in the diagnosis of schizophrenia spectrum disorders. It is estimated that hallucinations occur in approximately 80% of patients with schizophrenia spectrum disorders, with the most common being auditory hallucinations (Toh et al., 2022). According to the continuum hypothesis, hallucinations in the clinical context are considered as an extreme manifestation of phenomena that range from vivid daydreams, through infrequent experiences of different sounds (e.g., mistakenly hearing one's name being called) to full-blown hallucinations (e.g., hearing distressing voices). Yet, a significant body of work has shown that hallucinatory-like experiences (HLEs), which lie on the hallucination continuum, are frequently reported in the non-clinical population (Linszen et al., 2022). It has been suggested that auditory hallucinations occur in 13.2% of the general population (Beavan et al., 2011). These data suggest that HLEs and hallucinations also occur outside the clinical context. Investigation of HLEs in the general population is important, as it helps us better understand the mechanisms underlying hallucinations and other perceptual anomalies (Barkus et al., 2007; Daalman et al., 2010).

Recently, in addition to studies on general HLEs, Phantom Phone Signals (PPS) are being increasingly studied as perceptual phenomena (Drouin et al., 2012; Horga & Abi-Dargham, 2020; Lin, et al., 2013a,b; Lin et al., 2020; Pisano et al., 2019; Tanis et al., 2015). PPS are perceptual anomalies wherein feedback from phones is experienced without having occurred, such as the sensation of a phone ringing, an incoming message, or a notification coming from various applications. PPS are experienced in auditory (as a ringing phone), visual (a blinking notification displayed on a smartphone screen), and tactile (phantom vibration) modalities (Tanis et al., 2015). It is estimated that between 27.4% and 89% of people from the general population experience PPS (Deb, 2015; Pisano et al., 2021). This relatively high prevalence suggests that PPS are a common experience and may be associated with the growing usage of smartphones (Pisano et al., 2021). Indeed, it is estimated that about 3.5 billion people worldwide use smartphones (O'Dea, 2020). In 2018 in Poland, almost 80% of the population used smartphones (Mobirank, 2020), and 74.8% of all cell-phone users did so on a daily basis. Importantly, cellphone addiction is rising alongside smartphone usage (Olson et al., 2022). Thus, PPS and associated phenomena are becoming an important field of research.

Previous studies have shown that some characteristics of smartphone usage are predictors of experiencing PPS (Rothberg et al., 2010; Subba, 2013; Tanis et al., 2015). A study conducted by Al-Ani et al. (2009) showed that PPS experiences were very common among participants who rated themselves as “mobile addicted.” Moreover, another study also provided evidence of a significant relationship between PPS and excessive smartphone usage, smartphone addiction, and phone importance (Tanis et al., 2015). Still, some studies found that characteristics of smartphone usage are not related to PPS (Catchings et al., 2010). It should be noted that conclusions from studies that link PPS to characteristics of smartphone usage are limited by the low number of studies. For this reason, further studies on the mechanisms of PPS are needed.

With regard to the mechanisms of PPS, some studies reported that contextual factors, such as expecting a call or being in a noisy environment, are important in reinforcing the experience of PPS (Sauer et al., 2015). For instance, being in a workplace where smartphones are essential for communicating with co-workers has been shown to reinforce the occurrence of PPS. A study on medical students showed a substantial change in experiences of PPS during a medical internship. For instance, at baseline, 78.1% students reported phantom vibrations and 27.4% reported phantom ringing. At follow-up, these rates increased to 95.9% and 87.7% respectively (Lin, et al., 2013b). Although the evidence indicates a high prevalence of PPS among medical students, more research on the general population is still needed (Pisano et al., 2021).

Importantly, although PPS have been found to correlate with high stress levels, anxiety, and depressive symptoms (Lin, et al., 2013a,b; Lin et al., 2020), few studies have focused on the relationships between PPS and psychopathology (Pisano et al., 2021). One study among adolescents found a relationship between experiencing PPS and both emotional problems and temper tantrums (Pisano et al., 2019). At the same time, the association between a wide range of HLEs and psychopathology is well documented (Allen et al., 2005; Gaweda et al., 2012; Johns, 2005). Additionally, the cognitive mechanisms of HLEs have been investigated in a rich line of research. For instance, attentional processes, cognitive control (Conn & Posey, 2000; Hugdahl et al., 2013), as well as different cognitive biases have been found to be important factors related to HLEs. With regard to PPS, there is much less research on cognitive mechanisms associated with this phenomenon.

One of the leading theoretical accounts suggests that perceptual anomalies are the result of an imbalance between top-down processes (i.e., priors or cognitive expectancy) and bottom-up processes. The role of top-down processes in shaping percepts is particularly emphasized in situations of perceptual uncertainty, where cognitive expectancy can influence the final percept (Corlett et al., 2019; Horga & Abi-Dargham, 2020; Powers et al., 2016). Cognitive expectancy may be considered as a prior that impacts perception (Corlett et al., 2019). It has been shown that priors have a stronger impact on perception in people who hallucinate than those without hallucinations (Powers et al., 2016). Thus, this suggests that cognitive expectancy (i.e., priors) may have an important impact on perception. Similarly, regarding PPS, it has been proposed that these experiences may emerge from the anticipation of phone signals through expectations (Rothberg et al., 2010). For instance, PPS may emerge in the context of a belief that the phone should ring because one is waiting on an important phone call. A limited number of studies have investigated this account in the context of semantic expectancy and its relationship to HLEs (Vercammen & Aleman, 2010). More recently, a study by Gawęda & Moritz (2021) suggested that audiovisual integration might play an essential role in the formation of false percepts in patients with schizophrenia. Participants performed a task in which they were asked to detect a target word in a noisy background (the word was audible in 60% of cases and absent in 40%). Conditions consisted of three levels of expectancy (1. low – no cue prior to the stimulus; 2. medium – semantic priming; 3. high – semantic priming accompanied by a video of a man mouthing the word). The results indicated that higher expectancy significantly increased the likelihood of false auditory perceptions among schizophrenia patients only. This gives preliminary evidence that the visual modality might play an important role in the complex mechanisms of auditory perceptual anomalies. Nonetheless, more research on visual and auditory modalities in the context of hallucinations and the hallucination continuum is needed.

To date, PPS and other HLEs have been studied independently. A growing line of research investigates PPS as an isolated type of experience without comparison to other HLEs. Therefore, the main aim of our study was to compare PPS and other types of HLEs with general psychopathology, smartphone dependence, and attentional control to investigate their similarities and differences in the non-clinical population. Furthermore, we also considered the relationships of both PPS and HLEs with priors (i.e., top-down factors, such as knowledge and beliefs), which have been linked to perceptual anomalies (Corlett et al., 2019; Horga & Abi-Dargham, 2020; Powers et al., 2016). In our study, we conceptualized priors as meta-cognitive beliefs about perception (Gawęda et al., in preparation). We hypothesized that meta-cognitive beliefs about perception and interpretations of perceptual experiences may tentatively influence how perception operates, and conversely actual perceptual experiences may shape individuals’ beliefs about perceptions. Hence, we expected that there would be a relationship between false perceptions and meta-cognitive beliefs about perception. Moreover, despite some existing research investigating the potential predictors of PPS (Drouin et al., 2012; Horga & Abi-Dargham, 2020; Lin et al., 2013a,b; Lin et al., 2020; Pisano et al., 2019; Tanis et al., 2015), to our knowledge, there are no studies that explore in-depth the mechanisms of this phenomenon using an experimental approach. Therefore, the objective of our study was to experimentally verify the effect of top-down processes on false auditory perceptions using a False Perception Task design (Gawęda & Moritz, 2021). Our experimental task was tailored to examine perceptual experiences that are contextually related to smartphone use (e.g., the moment of an incoming smartphone notification on the screen) with two conditions of expectancy: low (no visual cue associated with an auditory stimuli) and high (a visual cue associated with an auditory stimulus). We hypothesize that more false recognitions will occur in the high expectancy condition than in the low expectancy condition. To our knowledge, this is the first study to investigate experimentally-induced false perceptions that are contextually connected to PPS. Moreover, we aimed to investigate whether there is a relationship between experimentally-induced false perceptions in the context of social media use and PPS alongside other HLEs.

Men and women in same-sex marriages exhibited a greater risk of psychiatric disorders than men and women in opposite-sex marriages, effect largely UNexplained by family upbringing

Same-Sex Marriage and Common Mental Health Diagnoses: A Sibling Comparison and Adoption Approach. Yin Xu et al. The Journal of Sex Research, Nov 18 2022. https://doi.org/10.1080/00224499.2022.2120597

Abstract: We aimed to test whether the association between same-sex marriage and common mental health diagnoses was explained by shared genetic and environmental familial influences using sibling comparison and adoption analyses. For the sibling comparison analysis, participants (1,177,712 men and 1,266,917 women) were individuals born in Sweden between 1932 and 1994 and had ever been recorded as married (in opposite-sex or same-sex marriages). For the adoption analysis, participants were 147,164 and 1,298 female–female full sibling and adoptive sibling pairs, respectively. Based on medical records, prescribed medication, and death certificates, depression, substance abuse, and suicide (completed and attempted) from age 18 years were identified. For both sexes, being in a same-sex marriage was associated with greater risk of depression, substance abuse, and suicide, compared with being in an opposite-sex marriage. Controlling for shared familial confounding reduced this difference by less than 20% in magnitude, but overall mental health disparities for individuals in same-sex marriages remained statistically significant. Among women, only the genetic correlation between same-sex marriage and depression was statistically significant (r = .33). Same-sex marriage, as a proxy for sexual orientation, was associated with increased risk of certain mental health diagnoses and shared familial confounding explained a small component of this association, depending on the diagnosis. The findings indicate that sexual orientation disparities in mental health outcomes may involve unmeasured factors, and a relatively small proportion should be considered that may be due to shared familial confounding relevant to both sexual orientation and psychopathology.

Should bads be inflicted all at once, like Machiavelli said? Evidence from life-satisfaction data

Should bads be inflicted all at once, like Machiavelli said? Evidence from life-satisfaction data. Paul Frijters et al. Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Volume 205, January 2023, Pages 1-27. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jebo.2022.10.047

Abstract: Is wellbeing, measured by life satisfaction, higher if the same number of negative events is spread out rather than bunched in time? Is it better if positive events are spread out or bunched? We answer these questions empirically, exploiting biannual data on six positive and twelve negative life events in the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia panel. Accounting for selection, anticipation, and adaptation, we find a tipping point when it comes to negative events: once people experience about two negative events, their wellbeing depreciates disproportionally as more and more events occur in a given period of time. For positive events, effects are weakly decreasing in size. So for a person's wellbeing it is better if both the good and the bad is spread out rather than bunched in time. This corresponds better with the classic economic presumption of diminishing marginal effects rather than Machiavelli's prescript of inflicting all injuries at once, further motivating the use of life satisfaction as a suitable proxy for utility. Yet, differences are small, with complete smoothing of all negative events over all people and periods calculated to yield no more than a 12% reduction in the total negative wellbeing impact of negative events.

Introduction

“Injuries, therefore, should be inflicted all at once, that their ill savor being less lasting may the less offend; whereas, benefits should be conferred little by little, that so they may be more fully relished.” – Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince

Ceteris paribus, would one inflict bad things all at once or spread them out? And would one do the same or the opposite with positive events? Machiavelli urges us to bunch the bad and space the good. We address this question empirically by looking at the non-linearity in the effects of positive and negative events on self-reported life satisfaction in a large panel of Australians observed since 2002, to shed light on the shape of the utility function. If our empirical life-satisfaction function turns out to be in line with classic economic assumptions on the shape of the utility function, life satisfaction could be interpreted as a suitable proxy for utility, which would further motivate its use for policy analysis.

In classic economic parlance, Machiavelli's reasoning assumes an S-shaped utility function that is concave in positive and convex in negative shocks, much like the shape of the value function by Kahneman and Tversky (1979). Then, the average absolute impact of negative shocks would decrease in their size (or number), with the same holding for positive effects. Under classic economic assumptions, on the other hand, there is concavity everywhere (diminishing marginal utility), which means that the average absolute impact of negative shocks would increase in their size. Fig. 1 illustrates the shapes of these different functions.

Implicit in Machiavelli's argument is adaptation to shocks: when he suggests inflicting all injuries at once rather than conferring them little by little, Machiavelli argues that, in doing so, “their ill savor [would be] less lasting”, which implies that these different strategies would exhibit different adaptation profiles over time. The same holds, in the opposite direction, for benefits.

The notion of ‘hedonic adaptation’ has a long tradition in psychology, dating back at least as far as Brickman's and Campbell's Hedonic Relativism and Planning the Good Society (Brickman and Campbell, 1971). There is now an established body of evidence on adaptation to various positive or negative life events in the psychology and applied economics literature, most of which uses individuals’ self-reported life satisfaction as outcome. It covers changes in marital status (Lucas, 2005; Lucas and Clark, 2006; Oswald and Gardner, 2006; Stutzer and Frey, 2006), disability (Menzel et al., 2002; Oswald and Powdthavee, 2008), income (Di Tella et al., 2010; Kuhn et al., 2011), or unemployment (Clark et al., 2008), as well as studies using measures of life satisfaction to look at anticipation and adaptation to life shocks in relative comparison (Clark et al., 2008; Frijters et al., 2011; Clark and Georgellis, 2013). Adaptation is also central to the idea of a set point of life satisfaction around which individuals fluctuate, and often thought to be one reason (besides relative comparisons) behind the lack of a strong relation between GDP and life satisfaction in rich countries over time.1 If we want to study Machiavelli's prescript empirically by looking at non-linearity in the effects of positive and negative life events on life satisfaction, we must, therefore, pay attention to the phenomenon of hedonic adaptation in order to separate that issue from the issue of non-linearity that determines the optimal spacing of events.

Apart from these studies, which have a particular focus on hedonic adaptation, there is a large literature on how individuals’ life satisfaction (or subjective wellbeing more generally) reacts to various positive or negative life shocks, including, for example, shocks to income and wealth (Gardner and Oswald, 2007; Adda et al., 2009; Schwandt, 2018), war time experiences (Johnston et al., 2016), crime victimization (Johnston et al., 2018), own criminal behavior (Corman et al., 2011), homelessness (Curtis et al., 2013), and various other life shocks (Lindeboom et al., 2002). However, despite the large interest in this topic, the question of optimal spacing of events has never been posed, to our knowledge. This reflects, in part, the inherent difficulty in finding random variation in enough life events simultaneously to be certain about their cumulative effect. Researchers, therefore, have typically restricted themselves to look at single events in isolation, such as unemployment or marital breakdown, or else have been interested in particular psychological mechanisms that hold for many events, such as adaptation or the relation between decisions and experiences (Kahneman et al., 1997).

Yet, the question of spacing, in particular its optimality, is important: to the extent that individuals may have control over certain life events (for example, getting married or divorced, retiring, or going for promotion), they may make ‘clean breaks’ (all at once), ‘bite the bullet’ (all at once), ‘take it one at a time’ (one by one), and so on. Often, policy-makers must decide when to implement certain reforms with negative or positive wellbeing consequences over the legislative period. Is it better to implement all reforms at once, or rather spread them out? Hence, it would be insightful for such deliberations to know whether – as Machiavelli's puts it – it is better if ‘injuries’ or ‘benefits’ are bunched or spread out, ceteris paribus.

We use the analogy of life events and test Machiavelli's prescript empirically, by specifying and estimating various life-satisfaction functions with life events as arguments. We find evidence that life satisfaction is concave in both positive and negative domains: accounting for selection, anticipation, and adaptation, and holding the number of negative events constant over an individual's life, we show that overall life satisfaction decreases when negative events occur all at once as opposed to being spread out. For positive events, the same holds, meaning that – from a welfare perspective – it is better if both the good and the bad are spread out. The findings from our empirical life-satisfaction functions, therefore, reject Machiavelli's prescript. If data on life satisfaction are anything to go by (an issue discussed more later on), our findings are suggestive of a utility function that is globally concave, in line with classic economic assumptions.

We use data on six positive and twelve negative life events in the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia (HILDA) panel. HILDA has several advantages over comparable datasets: it uniquely tracks the 18 life shocks we use for the entire duration of the panel (2002-now), has a large numbers of individuals (about 20,000), consistently measures life satisfaction in every survey year, and records life events on a quarterly basis. The panel dimension allows us to look at within-person variation in life events and life satisfaction, reducing some of the bias resulting from selection into particular events. The availability of quarterly event information allows us to account for the adaptation profile of each event on a precise level.

In our most simple specification, we pool all positive life events into a single count variable and all negative events into another, finding clear evidence of a non-linear effect of life events on life satisfaction. This specification assumes that all events have equal magnitude and the same temporal effect profile, which are both unlikely. So in our extended specification, where each event has its own anticipation and adaptation profile, we use empirical indices of negative and positive events, finding the same overall pattern.

Another legitimate worry is that events might arise from choice behavior rather than befalling individuals randomly. In sensitivity analyses, we show that the results remain qualitatively the same when following the literature and looking only at a specific subset of more exogenous and unanticipated events in our data (like winning the lottery, experiencing the death of a close friend, or being a victim of crime). Further robustness checks, including tests for selective attrition, respondents’ fidelity and engagement with the survey questions, and alternative estimation procedures, are all in line with our main findings.

We then ask: how much does the non-linearity in life events matter when it comes to overall welfare, measured as the sum of life satisfaction over the population over time? We find that if losses were spread evenly in a given period of time, the overall welfare loss from these losses would reduce by about 10%. If gains were spread evenly, the overall welfare gain would rise by about 2%. In sum, this would yield an overall net welfare gain of about 12% relative to the status quo. Note that this is 12% of the status quo effects of all positive and negative events, not 12% of welfare or life-satisfaction variation.

Our findings add to two streams of literature: first, there is a literature in applied economics and psychology that exploits data on subjective wellbeing (in particular on self-reported life satisfaction) focussed on the non-linearity around the reference point. A general finding is that financial worsening looms larger for life satisfaction than financial improvement of the same absolute size, which would be in line with prospect theory and the kink at the reference point of value functions experimentally identified by Kahneman and Tversky (1979). Using nationally representative longitudinal household data from the British Household Panel Survey (BHPS) and the SOEP panel, Boyce et al. (2013) find that, over a relatively long time horizon, positive changes in income from one year to another yield a lower absolute change in life satisfaction than negative changes. A similar asymmetry is found by De Neve et al. (2018) at the macro level when it comes to positive and negative fluctuations in economic growth. Likewise, Vendrik and Woltjer (2007) provide evidence of a globally concave life-satisfaction function in the context of relative income, with a (slight) kink at a zero relative income gap. Gonza and Burger (2017) also claim an S-shaped function in some of their estimates for the effects of the economic downturn of 2008 on life satisfaction.

Second, there is an established literature studying anticipation and adaptation in self-reported life satisfaction to various life events, both positive and negative. Clark et al. (2008) use annual data on four negative (unemployment, divorce, widowhood, and lay-off) and two positive life events (marriage and childbirth) from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP), showing that respondents anticipate and later fully adapt to most life events when it comes to their life satisfaction. Frijters et al. (2011) extend this analysis by studying life satisfaction dynamics around changes in employment status (being promoted and being laid off), changes in family life (births, deaths, and divorce), and changes related to the physical person (victimization and health) in the HILDA panel. The authors confirm that respondents hedonically adapt to most changes in life circumstances. Dore and Bolger (2018) extend that methodology to allow for heterogeneous response patterns to negative shocks they call ‘stressors’.

We join both streams of literatures, allowing for a non-linearity at the reference point while focussing primarily on non-linearities further away from it. Most importantly, we account for the dynamics of life events by explicitly modeling anticipation and adaptation regarding each life event at a precise quarterly level.

The rest of this paper is organised as follows: Section 2 gives an overview of the data we use and provides summary statistics on the life events we study. Section 3 introduces the empirical strategy, including different types of estimation and different ways to operationalise the occurrence of life events in a given period of time. Section 4 presents our main findings and scrutinises their robustness regarding alternative operationalisations and explanations. Section 5 calculates overall welfare counterfactuals. Finally, Section 6 concludes and discusses potential implications for individual and policy choices.