The sound of swearing: Are there universal patterns in profanity?

The sound of swearing: Are there universal patterns in profanity? Shiri Lev-Ari & Ryan McKay. Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, Dec 6 2022. https://link.springer.com/article/10.3758/s13423-022-02202-0

Abstract: Why do swear words sound the way they do? Swear words are often thought to have sounds that render them especially fit for purpose, facilitating the expression of emotion and attitude. To date, however, there has been no systematic cross-linguistic investigation of phonetic patterns in profanity. In an initial, pilot study we explored statistical regularities in the sounds of swear words across a range of typologically distant languages. The best candidate for a cross-linguistic phonemic pattern in profanity was the absence of approximants (sonorous sounds like l, r, w and y). In Study 1, native speakers of various languages (Arabic, Chinese, Finnish, French, German, Spanish; N = 215) judged foreign words less likely to be swear words if they contained an approximant. In Study 2 we found that sanitized versions of English swear words – like darn instead of damn – contain significantly more approximants than the original swear words. Our findings reveal that not all sounds are equally suitable for profanity, and demonstrate that sound symbolism – wherein certain sounds are intrinsically associated with certain meanings – is more pervasive than has previously been appreciated, extending beyond denoting single concepts to serving pragmatic functions.

General Discussion

Trying to express anger using a swear word full of gentle, soft sounds... would be the verbal equivalent of angrily trying to slam a door fitted with a compressed air hinge.

~ Rebecca Roache (2016)

Swear words have a unique linguistic power. Swearing in public is illegal in many countries and profanity is a major target for censorship in the arts and entertainment industries (Bergen, 2016). Swearing elicits physiological responses such as elevated heart rate and increased galvanic skin response (Bowers & Pleydell-Pearce, 2011; Buchanan et al., 2006; Harris et al., 2003). Moreover, swearing aloud increases tolerance to pain (Stephens et al., 2009; Stephens & Robertson, 2020; Stephens & Umland, 2011) and boosts physical performance (Stephens et al., 2018).

What gives swear words their potency? Part of the answer, of course, may lie in what these words literally refer to: after all, the usual suspects include taboo topics such as excretion and sex. However, the sounds in swear words may also play an important role.

Our findings indicate that not all sounds are equally suitable for profanity. In an initial, pilot study we explored statistical regularities in the sounds of swear words across a set of typologically distant languages. The most promising candidate for a universal phonemic pattern in profanity to emerge from this analysis was the absence of approximants (sonorous sounds like l, r, w and y). Study 1 confirmed that native speakers of various typologically distant languages were relatively unlikely to identify words containing an approximant as swear words. It may be that approximants are sound-symbolically associated with calm and contentment, and so are unsuitable for giving offence (Nielsen & Rendall, 2011, 2013; Yardy, 2010). In Study 2 we found that sanitized versions of swear words – minced oaths – contain significantly more of these sounds than the swear words they were derived from. According to Hazen (2020), minced oaths allow “for restrained fist-shaking at the universe”. Our findings suggest that approximants are a relevant “restraint” – the verbal equivalent of fitting a compressed air hinge to a door (Roache, 2016).

Though we focused primarily on approximants, future studies may identify other phonemic groups particularly suitable or unsuitable for profanity. For example, studies with larger samples from more languages might allow other, weaker, effects to emerge. Alternatively, it may be that some phonemic effects occur only in certain word positions (e.g., stressed syllable, word ending, vocalized position) or only in combination with other phonemes. For example, Bergen (2016) reported that monosyllabic nonwords sound more profane to native English speakers when they end in a consonant than a vowel.

Our findings demonstrate that sound symbolism is more pervasive, with a broader functional role, than has previously been appreciated, extending beyond single concepts (such as object size) to broad pragmatic functions. This has both practical and theoretical implications. At the practical level, using words rich in approximants may help defuse tense social situations and so may be important in a range of real-world contexts (e.g., relationship conflict, diplomacy, hostage negotiation). At the theoretical level, our results suggest a functional role for sound symbolism that extends beyond supporting language acquisition in childhood (Imai et al., 2008; Kantartzis et al., 2011; Monaghan et al., 2014; Perry et al., 2018; Thompson et al., 2012). Specifically, our findings suggest that sound symbolism can facilitate the pragmatic expression of emotion, attitude or arousal (Nielsen & Rendall, 2011, 2013). Other fields of linguistics, such as semantics and historical linguistics, may benefit from considering how sounds can be modified to better exploit other pragmatic functions. While Study 2 focussed on minced oaths and offensiveness, word alterations in other vocabulary domains may reflect other sound symbolic patterns and serve other pragmatic functions (e.g., cajoling, appeasing, expressing authority).

We acknowledge three caveats. First, while our results demonstrate clearly that speakers of a range of languages tend to judge that words with approximants are not good candidates to be swear words, this finding is about perceptions of swearing, rather than swearing itself. Nevertheless, our experimental approach is consistent with a long tradition in sound symbolism research. For instance, it has long been accepted that there is a sound symbolic association between high front vowels such as i and small size, yet for decades this consensus relied solely on experiments (e.g., Newman, 1933; Peña et al., 2011; Sapir, 1929; Tarte & Barritt, 1971; Thompson & Estes, 2011). It was only very recently that an association between the vowel i and the concept “small” was demonstrated to be a statistical regularity across actual human languages (Blasi et al., 2016).

Second, we do not mean to suggest that the presence of approximants is sufficient to render words inoffensive: again, our findings are probabilistic rather than deterministic. What our results point to is an underlying cognitive bias, a predisposition that will have acted in concert with historical accident to shape the evolution of swear words. Just as the association between nasal sounds and words for “nose” does not manifest in every language – or even in most languages (Blasi et al., 2016) – we should not expect that the pattern we have identified will manifest in every language, and even languages that reflect the pattern are likely to have swear words with approximants, though fewer than would be predicted by their sound system.

Third, although we recruited speakers of different languages for Study 1, they were all familiar with English. We cannot exclude, therefore, the possibility that their performance in the “sweardar” experiment reflected their familiarity with phonetic patterns in English. We think this unlikely, as native French speakers, whose language does not exhibit this pattern, demonstrated numerically the strongest effect in the experiment. This suggests that performance in the experiment does not simply mirror linguistic knowledge. Moreover, our pilot study results indicated that approximants were at least as under-represented in the swear words of some of the other languages we investigated (e.g., Hungarian, Russian) as they were in English.

So, are swear words “universally patterned on the basis of sound” (Wajnryb, 2005, p. 205)? Our results point to a robust cross-linguistic sound symbolic association in the minds of human speakers. As to the wider universe, the jury is out: surprisingly, according to The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, the rudest word in the universe is “Belgium”, which contains an approximant.Footnote4

Notes

1. 1  It is worth noting that many thinkers arguing for arbitrariness as a fundamental aspect of language, such as Hockett, were active after Sapir and Köhler’s findings on sound symbolism were already well known. Their argument was not necessarily that sound symbolism is completely absent in language but that its presence is limited to a few words here and there, and that it does not play a meaningful role in communication. Thus, Hockett writes: “Human language is almost wholly arbitrary” (Hockett, 1959, p. 34; emphasis added).

2. 2  This analysis differs from the one we pre-registered because once we carried out the pre-registered analysis, we realised it was biased in that it led to some languages receiving higher weight than others. See the Online Supplementary Material (OSM) for the pre-registered analysis. The main result reported here – under-representation of approximants - is significant in the pre-registered analysis.

3. 3  We then repeated the analysis after removing 31 participants who provided the same response 10 or more times in a row (as per our pre-registration). Participants were again less likely to select the words with approximants as swear words (β = 0.53, SE = 0.08, z = 6.90, p < .001).

4. 4  We can’t resist noting that, in reality, the Belgium case accords with our thesis, because in this context “Belgium” is actually a minced oath – a substitute for “fuck” (Inglis-Arkell, 2012). Douglas Adams’ American publishers objected to the word “fuck” in the original text of Life, the Universe, and Everything (the third book in the Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series), and Adams responded by replacing it with “Belgium” and adding some embellishments about the word “Belgium” being forbidden everywhere but Earth (where people were too stupid to know what it meant). The joke plays on the stereotype of Belgium as bland and inoffensive (Mason, 2022), but the approximant in the word might have helped seal the deal.

Mirrors in elevators have several functions, among them making for a more spacious, relaxed and speedier ride

Why Are There Mirrors in Elevators? This design feature is no accident. Tara Well. Psychology Today, December 5, 2022. https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/the-clarity/202212/why-are-there-mirrors-in-elevators

Overestimating how much others agree: Although conspiracy beliefs were in the majority in only 12% of 150 conspiracies across three studies, conspiracy believers thought themselves to be in the majority 93% of the time

Pennycook, Gordon, Jabin Binnendyk, and David G. Rand. 2022. “Overconfidently Conspiratorial: Conspiracy Believers Are Dispositionally Overconfident and Massively Overestimate How Much Others Agree with Them.” PsyArXiv. December 5. doi:10.31234/osf.io/d5fz2

Abstract: There is a pressing need to understand belief in false conspiracies. Past work has focused on the needs and motivations of conspiracy believers, as well as the role of overreliance on intuition. Here, we propose an alternative driver of belief in conspiracies: overconfidence. Across eight studies with 4,181 U.S. adults, conspiracy believers not only relied more intuition, but also overestimated their performance on numeracy and perception tests (i.e. were overconfident in their own abilities). This relationship with overconfidence was robust to controlling for analytic thinking, need for uniqueness, and narcissism, and was strongest for the most fringe conspiracies. We also found that conspiracy believers – particularly overconfident ones – massively overestimated (>4x) how much others agree with them: Although conspiracy beliefs were in the majority in only 12% of 150 conspiracies across three studies, conspiracy believers thought themselves to be in the majority 93% of the time.

Relation between pathogen-avoidance motivations and prejudice toward gay men and women is present in 31 nations

Disgust sensitivity relates to attitudes toward gay men and lesbian women across 31 nations. Florian van Leeuwen et al. Group Processes & Intergroup Relations, March 26, 2022. https://doi.org/10.1177/13684302211067151

Abstract: Previous work has reported a relation between pathogen-avoidance motivations and prejudice toward various social groups, including gay men and lesbian women. It is currently unknown whether this association is present across cultures, or specific to North America. Analyses of survey data from adult heterosexuals (N = 11,200) from 31 countries showed a small relation between pathogen disgust sensitivity (an individual-difference measure of pathogen-avoidance motivations) and measures of antigay attitudes. Analyses also showed that pathogen disgust sensitivity relates not only to antipathy toward gay men and lesbians, but also to negativity toward other groups, in particular those associated with violations of traditional sexual norms (e.g., prostitutes). These results suggest that the association between pathogen-avoidance motivations and antigay attitudes is relatively stable across cultures and is a manifestation of a more general relation between pathogen-avoidance motivations and prejudice towards groups associated with sexual norm violations.

Discussion

We examined the relation between pathogen avoidance and antigay attitudes in a large sample of heterosexual adults across 31 countries. Analyses showed that pathogen disgust sensitivity related to antigay attitudes measured by four variables (opposition to gay marriage, opposition to gay and lesbian sexual orientation, antipathy toward gay men, and antipathy toward lesbian women), and that these relations were small but relatively stable across countries. An analysis that explored how the relation varied across cultural regions showed that it was weakest in countries with a cultural relation to Britain. Overall, these results suggest that the relation between pathogen-avoidance motivations and antigay prejudice does not derive from factors that are particular to some countries (e.g., stereotypes about gay men specific to North American populations), but from factors that are relatively stable across the sampled countries.

Disgust sensitivity was related to both antipathy toward gay men and lesbian women, which is not consistent with the notion that the relation results from the association of gay men with anal intercourse (Kiss et al., 2020). In addition, the analysis revealed that pathogen disgust sensitivity was also related to antipathy toward other groups, in particular prostitutes, sexually promiscuous people, and atheists. A decomposition analysis showed that the relation between disgust sensitivity and antigay prejudice could be mostly accounted for by the relation between disgust sensitivity and antipathy toward these other groups. The correlation between disgust sensitivity and antigay prejudice could not be accounted for by prejudice toward politicians and lawyers, suggesting that the relation was not driven by prejudice toward groups associated with violations of cooperative norms. In addition, the results were only partially consistent with the notion that disgust sensitivity relates to negative attitudes toward outgroups in general. On the one hand, pathogen disgust sensitivity related to prejudice toward all groups except lawyers. On the other hand, for the four groups that were not characterized by sexual norm violations, disgust sensitivity showed relatively small relations with prejudice, and only attitudes toward atheists could account for a substantial part of the association between disgust sensitivity and antigay prejudice. In combination with evidence that prejudice toward atheists might derive from perceptions of promiscuous sexuality (Moon et al., 2019), the current findings provide little support for the notion that pathogen-avoidance motivations relate specifically to antigay prejudice. Instead, they suggest that pathogen-avoidance motivations relate more broadly to prejudice toward groups associated with sexual norm violations (Crawford et al., 2014).

Limitations

We note four limitations that should be taken into account when interpreting these results. First, the current study did not assess the degree to which participants associated gay men and lesbian women with violations of sexual, nonsexual, traditional, or religious norms. Research on opposition to gay marriage suggests that in the US, antigay attitudes vary as a function of associating gay men and lesbian women with violating sexual norms (Pinsof & Haselton, 2016, 2017). The study did, however, include measures of prejudice toward prostitutes and sexually promiscuous individuals who, by definition, depart from heterosexual monogamy. Recent work suggests that negative sentiments toward atheists might also stem from perceptions of promiscuous sexuality (see Moon et al., 2019). In addition, research has reported that sexual prejudice could result from a variety of threats (e.g., loss of status, child development; Pirlott & Cook, 2018), including perceptions of unwanted sexual interest (Pirlott & Neuberg, 2014). Future research may explore how to efficiently measure the extent to which individuals associate a target group (e.g., gay men) with this variety of threats.

Second, for some of the countries, the sampling methods resulted in samples that were more positive toward gay and lesbian sexual orientation relative to their population. For example, in the US sample, 86% of participants indicated that society should accept gay and lesbian sexual orientation, whereas a 2013 Pew survey estimated that 60% of the U.S. population felt this way (Pew Research Center, 2013). Similarly, in the Japanese sample, 79% of participants indicated that society should accept gay and lesbian sexual orientation, whereas only 54% did in the 2013 Pew survey. (That said, there was a strong nation-level correlation between estimates from the 18 nations sampled here and those obtained by Pew’s representative sampling, r = .83.) Reduced variation in antigay attitudes might have attenuated relations between antigay attitudes and the predictor variables. The reduced variation in antigay attitudes may also have resulted in underestimating the cross-cultural variation in the relation between disgust sensitivity and antigay attitudes. Assuming that university communities (which were oversampled) are less variable across nations than are representative samples, the current study could have underestimated cross-cultural variation. Future studies using more ideologically diverse samples might reveal stronger associations between antigay attitudes and disgust sensitivity, and more cross-cultural variation in this relation.

Third, because the study was designed for data collection with a large and culturally diverse sample, it used a small number of self-report items that might be vulnerable to self-presentation biases. Further, attitudes toward each group were measured with single-item feeling thermometers. Although feeling thermometers are widely used measures of prejudice, single-item measures likely have lower reliability than multi-item measures. This low reliability is likely to have attenuated the observed effect sizes. In addition, the study included only four feeling thermometers for groups not characterized by sexual behavior. We included the same groups in all countries and assumed that, across cultures, people would associate politicians and lawyers with violating cooperative norms. However, it is possible that in some countries, these groups were not associated with violating cooperative norms. Furthermore, the survey included no measures of prejudice toward foreign or ethnic outgroups. Hence, the current results are mute on the issue of whether the relation between pathogen-avoidance motivations and antigay prejudice can be accounted for by prejudice toward foreign or ethnic outgroups. Extant research on this issue is mixed. Some work suggests that pathogen-avoidance motivations relate to both sexual prejudice and racial prejudice (Kam & Estes, 2016), while some studies suggest there is a unique relation with sexual prejudice (Inbar et al., 2012; Tapias et al., 2007). Note, however, that recent work has specifically tested the outgroup-avoidance perspective—by assessing the relation between pathogen-avoidance motivations and prejudice toward different kinds of immigrants—and suggests that pathogen avoidance does not relate to prejudice toward foreign immigrants in general, but motivates negative sentiments specifically toward foreign immigrants who do not assimilate to local norms (Karinen et al., 2019).

Sexual and Moral Disgust Sensitivity

The fourth limitation is related to the measurement of individual differences in pathogen-avoidance motivations. The current study used a measure of pathogen disgust sensitivity. While pathogen cues are typical elicitors of disgust, disgust is also evoked by stimuli with little pathogen-relevant information value, such as high-risk or low-value sexual behaviors (e.g., sex with strangers, incest), and violations of moral norms (Tybur et al., 2009, 2013). Thus, individuals vary not only in their tendencies to feel disgust toward pathogen cues (i.e., pathogen disgust sensitivity), but also toward sexual behaviors (i.e., sexual disgust sensitivity) and moral violations (i.e., moral disgust sensitivity). In addition, pathogen, sexual, and moral disgust sensitivity are correlated (Tybur et al., 2009), meaning that the relation between disgust sensitivity and prejudice toward groups associated with violating sexual norms might result from overlap between pathogen disgust sensitivity and sexual and/or moral disgust sensitivity. The survey did not include items measuring sexual or moral disgust sensitivity and was not able to control for these variables. To address this issue, we performed a reanalysis of data of an unpublished study by van Leeuwen et al. (2016) with participants from the USA (n = 462), Brazil (n = 485), South Africa (n = 481), and China (n = 450). These data included items for pathogen, sexual, and moral disgust sensitivity, and items for antigay attitudes. Multilevel regression analysis showed that both pathogen disgust sensitivity (b = 0.45, 95% CI [0.18, 0.72]) and sexual disgust sensitivity (b = 0.90, 95% CI [0.65, 1.14]) related to stronger antigay attitudes, while moral disgust sensitivity related to more progay attitudes (b = −1.38, 95% CI [−1.72, −1.03]). Furthermore, the correlation with pathogen disgust sensitivity did not differ from zero when controlling for sexual disgust sensitivity (b = 0.02, 95% CI [−0.27, 0.31]), but did differ from zero when controlling for both sexual and moral disgust sensitivity (b = 0.38, 95% CI [0.08, 0.68]). (For details, see supplemental analysis S18.) In short, the relation between pathogen disgust sensitivity and antigay attitudes could not be accounted for by moral disgust sensitivity. While sexual disgust sensitivity was also related to antigay attitudes, these data did not clearly show whether sexual disgust sensitivity entirely or partially accounts for the relation between pathogen disgust sensitivity and antigay attitudes.

Further Research

The current findings suggest at least three avenues for further research. As mentioned before, several explanations for the relation between pathogen-avoidance motivations and prejudice towards groups that violate sexual norms have been proposed. Some of these assume that aversion to sexual norm violations functions to reduce the infection risk posed by those perceived as sexually promiscuous. Consistent with this possibility, recent modeling work suggests that, when sexually transmitted infections are endemic, a reproductive strategy of punitive monogamy (i.e., a strategy that combines serial monogamy with punishment of those who are polygynous) performs better than a polygynous reproductive strategy (Bauch & McElreath, 2016). Future research might examine whether the relation between pathogen-avoidance motivation and prejudice towards groups associated with sexual norm violations is tailored specifically to avoiding infection by future mates.

Second, the relation between pathogen avoidance and condemnation of individuals who are perceived to be promiscuous could exist because people who are more disgust sensitive tend to have more monogamous mating strategies, and therefore attempt to reduce others’ sexual promiscuity (Tybur et al., 2015). Monogamous mating protects against the infection risk posed by intimate contact (sexual or otherwise) with multiple conspecifics, so more pathogen-avoidant individuals might favor such strategies. In turn, a monogamous mating strategy poses the risks of cuckoldry and abandonment, which can be averted by promoting and enforcing norms of monogamy (Pinsof & Haselton, 2016). Some existing work is consistent with this idea. Pathogen disgust sensitivity correlates positively with sexual disgust sensitivity—a measure of aversion to sexual activity outside of a pair bond (Tybur et al., 2009). Pathogen disgust sensitivity correlates negatively with number of past sexual partners (Gruijters et al., 2016) and sociosexual orientation (Tybur et al., 2015). Germ aversion—another measure of pathogen-avoidance motivations—is also related to a monogamous orientation (Duncan et al., 2009; Gruijters et al., 2016; Murray et al., 2013). However, some recent findings are inconsistent with the sexual strategies account. Aarøe et al. (2020) found that sociosexual orientation did not mediate the relation between disgust sensitivity and political ideology, and at least two studies have reported no relation between pathogen disgust sensitivity and openness to casual sex (Al-Shawaf et al., 2015; O’Shea et al., 2019). Further research might examine the magnitude, causal direction, and cross-cultural stability of the association between pathogen avoidance and mating strategies.

Third, as mentioned before, sexual prejudice can be partly explained in terms of perceived unwanted sexual interest (Pirlott & Neuberg, 2014). The current study observed substantial and cross-culturally stable relations between participant sex and antipathy toward gay men and lesbian women. This sex difference is consistent with previous reports of stronger antigay prejudice among men than women (Bettinsoli et al., 2019; Kite & Whitley, 1996). At the same time, men showed less antipathy toward prostitutes and sexually promiscuous people. Further research might examine whether these sex differences can be explained in terms of unwanted sexual interest or are related to other causes.

Practical Implications

Finally, these findings suggest two directions for efforts to reduce antigay prejudice. First, the relation between pathogen-avoidance motivations and antigay prejudice seems small in comparison to the effects of other factors such as participant sex and traditionalism. Even though the current findings are consistent with previous work showing a relation between pathogen-avoidance motivations and sexual prejudice, they also suggest that the size of this relation is small. Hence, if causal relations exist, reductions in pathogen-avoidance motivations would lead to only modest reductions in sexual prejudice.

Second, motivations to avoid infection do not seem related to unique features of gay men or lesbian women. Rather, this association is common with other groups associated with sexual norm violations. As condemnation of nonmonogamous individuals seems substantially influenced by processes unrelated to pathogen avoidance (e.g., Pinsof & Haselton, 2016), a focus on monogamy might be more effective. Perhaps antigay prejudice might be reduced by highlighting the prevalence of pair bonding among gay men and lesbian women.

We are often able to maintain the belief that we are moral people despite knowledge of our failings; one mechanism is to represent one's past immoral behaviors in concrete or mechanistic terms, thus stripping the action of its moral implications

Making molehills out of mountains: Removing moral meaning from prior immoral actions. Chelsea Helion, Adrian Ward, Ian O'Shea, David Pizarro. Journal of Behavioral Decision Making, December 4 2022. https://doi.org/10.1002/bdm.2310

Abstract: At some point in their lives, most people have told a lie, intentionally hurt someone else, or acted selfishly at the expense of another. Despite knowledge of their moral failings, individuals are often able to maintain the belief that they are moral people. This research explores one mechanism by which this paradoxical process occurs: the tendency to represent one's past immoral behaviors in concrete or mechanistic terms, thus stripping the action of its moral implications. Across five studies, we document this basic pattern and provide evidence that this process impacts evaluations of an act's moral wrongness. We further demonstrate an extension of this effect, such that when an apology describes an immoral behavior using mechanistic terms, it is viewed as less sincere and less forgivable, likely because including low-level or concrete language in an apology fails to communicate the belief that one's actions were morally wrong.

 

 

We presented men with animated female characters that varied in their lumbar curvature and back arching (i.e., lordosis behavior); men’s attraction increased as lumbar curvature approached the hypothesized optimum

Lordosis in Humans. Ayten Yesim Semchenko et al. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Dec 2 2022. https://doi.org/10.1177/01461672221115218

Abstract: Despite progress in attractiveness research, we have yet to identify many fitness-relevant cues in the human phenotype or humans’ psychology for responding to them. Here, we test hypotheses about psychological systems that may have evolved to process distinct cues in the female lumbar region. The Fetal Load Hypothesis proposes a male preference for a morphological cue: lumbar curvature. The Lordosis Detection Hypothesis posits context-dependent male attraction to a movement: lordosis behavior. In two studies (Study 1 N: 102, Study 2 N: 231), we presented men with animated female characters that varied in their lumbar curvature and back arching (i.e., lordosis behavior). Irrespective of mating context, men’s attraction increased as lumbar curvature approached the hypothesized optimum. By contrast, men experienced greater attraction to lordosis behavior in short-term than long-term mating contexts. These findings support both the Lordosis Detection and Fetal Load Hypotheses. Discussion focuses on the meaning of human lordosis and the importance of dynamic stimuli in attractiveness research.

Check also Sexual Attractiveness: a Comparative Approach to Morphological, Behavioral and Neurophysiological Aspects of Sexual Signaling in Women and Nonhuman Primate Females. Bernard Wallner et al. Adaptive Human Behavior and Physiology, March 28 2019. https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2019/03/a-comparative-approach-to-morphological.html

We apply deep learning to daytime satellite imagery to predict changes in income and population at high spatial resolution in US data

Khachiyan, Arman, Anthony Thomas, Huye Zhou, Gordon Hanson, Alex Cloninger, Tajana Rosing and Amit K. Khandelwal. 2022. "Using Neural Networks to Predict Microspatial Economic Growth." American Economic Review: Insights, 4(4):491-506. DOI: 10.1257/aeri.20210422

Abstract: We apply deep learning to daytime satellite imagery to predict changes in income and population at high spatial resolution in US data. For grid cells with lateral dimensions of 1.2 km and 2.4 km (where the average US county has dimension of 51.9 km), our model predictions achieve R2 values of 0.85 to 0.91 in levels, which far exceed the accuracy of existing models, and 0.32 to 0.46 in decadal changes, which have no counterpart in the literature and are 3–4 times larger than for commonly used nighttime lights. Our network has wide application for analyzing localized shocks.

Machiavellian men and psychopathy women report more sex partners; Machiavellians have more unprotected sex partners & rather accept infidelity

Overcoming agreeableness: Sociosexuality and the Dark Triad expanded and revisited. Lennart Freyth, Peter K.Jonason. Personality and Individual Differences, Volume 203, March 2023, 112009. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2022.112009

Highlights

• The Dark Triad traits outperform agreeableness and the dark core on sexual outcomes.

• Machiavellian men and psychopathy women report more sex partners.

• Machiavellians have more unprotected sex partners and rather accept infidelity.

Abstract: We replicated and extended (N = 495) what is known about the relationships between the Dark Triad traits (i.e., narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy) and a wider range (than previously reported) of sociosexuality including risky sexual behaviors (e.g., lack of condom use) and sexuality in relation to dating applications like Tinder, in general, in men and women, and above agreeableness. Machiavellianism and psychopathy were linked to most sociosexual behaviors and attitudes. In men, Machiavellianism was linked to various sociosexual outcomes, in women those outcomes were associated with psychopathy instead. Agreeableness was hardly correlated with sociosexual outcomes. The Dark Triad traits were more strongly correlated with the studied outcomes even after controlling for agreeableness or for the dark core. Unexpectedly, men who were Machiavellian and agreeable reported the most sex partners in different contexts, but not psychopaths. In contrast, women who were psychopathic not only had more sex partners in general, but they also engaged in more unprotected sex, and one-night stands than men did. These findings build on prior research on the Dark Triad traits and their associations with sociosexuality and help to draw a more nuanced and modern picture of those relationships.

Keywords: Sexual behaviorsAgreeablenessDark TriadSociosexualityUnprotected sexDark Core

4. Discussion

We replicated and extended what is known about the Dark Triad traits regarding sociosexuality. We did this by investigating a wider, modern range of sociosexual outcomes than previous, traditional research which was limited to either sociosexuality or specific types of relationships (Adams et al., 2014; Jonason et al., 2009). In our study, the Dark Triad traits were related to almost all sociosexual outcomes independently of agreeableness and offer contributions beyond the dark core. Differences were indicated in 36 % overall correlations, in 55 % among men, and 39 % of tests among women; and in 24 % of tests sex moderations were found. The Dark Triad traits' correlations towards sociosexual outcomes showed differences for sociosexual desires and the acceptance of infidelity in eight tests, and in five out of eleven tests for sociosexual attitudes. This indicates substantial differences in the correlations and supports the claim, that the Dark Triad traits are more than just disagreeableness or the Dark Triad's core (Sleep et al., 2017). We summarize our findings in three domains. First, replicating Dark Triad traits' correlates with sociosexuality and expanding the outcomes by updating aspects of modern sex research. Second, we demonstrated sex differences covering various aspects at once providing a multi-faceted picture of men's and women's sexual behavior and attitudes in a diverse range of sociosexual phenomena. Third, we tested whether the Dark Triad traits' correlations were independent of agreeableness and of a dark core, and if agreeableness could provide incremental variance for sociosexual outcomes on top of the Dark Triad traits.

First, we replicated links between the Dark Triad traits and agreeableness with sociosexual outcomes and expanded these finding by including less investigated manifestations like the number of oral sex partners, of the number of sex partners via dating apps partners in total and unprotected, the total number of one-night stands, the active experience of prostitution, and the acceptance of infidelity (Flesia et al., 2021). Especially Machiavellianism and psychopathy were linked to almost all sociosexual phenomena, while agreeableness was of minor importance as was narcissism, which was linked to attitudinal outcomes only. Interestingly, Machiavellianism correlated positively with the acceptance of infidelity, matching previous findings that Machiavellian cheaters do not report relationship dissolution, while psychopathic cheaters did (Jones & Weiser, 2014). Agreeable individuals reported more one-night stands and less acceptance of infidelity. In general, linking the Dark Triad traits with sociosexuality (i.e., short-term mating) is in line studies spanning at least two decades (Horsten et al., 2022; Jonason et al., 2009) and investigating different behaviors of modern sex life instead of just relying on unidimensional sociosexuality provided a more nuanced picture.

Second, examining the associations between personality traits and sociosexuality in both sexes showed that agreeableness was associated with more sex partners among several conditions in men but not in women, and more strongly with sex partners via dating applications in men than in women. Among men, Machiavellianism was related to most sexual outcomes, and more strongly associated with sociosexual desires and behaviors compared to women. Observing no psychopathy-sociosexuality link among men, challenges the view of exploitative men (e.g., Jonason et al., 2009) along with adaptationist accounts (Jonason et al., 2017). Surprisingly, psychopathic men even reported fewer sexual partners, general and unprotected, than women. As undesirable personality traits are a “dealbreaker” for women, callous-psychopathic men might be undesirable mates even in short-term mating contexts (Blanchard et al., 2021). Alternatively, younger and charming men might be able to compensate for this, but our sample was too old on average to test such things. In women, psychopathy was associated with most sexuality measures and in three behavioral cases even more strongly than in men. Psychopathy manifests itself rather violently in men, while the borderline-like manifestations (i.e., emotional dysregulation, impersonal sexual attitudes) in women are favored for long- and short-term mating by men (Blanchard et al., 2021). Conceivably, impulsive, sexually motivated, psychopathic women play an active role in sex, supported by our findings. These behavioral sex-specific associations might be specific “flavored” manifestations of the individual trait on top of the underlying disposition of the dark core (Bader et al., 2022). Evidently, the Dark Triad traits are different mating strategies with different mechanism in men and women, which lead to short-term sex and are not limited to young samples (Carter et al., 2014). The outcomes of the Dark Triad traits show variation by sex (Jonason et al., 2017), particularly impulsivity (i.e., psychopathy) and outcomes such as sociosexual desire, which leads us to the assumption that contradicting studies (Carter et al., 2014) may be based on statistical and/or observed artifacts. Taken together, the Dark Triad traits are associated with different sexual outcomes in men and women, and additionally the strength of the correlations depends on the sexual variable considered.

Third, agreeableness was not only associated with few sexual outcomes but based on Steiger's z-tests and regressions, we showed just how unimportant it is. For instance, the models where the Dark Triad traits were in Step 1 of hierarchical regressions could not be improved by adding agreeableness in Step 2 overall and in both sexes which may mean that the Dark Triad traits account for variance above agreeableness and their supposed dark core (Sleep et al., 2017). Furthermore, the associations with different outcomes (Jones & Weiser, 2014) of Machiavellianism (e.g., total number of sexual partners) and psychopathy (e.g., number of one-night stand partners) assessed in this study, or regarding different outcomes associated with both traits in terms of behaviors and preferences compared to other studies (Adams et al., 2014), support the distinctiveness of the two characteristics (e.g., impulse control, sensitivity to punishment; Jones & Mueller, 2022), which some researchers doubt (Miller et al., 2017). This difference is particularly visible when men and women are compared.

Taken together, men's sexual behaviors appear agreeable and tactical (i.e., Machiavellian), their cognitions self-centered. Women's sexual behaviors seem more psychopathic and partly tactical. The Dark Triad traits were correlated with almost all investigated outcomes and remained so after controlling for either agreeableness or the dark core (mostly). The dark core outperforming disagreeableness supports voices (Moshagen et al., 2020), which contradict the claim that both are the same (Vize et al., 2021). Whether Machiavellianism should be interpreted as agentic tactics or deceitfulness, and how agreeableness is best operationalized be answered by subsequent, facet-level research.

4.1. Limitations and conclusions

Despite the methodological strength and a large adult sample who reported a wide range of rarely investigated sociosexual behaviors, our study is not free of limitations: the cross-sectional design, a small subsample for sex partners via dating applications (Flesia et al., 2021), and relying on reported behaviors and not on reported preferences (Adams et al., 2014). However, we want to focus on two concerns future researchers should address. Shorter scales may measure the trait's main components but not all potential characteristics, as is true for agreeableness, which we captured with a scale (BFI-S) based on the Big Five Inventory instead of the NEO-PI or Five-Factor-Model (Vize et al., 2021). The BFI-S is repeatedly used in German samples after being improved for a German population (Schupp & Gerlitz, 2008), was repeatedly validated (also for the NEO-PI-R; Hahn et al., 2012), and built with the intention to measure the trait and not its facets (John et al., 2008). Therefore, we consider the BFI-S a useful measure for our study, particularly regarding the partialization of agreeableness. Therefore, we suggest working on a unidimensional construct of disagreeableness to differentiate it from low agreeableness, an approach used in the Big Five tradition (John et al., 2008). As sociosexuality correlated with psychopathy in women but not in men, interpretations could be tempered because we used a different measure of the Dark Triad traits than previous studies (Jonason et al., 2009) and we sampled Germans, as opposed to North Americans who are common in this area of research given the three most cited researchers in the field are American and Canadian (i.e., Jonason, Jones, & Paulhus). In addition, sex differences in sociosexuality are smaller in Germany compared to America (Schmitt, 2005); German men might be less assertive “hunters” or German women are more agentically promiscuous than North American women. Moreover, more equality among men and women in more sociosexually unrestricted societies (Lippa, 2009), might lead to more active sexual strategies in women. Future research should investigate further sociosexual outcomes, particularly on the different patterns of dating app-related outcomes between the sexes. Especially women's strategies must be studied and compared in younger and older women with long- and short-term dating orientations. Research should also examine whether the use of dating apps, as an expanded “hunting ground”, or as a necessary alternative for nice guys, also results in mating success.

We replicated and expanded the relationships between the Dark Triad traits and agreeableness with sociosexuality. We drew a more nuanced picture of particularly Machiavellian men and psychopathic women engaging in more casual sex, while agreeableness was weakly and only occasionally and minimally correlated to sociosexual outcomes and not associated with any sexual behaviors in women. The Dark Triad traits account for sociosexual outcomes beyond agreeableness and the dark core, so we reject the hypotheses offered in the podcast. By replicating some, but not all, previous links between the Dark Triad traits and sociosexuality while revealing new ones, more work is clearly needed on this topic.

Overestimating the Intensity of Negative Feelings in Autobiographical Memory: Evidence from the 9/11 Attack and Covid-19 Pandemic

Castillo, Juan, Haoxue Fan, Olivia T. Karaman, Jocelyn Shu, Yoann Stussi, Maria A. Kredlow, Sophia Vranos, et al. 2022. “Overestimating the Intensity of Negative Feelings in Autobiographical Memory: Evidence from the 9/11 Attack and Covid-19 Pandemic.” PsyArXiv. December 2. doi:10.31234/osf.io/xw6rf

Abstract: When recalling autobiographical events, people retrieve not only the event details, but also the feelings they experienced. Past work with different measures of memories for feelings remain inconclusive, suggesting that people are either highly consistent or inconsistent with remembering feelings. The current study examined whether people are able to consistently recall the intensity of previous feelings associated with consequential and negatively valenced emotional events, i.e., the 9/11 attack (N = 769) and Covid-19 pandemic (N = 726). By comparing the initial and recalled intensities of negative feelings, we found that people systematically recall more intense negative feelings than they initially reported – overestimating the intensity of past negative emotional experience. The Covid-19 dataset further showed that people whose emotional well-being improved more demonstrate smaller biases in remembered feelings. Across both datasets, the remembered intensity of feelings correlated with initial feelings and were also influenced by current feelings, although the impact of the current feelings was stronger in the Covid-19 dataset than the 9/11 dataset. Our results suggest that when recalling negative autobiographical events, people tend to overestimate the intensity of experienced negative emotional experience with the degree of bias influenced by current feelings and well-being.

Canadian Atheists are No Less Healthy than the Religious

Throw BABE Out With the Bathwater? Canadian Atheists are No Less Healthy than the Religious. David Speed. Journal of Religion and Health volume 61, pages 4608–4634. Apr 18 2022. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10943-022-01558-w

Abstract: The belief-as-benefit effect (BABE) is a broad term for the positive association between religion/spirituality (R/S) and health outcomes. Functionally, religious variables and religious identities predict greater wellness, which implies that atheists should report worse health relative to religious groups. Using Cycle 29 of the cross-sectional General Social Survey from Statistics Canada (N > 15,900), I explored health differences in stress, life satisfaction, subjective physical wellbeing, and subjective mental wellbeing across R/S identities (atheists, agnostics, Nones, Catholics, Protestants, Eastern Religions). Results indicated that (1). religious attendance, prayer, and religiosity were generally unrelated to all health outcomes for all R/S identities, (2). averagely religious atheists reported health parity with averagely religious members of all other R/S identities, and (3). when comparing a maximally nonreligious atheist group against several maximally religiously affiliated groups, atheists largely showed health parity. If both low R/S and high R/S are associated with comparable wellness, researchers should actively question whether R/S is genuinely salutary.

Rolf Degen summarizing... The earliest memories of our childhood mostly consist of innocuous, disjointed scraps of experience, often devoid of emotion and without a coherent narrative

Early Childhood Memories Are not Repressed: Either They Were Never Formed or Were Quickly Forgotten. Mark L. Howe. Topics in Cognitive Science, December 2 2022. https://doi.org/10.1111/tops.12636

Abstract: Early childhood events are rarely remembered in adulthood. In fact, memory for these early experiences declines during childhood itself. This holds regardless of whether these memories of autobiographical experiences are traumatic or mundane, everyday experiences. Indeed, what people tend to remember from their childhoods involves relatively innocuous experiences, ones often devoid of emotion. In this article, I provide an overview of the types of memories adults recall from their childhoods and the ages at which these memories are believed to have been formed. Along the way, I provide a brief exegesis of the neurobiological and cognitive underpinnings of early memory development. I will show that changes and growth in neural interconnectivity as well as the development of various cognitive structures (e.g., the inception of the cognitive self) help propel the emergence of a mature autobiographical memory system, one that can and does serve as a reconstructive base for remembering events that occur in later childhood and adulthood. During the course of this review, I detail the nature of early memories, their fragility, and the adaptive consequences of forgetting and supplanting these memories with newer, more age-appropriate experiences throughout childhood.

3 Forgetting as adaptive

The idea that forgetting is an adaptive process has gained considerable currency recently (e.g., see Nørby, 2015; Ryan & Frankland, 2022). A central tenet here is that “… information loss prevents overfitting to perceptual situations that are too specific. In other words, degrading stored information contained in a memory allows organisms to behave more flexibly and promotes better memory-guided decision-making” (Ryan & Frankland, 2022, p. 179). Forgetting then, in childhood and adulthood, is something that occurs in an adaptive memory system, one that is geared to promote the survival of the remembering organism (also see Howe & Otgaar, 2013).

A related mechanism that, although not necessarily leading to the complete erasure of information but simply its modification, is reconsolidation. Like consolidation, reconsolidation involves initial trace volatility of engrams in memory followed by the stabilizing of the engram, in this case, following the retrieval of a previously stored memory trace. During the period of instability, additional information can be added to the original memory trace, information that subsequently becomes part of the newly restored engram. Through this process, the original trace is updated with new information, making that representation more pertinent to functioning in the organisms current environment.

Concerning the forgetting of early childhood experiences, one model suggests that the ongoing maturation of the hippocampal complex may make infantile memories inaccessible to later retrieval attempts (Alberini & Travaglia, 2017). The idea here is that there are critical periods in memory-related neural development in which the young organism is learning to learn and remember. Although memory traces may be laid down early in this development, forgetting of these traces might occur due to the maturation of the hippocampal memory system in response to these infantile experiences, making memories of these early experiences inaccessible to retrieval attempts in this more mature memory system.

Another process that exacerbates forgetting is hippocampal neurogenesis (e.g., see Akers et al., 2014). In infancy as well as adulthood, new neurons are generated in the hippocampus (specifically, the subgranular zone of the dentate gyrus), neurons that integrate into hippocampal circuits permitting new learning. This integration not only aids in the storage of new memories, but can also affect memories that are already stored. That is, as these new neurons integrate into the hippocampus, they establish new synaptic connections that either compliment those that already exist or may even replace those existing ones. Thus, high levels of hippocampal neurogenesis can lead to higher levels of forgetting of information already stored in memory. Because hippocampal neurogenesis rates tend to be high during infancy (see Akers et al., 2014), rates of forgetting should be high then too. The fact that these high rates of neurogenesis are seen across many species during infancy, and these same species evince high rates of infantile amnesia, neurogenesis may be partly responsible for increased forgetting of early life events (Akers et al., 2014; Josselyn & Frankland, 2012; also see Howe, 2011). Importantly, because neurogenesis reconfigures hippocampal circuits, memories originally served by these circuits have been fundamentally altered and cannot be reinstated as they no longer exist in their original form (Akers et al., 2014). As development proceeds, neurogenesis rates decline, making it easier (neurobiologically, at least) to retain hippocampally dependent (declarative/autobiographical) memories over longer and longer periods of retention. Thus, given the need to update early memories in light of new experiences, as well as the prodigious rates of neurogenesis early in life, both of these factors contribute to the increased forgetting, not repression, of early childhood experiences.

Casadastraphobia, the fear of "falling up" into the sky

Letter to the Editor: A previously undescribed specific phobia. Alan Price, David Moore, Raja Mukherjee, Kayleigh Seen. Journal of Psychiatric Research, Volume 157, January 2023, Page 17. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpsychires.2022.11.001

[No abstract] [From https://phobia.fandom.com/wiki/Casadastraphobia - Casadastraphobia is the fear of falling into the sky. It is a relatively recently identified fear, having first appeared on urbandictionary.com on December 11th, 2006, having not previously been recorded or coined anywhere else. It is defined as an irrational or pathological fear of falling into the sky. "Cas-" is a Latin morpheme meaning "to fall," while "ad" is a Latin preposition meaning "to" or "toward." And most people recognize "-astra-" as the Latin morpheme for "star," and "phobia" as a greek word meaning "fear of." Thus, Casadastraphobia is "a fear of falling toward the stars," which is interpreted in this sense to mean, more broadly, a fear of falling toward the sky. But "-astra-" is not a etymological mistake, as many people report that their casadastraphobia is worse while they are viewing a night sky. Casasdastraphobia is, by its nature, a fantasy phobia, or a phobia for which the probability of the event described in the fear happening is zero, or near zero. This means that there is some amount of fantastical thinking involved in the precipitation of this phobia, which points to possible psychosis, as might be observed in schizotypal or schizophrenic thinking (or in bipolar disorder with psychotic features). Obsessive rumination is not beyond the realm of these disorders, and the two symptoms together can result in potentially traumatic experiences. There also seems to be some comorbidity between this phobia and vertigo, suggesting that vertigo might provoke the thinking which then becomes obsessively ruminated on, and thereby traumatizing. This is by its nature speculative, and not empirical, however, as casadastraphobia is a rather novel description of irrational fear, and has not yet made its way into broader medical discourse. ]