Contrary to the moral comparison, appearance-based standards comparison is most frequently made with those of better looks than our own, and we suffer for it

How we compare: A new approach to assess aspects of the comparison process for appearance-based standards and their associations with individual differences in wellbeing and personality measures. Peter A. McCarthy, Thomas Meyer, Mitja D. Back, Nexhmedin Morina. PLOS, January 11, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0280072

Abstract: We introduce a novel approach to assess habitual comparison processes, while distinguishing between different types of comparison standards. Several comparison theories (e.g., social) suggest that self-evaluations use different standards to inform self-perception and are associated with wellbeing and personality. We developed the Comparison Standards Scale for Appearance (CSS-A) to examine self-reported engagement with social, temporal, criteria-based, dimensional, and counterfactual comparisons for upward and downward standards in relation to appearance. The scale was completed by three hundred participants online alongside measures of appearance schemas, social comparison evaluations, depression, anxiety, stress, self-esteem, physical self-concept, narcissism, and perfectionism. The CSS-A was found to reliably assess individual differences in upward and downward comparison frequency and affective impact for multiple comparison standards. In line with theory, CSS-A upward comparisons were more frequent than downward comparisons and coincided with negative (versus positive) affective impact. Comparison intensity (i.e., comparison frequency × discrepancy) predicted negative and positive affective impact for upward and downward comparisons, respectively. This relationship was partially mediated by appearance concern for upward comparisons (a composite of appearance schemas and physical self-concept), yet moderated by negativity for downward comparisons (a composite of depression, anxiety, stress, and self-esteem). We offer a framework for measuring the comparison process that warrants further research on underlying comparison processes, for which the CSS(-A) and experience sampling methods should serve as useful tools.

Discussion

This study presents a novel approach to assess between-person differences in aspects of the comparison process as they relate to appearance self-perception. Results suggest that the CSS-A reliably assesses individual differences across five types of comparison standards and engendered affective reaction. Participants reported more upward than downward comparisons and comparison intensity was significantly associated with affective impact. Appearance concern partially accounted for the aversive affective consequences of upward comparisons, while the positive association between downward intensity and affective impact was weaker for individuals who reported higher negativity ratings.

Structure & properties of the CSS-A items

Analyses of frequency items showed good reliability and the two-factor structure indicates that all types of standards are used in upward and downward appearance-based comparisons. Exploratory factor analyses for items per standard could only support extraction of a social standard factor, likely due to the greater potential of specific social standards (eight) compared to the other standards (four each). However, social standards are also more commonly used to inform appearance-based self-perceptions due to physical representations and socio-cultural phenomena such as advertising and social media, [e.g., 60–62]. This was supported by the CFA, where the general appearance factor was defined by a social item.

As expected, upward comparisons were more frequently reported than downward comparisons and were associated with predominantly negative affective impact, while downward comparisons were predominantly positive. In the EFA, the upward and downward comparison factors accounted for 25% of the common variance in frequency, however the downward comparison factor explained a relatively low amount of this, which usually indicates the items do not accurately measure a shared latent factor. Yet in the CFA, downward items accounted for variance in the general factor and the downward factor, where loadings were stronger for the latter. This indicates that while downward standards are utilised, they are less salient in appearance comparisons, supporting previous findings that they are not as common as upward standards [63,64]. Downward comparisons may be rather reactive, rather than self-initiated, and involve more flexible standards [65], thus being less consistent and more difficult to recall than upward comparisons.

Only future temporal, counterfactual, compensatory dimensional, and ideal criteria-based standards significantly contributed to a specific upward comparison factor, indicating that these captured less typical upward appearance comparisons. While taking the motivational significance of comparisons processes into account [1], we anticipated the future temporal and compensatory dimensional standards as appetitive (i.e., favourable) upward comparisons. This was supported by the positive mean affective impact ratings for these items, while the counterfactual comparison items were aversive, indicating that the upward factor represents both appetitive and aversive standards outside of the typical appearance comparisons. Specific standards could prove useful for identifying atypical comparison habits that have (dys)functional properties. For example, according to the functional theory of counterfactual thinking [66], excessive upward counterfactual thinking is associated with higher negative affect and depressive symptoms, supported in a review of upward counterfactual thinking [28]. Further investigation of comparison standards as indicators of self-perception is necessary, particularly to establish what constitutes excessive or dysfunctional appearance comparisons, as well as if this varies between dimensions. Our results show that the CSS-A is a useful tool for future research to consider multiple comparison standards when investigating appearance self-evaluation processes, as well as providing a framework for research in other domains.

While appearance comparisons are largely shaped by social and upward standards, other comparison dimensions may be shaped by different types of standards. For example, comparisons involved in assessing one’s wellbeing are predominantly based on upward comparisons using past temporal, social, and criteria-based standards, often with negative evaluations [3]. Whereas for academic and social performance, past and future temporal comparisons are most common and are associated with more positive self-evaluations than social and criteria-based comparisons [38]. We encourage further research using the CSS-A framework for other comparison dimensions to gain better insight into variations of the comparison process.

The roles of Appearance concern and negativity

Both appearance concern and negativity showed stronger associations with upward comparison intensity and affective impact than downward comparison intensity and affective impact, and both composite variables were associated with negative affective impact. We tested a provisional process-based approach to assess the mediating and moderating properties of the composite variables on the relationship between comparison intensity and affective impact. For upward comparisons, higher comparison intensity with higher appearance concern was associated with negative affective impact. For downward comparisons, the association between comparison intensity and positive affective impact was moderated by negativity, where low negativity scores were indicative of higher positive affective impact as intensity scores were higher. These results support previous findings that dimension salience and psychological wellbeing influence comparison outcomes and subsequent affective reactions [2,3], and could explain findings such as why only some individuals experience the touted benefits of downward comparisons [67]. Future research should focus on these relationships in-situ due to the dynamic nature of cognitions, emotions, and behaviour.

While our conclusions may appear self-evident, very little research has investigated influences of the comparison process outside of self-esteem, group differences, or motives, especially beyond social comparisons. Although beyond the scope of this paper, perception of changeability of an attribute has also been identified as a moderator of self-evaluative process and outcomes [68], which can be applied to the comparison process and consequences, such as change in affect [1]. For example, if an individual makes an unfavourable comparison about their appearance and perceive this as a fixed entity, they are more likely to be threatened by the comparison and experience a negative change in affect, particularly if appearance concern is high. However, should the individual perceive appearance as malleable, this could lead to optimism and a positive change in affect.

Measurement of the comparison process

Previous cross-sectional assessments of comparison standards have focused on unitary aspects of the comparison process, mostly the frequency of specific comparisons, such as in social [16] and counterfactual comparisons [69]. In a rare example of a multi-standard comparison scale, only frequency was assessed and the scale was limited to one item per direction and standard, and scoring ignored individual comparison standards [70]. Several reviews have reiterated that to fully understand the comparison process, it is important to consider various standards, direction of comparison, perceived (dis)similarity and engendered reactions [1,2,5]. The conceptualization of the CSS-A is therefore necessary to assess key aspects of the comparison process, with comparison intensity and affective impact variables providing respective indicators of comparison evaluation outcomes and engendered reaction. Literature investigating the associations of comparison habits with body-image perception and eating disorders have all but focused on social comparison [23,71,72], yet our results show that individuals engage with multiple types of standards. Observed gender differences in comparison intensity and affective impact ratings also occurred within upward standards, where women reported higher comparison intensity than men as well as lower negative affective impact scores. Investigating multiple comparison standards in body-image research could provide greater insight into individual differences when considering gender, as well as informing potential uses for clinical assessment and intervention.

Strengths and limitations

Previous self-report measures have predominantly focused on singular types of comparison standards or have been limited to one aspect of the comparison process. We developed the CSS-A to measure multi-standard comparisons in context of perceived appearance. Our approach incorporates several theories of comparison standards that have found comparative thinking influences self-perception. Yet, the following limitations deserve to be mentioned. Despite recruiting a large sample and following the general rule of thumb of at least 10:1 ratio of participants to items for obligatory scale items [73], a larger sample and a better distribution of age and gender would have benefited validity and reliability. In addition, convergent validity regarding standards is limited given the lack of comparable measures and subsequent novel development of the scale. Thus, future studies with larger samples are required to further establish the characteristics of the CSS-A. Another potential limitation is that we focused on upward and downward comparisons, omitting the possibility of lateral comparisons. The general comparison processing model of self-perception by Morina [1] defines lateral comparisons as fulfilling an important role in the self-evaluation process. For example, lateral social comparisons tend to be reported just as often as upward social comparisons [5]; however, upward and downward comparisons across various standards have been reported more often than lateral comparisons for the dimension of wellbeing [3]. We did not explicitly refer to lateral comparisons, yet we assessed the degree of comparison discrepancy, where a value of zero may suggest a lateral comparison. Thus, using the intensity variables per direction, we attempt to control for lateral comparisons while assessing the typical outcome of upward or downward comparison evaluations.

Future research

Our approach to assessing comparison as a process provides several avenues for future research. The current study focuses on appearance comparisons, however comparison tendencies represented by intensity and affective impact will likely differ depending on the comparison dimension, with contextual and individual differences influencing the comparison process [1]. Therefore further research can adapt the CSS-A to other specific comparison dimensions, such as trauma-related counterfactual comparisons [29]. Using the process-based approach to assessment with experience sampling methods will also facilitate the assessment of multiple comparison dimensions, as well as providing within-person data to see if our findings occur at state-level. Previous experience sampling in diary studies have often focused on specific types of comparison standards [19–21], or were limited regarding information about comparison standards and self-evaluation [14]. Our approach could be applied to a diary method similar to Summerville and Roese [14] using prompts and a series of questions to assess what type of comparison standard was used, yet with a broader range of comparison standards, as well as additional questions addressing key aspects of comparison such as discrepancy. Finally, to examine the comparative impact of different types of comparison on appearance and engendered reactions experimental studies are required. More data on the comparison process at both trait and state levels will provide much needed insight on the aspects involved and how these contribute to beneficial and undesirable consequences.

Over Half Of Millennial Women Have Received Unsolicited NSFW Pics

Sexual violence laws: Policy implications of psychological sex differences. David M. Buss. Evolution and Human Behavior, January 11 2023, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2023.01.003

Abstract: Laws act as levers to influence human behavior. Their effectiveness hinges on understanding an accurate model of human nature, particularly the psychological and behavioral components of that nature. Evolved sex differences in our sexual psychology are sometimes moderate to large in magnitude and highly replicable. Women, for example, typically judge the same set of actions—such as leering, sexual jokes, or unwelcome workplace advances—as more sexually harassing and upsetting than do men. When a generic “reasonable person” standard is applied to adjudicating sexual harassment cases, this standard can harm women if judges and juries are populated by “reasonable men.” Other relevant sex differences involve fears evoked by stalking victimization, defenses against rape such as tonic immobility, and negative emotions in response to certain forms of unsolicited sexual imagery. This paper argues that existing psychological sex differences should inform the construction and implementation of policies and laws that regulate forms of sexual violence such as sexual harassment, mate stalking, and rape.

In everyday life, people more often compare themselves to those who look better than they do - to their own detriment

Relativity in Social Cognition: Basic processes and novel applications of social comparisons. Christian Unkelbach et al. European Review of Social Psychology, Jan 10 2023. https://doi.org/10.1080/10463283.2022.2161043

Abstract: A key challenge for social psychology is to identify unifying principles that account for the complex dynamics of social behaviour. We propose psychological relativity and its core mechanism of comparison as one such unifying principle. To support our proposal, we review recent evidence investigating basic processes underlying and novel applications of social comparisons. Specifically, we clarify determinants of assimilation and contrast, evaluative consequences of comparing similarities vs. differences, attitudinal effects of spatial relativity, and how spatial arrangements determine perceived similarity, one of the antecedents of social comparisons. We then move to behavioural relativity effects on motivation and self-regulation, as well as imitation behaviour. Finally, we address relativity within the more applied areas of morality and political psychology. The reviewed research thereby illustrates how unifying principles of social cognition may be instrumental in answering old questions and discovering new phenomena and explanations.

General discussion

We proposed that social cognition is relative in nature. To substantiate this proposal, we illustrated the relativity’s importance and the importance of comparative thinking in eight sections (cf.

). The first four sections addressed basic processes influencing comparative thinking, while the latter four sections addressed influences of comparative thinking; on behaviours, both regulated and automatic, as well as the more applied aspects of moral and political psychology.

Our first section on the determinants of assimilation and contrast established a method and analysis that allows vigorous tests of comparison theories (Barker & Imhoff, 2021; Barker et al., 2020). The section also explains why Gerber et al. (2018)’s meta-analysis found little evidence for assimilation effects. For most people, Pope Francis is an extreme downward comparison standard on the athleticism dimension, while Serena Williams is an extreme upward standard, leading to contrast effects in judgements of athleticism. However, the “window of assimilation” (cf. Figure 1) might be much more difficult to hit and might vary from person to person. The first section thereby provides a strong methodological and theoretical advancement for research on classic social comparison phenomena.

The second section addressed a central assumption of the SAM (Mussweiler, 2003): People compare stimuli based on their similarities or differences. In combination with properties of the evaluative ecology (i.e., the frequency and diversity of positive and negative information; Unkelbach et al., 2019, 2020; cf. Figure 3), we predicted and found a novel effect, the “common good” phenomenon (Alves et al., 2017a). In a standard ecology, similarities are likely to be good, while differences are likely to be bad. This insight has important implications if one again realises the ubiquity of comparisons and how often people look for differences (see Alves et al., 2018, 2020). The second section thereby also illustrates how comparative thinking may contribute to processes of stereotyping and, ultimately, prejudice.

The third section addressed another evaluative consequence of relativity, building on the relative location of stimuli in space (Gerten & Topolinski, 2020). Relativity is not only ubiquitous in the social but also in the physical domain. The third section showed the evaluative consequences of such relative location due to processing facilitations. While this might appear rather abstract and the effect rather subtle, the implications for real-world applications are straightforward (e.g., how to arrange quantities in texts and pictures). Our third section thereby illustrates novel relativity effects that have been so far overlooked in the literature.

Our fourth section returned to the question of which stimuli are considered as comparison standards and addressed spatial distance as a moderator. The section illustrated this point with an increased probability of jointly categorising two stimuli (Schneider & Mattes, 2022; cf. Figure 8). Thus, because close stimuli appear more similar, they should be more likely to be selected as a comparison standard. We have to concede, though, that the respective experimental evidence is currently lacking. In addition, we did not yet investigate the joint implication of section four’s and section two, namely that close stimuli should also appear more positive compared to more distant stimuli (i.e., if they appear more similar, they should also appear more positive; Alves et al., 2017a).

Our fifth section then moved to a largely unexplored area of relativity and the corresponding comparative thinking, namely motivational effects (Diel and Grelle et al., 2021, Diel, Broeker, et al., 2021). The section shows how key motives postulated in social comparison research (i.e., self-evaluation, self-improvement, and self-enhancement) map onto comparison directions (i.e., lateral, upward, and downward), resulting in corresponding effects for goal pursuit from upward and downward comparisons (i.e., “pushing” or “disengagement” vs. “coasting”, respectively). The theoretical framework and the data provide a step from the cognitive judgement effects (e.g., self-esteem) to actual behavioural effects of relativity and social comparisons.

The sixth section continued the path towards behavioural effects of comparison. However, instead of motivated behaviour, the section addressed automatic imitation, which occurs between interaction partners (Genschow, Cracco, et al., 2021). The straightforward hypothesis, derived from the similarity function between a target and a standard, was that more similar targets should lead to stronger imitation behaviours. We could confirm this prediction initially (Genschow, Cracco, et al., 2021): If participants focus on similarities between themselves and the other person, they show more imitation behaviour. However, when we manipulated searching for similarities and differences not directly (as we did in the previous sections) but more indirectly via group membership (Genschow, Westfal, et al., 2021), the influence was no longer visible (cf. Figure 11). The similarity/difference perspective explains and unifies several documented moderators on imitation behaviour. However, the subtler effects of group membership failed to produce the predicted effects.

The seventh section advanced the relativity principle into the area of moral psychology. We found major differences between moral and social comparisons (cf.

; Fleischmann et al., 2021). Despite these differences, the section highlights the usefulness of an over-arching empirical framework. While theories of emotion and intuition strongly influence moral psychology, the section provides relevant insights from a social-cognitive comparison perspective.

Our last section applied the relativity principle to political psychology, showing that Republicans (in the US) accept pro-environmental messages more when the message is framed as a comparison to the past (“Restoring the planet”) rather than a comparison with a potential future (“Creating a new earth”; Baldwin & Lammers, 2016; Lammers & Baldwin, 2018).

Together, these eight sections lines show the usefulness of an overarching theoretical framework, here, what we termed the relativity principle, to generate new insights into novel areas (e.g., self-regulation, imitation, morality, and political psychology) and to understand existing (i.e., social comparison) phenomena better. Given both the breadth and depth of the reviewed results, we thus believe our review suggests that Festinger (1980, p. 246) was correct in his assumption that universal dynamics can be found in all of social psychology. At the very least, such universals provide a lens through which one can gain new perspectives on classic and contemporary research topics.

Limitations

Despite the overall success of applying the relativity principle and the processes of comparative thinking to different areas, we must concede that our approach is flawed. It amounts to what Karl Popper (1934) called a confirmatory research strategy: We postulated that swans are white and went on to search for white swans (i.e., confirmatory evidence). We agree that science advances best by searching for black swans, that is, by trying to falsify a hypothesis.

However, one may also construe our strategy more positively. First, to stay within the metaphor, we provided some conceptual and theoretical clarifications on how to test if a swan is white (e.g., when does assimilation and contrast occur), antecedents of why the swan is white (e.g., spatial distance), and consequences of the swan being white (e.g., similarities are typically positive). Second, we discovered some unknown swan species (e.g., motivational effects) even in areas where one might assume that there are no swans (i.e., see Section 7 on moral psychology).

Our reviewed data might nevertheless represent only a small percentage of a larger psychological universe where relativity and comparative thinking play no role at all. This problem is not specific to the presented research program. It applies to every empirical investigation that does not rely on a representative sample (Brunswik, 1955) and inductively makes bottom-up inferences from a sample to a population (Becker et al., 2021). In our case, the sample is not participants and a population of people but a sample of research areas. Thus, our review is suggestive but cannot provide conclusive evidence for our claim.

We found that males, and males over 30 in particular, rated sports cars as more desirable when they were made to feel that they had a small penis

Richardson, Daniel C., Joseph Devlin, John S. Hogan, and Chuck Thompson. 2023. “Small Penises and Fast Cars: Evidence for a Psychological Link.” PsyArXiv. January 10. doi:10.31234/osf.io/uy7ph

Abstract: In this experiment, we manipulated what men believed about their own penis size, relative to others. We gave them false information, stating that the average penis size was larger than it in fact is, reasoning that, on average, these males will feel that relatively and subjectively their own penis was smaller; compared to those told that the average penis size was smaller than true average. We then asked them to rate how much they would like to own a sports car. These facts and questions were buried amongst other items giving information and asking for product ratings, so that our hypothesis was masked from participants. We found that males, and males over 30 in particular, rated sports cars as more desirable when they were made to feel that they had a small penis.

Interests in becoming a surgeon were associated with higher rates of psychopathy, even more so in women

What kind of Dr do you want to be?: A cross-sectional study measuring personality and sex effects of medical students. Irem F. Kashikchi, Bayram M. Savrun, Peter K. Jonason. Personality and Individual Differences, Volume 205, April 2023, 112075, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2022.112075

Abstract: Turkish medical students (N = 376; 145 men, 231 women) aged 18–25 (M = 20.36, SD = 2.02) reported on their personality and post-graduation specialty preferences. We found (1) sex differences in interests in psychiatry in favor of women (suppressed by Machiavellianism and competitiveness) and surgery in favor of men (mediated by psychopathy and competitiveness), (2) interests in basic/diagnostic medicine were associated with higher rates of narcissism and competitiveness in women, (3) interests in surgery were associated with higher rates of psychopathy (mediated by masculinity and competitiveness), and (4) interests in psychiatry were associated with less competitiveness. In women, psychopathy was correlated with interests in surgery more than basic/diagnostic medicine whereas competitiveness was more strongly correlated with interests in basic/diagnostic medicine than psychiatry. In men, competitiveness was more correlated with interests in psychiatry than surgery. Lastly, the relationship between interests in basic/diagnostic medicine and competitiveness was more strongly correlated in women than in men. Results are discussed in relation to sociocultural and evolutionary models of vocational interests.

Introduction

The reasons people make choices is determined by their personality and context; this includes their choices in professions. To date, research on medical specialty selection has (1) been limited to actual physicians (Bucknall et al., 2015), (2) focused on socially desirable personality traits (Milić et al., 2020), and (3) was quite Western in nature (Grasreiner et al., 2018). In this study, we provide a broad account of individual differences in vocational interests in medicine among Turkish medical students.

Like all other choices, the appeal of medical preferences may come down to what perceived utility each serves in people's lives. The motivational goals for being a medical doctor may center around communion (i.e., helping others) and agency (i.e., earning status) and each of these may be differently appealing to different people as a function of their personality and their sex. People characterized, either directly or indirectly, by seeking status may pursue medicine to satisfy these desires. For instance, those characterized by narcissism (e.g., sense of entitlement, grandiosity; Morf & Rhodewalt, 2001), Machiavellianism (e.g., pragmatism, duplicitousness; Jones & Paulhus, 2009), and psychopathy (e.g., callousness, antisociality; Hare et al., 2012), and those who enjoy competition (Buser et al., 2014) may be especially prone to seek status, compete with others (Vedel & Thomsen, 2017), and have less empathy compared to non-surgical areas (Walocha et al., 2013) which may inform their vocational interests (Jonason et al., 2014). Unsurprisingly, these traits are common in surgeons (Bucknall et al., 2015) where little direct interaction with patients is required and being a surgeon is considered particularly prestigious (Murphy, 2018); limited empathy and heightened interest in status are agentic characteristics. In contrast, where direct interaction with patients and empathy are job requirements like in psychiatry, these traits are likely not only costs, but may also dissuade people characterized by these traits to choose a profession like psychiatry. As such, more empathy should enable choices in psychiatry as a specialty reliant on emotional intelligence and interpersonal interactions (Chen et al., 2012). Therefore, we predict the Dark Triad traits and competitiveness should be associated with greater interests in surgery, whereas more empathy should be associated with greater interests in psychiatry.

Beyond personality traits, there are sex/gender effects on medical preferences. For instance, surgery is often preferred by men whereas women tend to prefer psychiatry (Öğrenci Seçme ve Yerleştirme Merkezi, 2020; but see Milić et al., 2020). More generally, girls/women choose more “people-oriented” jobs (i.e., communal) and boys/men are more interested in jobs that require dealing with “things” (Luoto, 2020). Some researchers contend these sex differences are a function of learned social roles of what are considered appropriate jobs for men and women (Wood & Eagly, 2012) whereas other researchers contend these sex differences are manifestations of different evolved biases that enabled the reproductive fitness of our female (i.e., being more group-oriented provides protection for women) and male (i.e., acquiring status earned men greater access to mating opportunities) ancestors (Puts, 2010). Whichever perspective is correct, we think replication and extension of these sex differences and gender role effects may be revealing here.

To better understand these sex/gender effects we consider the idea of (1) sex-typical and (2) sex-atypical job preferences. First, we expect that greater masculinity should be linked to preferences for surgery, whereas greater femininity should be linked preferences to psychiatry. In reference to the second point, understanding how gender non-conforming people make their specialty choices may further elucidate sex/gender effects in preferences. For example, women who chose male-typical occupations are more assertive and tough-minded compared to women in female-typical jobs (Lemkau, 1983) and men who prefer female-typical jobs are more emotionally sensitive compared to other men preferring male-typical occupations (Lemkau, 1984). There are two ways to test these issues. First, examining whether the correlations between the personality traits and preferences differed in the sexes (i.e., moderation). For instance, if sex-typical traits, like psychopathy, are more strongly correlated with sex-typical professions, like surgery, in men than in women, we will have shown that when “properly matched”, traits predict preferences in sex-differentiated ways. Second, we test whether sex differences are a function of the personality traits. For instance, if the removal of variance of a sex-atypical trait like empathy in men makes the sex difference grow, we have shown that the sex differences are larger when considering more sex-typical people (i.e., suppression). Alternatively, men and those high in psychopathy may think of their patients as “things” more than women and those low in psychopathy, translating into a reduction of sex differences in interest for surgery by psychopathy (i.e., mediation).

Last, because surgical and psychiatric specialties may require considerably different characteristics, they might be considered as the two extreme ends of a specialty preference spectrum. Hence, we include more “neutral” specialties (i.e., basic/diagnostic medicine) requiring both patient-physician contact like psychiatry as well as some surgical practices when the occasion arises (i.e., removal of melanoma). By this, we can examine personality and sex differences in specialty preferences in a broader context.

In the current study, we examine the vocational interests (i.e., basic/diagnostic medicine, surgery, psychiatry) of medical students through the lens of personality psychology in broad (i.e., the Dark Triad traits) and narrow (e.g., competitiveness) manifestations overall and in men and women. We explore the possibilities that (1) these correlations are different in men and women, (2) sex differences in preferences may be a function of personality traits, and (3) narrowband traits may serve as the mechanisms that link broadband traits to medical specialties. Importantly, we do this in a Turkish, as opposed to a Western sample, thereby adding sampling heterogeneity to the areas of vocational interests and medical specialization preferences to see whether previous findings were Western-specific.

Again, the affinity to censorship depends on the third person effect: the belief that others are more easily influenced by "bad" media content than oneself

Do Users Want Platform Moderation or Individual Control? Examining the Role of Third-Person Effects and Free Speech Support in Shaping Moderation Preferences. Shagun Jhaver, Amy Zhang. arXiv, Jan 5 2023. https://arxiv.org/abs/2301.02208

Abstract: Online platforms employ commercial content moderators and use automated systems to identify and remove the most blatantly inappropriate content for all users. They also provide moderation settings that let users personalize their preferences for which posts they want to avoid seeing. This study presents the results of a nationally representative survey of 984 US adults. We examine how users would prefer for three categories of norm-violating content (hate speech, sexually explicit content, and violent content) to be regulated. Specifically, we analyze whether users prefer platforms to remove such content for all users or leave it up to each user to decide if and how much they want to moderate it. We explore the influence of presumed effects on others (PME3) and support for freedom of expression on user attitudes, the two critical factors identified as relevant for social media censorship attitudes by prior literature, about this choice. We find perceived negative effects on others and free speech support as significant predictors of preference for having personal moderation settings over platform-directed moderation for regulating each speech category. Our findings show that platform governance initiatives need to account for both the actual and perceived media effects of norm-violating speech categories to increase user satisfaction. Our analysis also suggests that people do not see personal moderation tools as an infringement on others' free speech but as a means to assert greater agency to shape their social media feeds.

Previous research has produced inconsistent findings regarding the role of altruism in mating success; this study sought to test whether altruism (charity/volunteer work) relates to number of offspring

Allen, M. S., Robson, D. A., Mishra, M., & Laborde, S. (2023). A prospective and retrospective 10-year study of altruism and reproductive success. Evolutionary Behavioral Sciences, Jan 2023. https://doi.org/10.1037/ebs0000320

Abstract: Previous research has produced inconsistent findings regarding the role of altruism in mating success. This study sought to test whether altruism (charity/volunteer work) relates to number of offspring. A nationally representative sample of Australian adults was separated into those unlikely to have more children (n = 4,296; age ≥ 45 [women], age ≥ 55 [men], Mage = 68.9 ± 11.0 years) and those likely to have more children (n = 4,724; age range = 18–44 [women], 18–54 [men], Mage = 32.8 ± 10.5 years). Measures of altruism and number of children were taken at baseline and 10 years later. In the retrospective analysis of older adults, there was a very small effect size in the predicted direction, indicating that more altruistic adults had more children. In the prospective analysis of younger adults, higher levels of altruism related to a greater number of total children 10 years later, as well as a greater number of children conceived during those 10 years. Increases in altruism over 10 years also related to a greater number of total children and a greater number of children conceived during those 10 years. Effect sizes were small to very small in all instances. There were no sex moderation effects and analyses controlled for personality, medical difficulties in childbearing, and sociodemographic factors. These findings provide evidence that altruism has a role in reproductive success, and indicate that inconsistent findings in previous research might simply reflect the small (real-world) effect size. 

Impact Statement: This research has demonstrated that Australian adults who do more charity or volunteer work tend to have more children. This effect was observed in men and women, as well as both younger and older adults. The study indicates that taking part in more charity or volunteer work might be a useful approach to developing successful relationships and long-term life satisfaction.

Revisiting the Connection Between State Medicaid Expansions and Adult Mortality: These findings imply that evidence that pre-ACA Medicaid expansions to adults saved lives is not as clear as previously suggested

Revisiting the Connection Between State Medicaid Expansions and Adult Mortality. Charles J. Courtemanche, Jordan W. Jones, Antonios M. Koumpias & Daniela Zapata, NBER Working Paper 30818, January 2023. DOI 10.3386/w30818

Abstract: This paper examines the impact of Medicaid expansions to parents and childless adults on adult mortality. Specifically, we evaluate the long-run effects of eight state Medicaid expansions from 1994 through 2005 on all-cause, healthcare-amenable, non-healthcare-amenable, and HIV-related mortality rates using state-level data. We utilize the synthetic control method to estimate effects for each treated state separately and the generalized synthetic control method to estimate average effects across all treated states. Using a 5% significance level, we find no evidence that Medicaid expansions affect any of the outcomes in any of the treated states or all of them combined. Moreover, there is no clear pattern in the signs of the estimated treatment effects. These findings imply that evidence that pre-ACA Medicaid expansions to adults saved lives is not as clear as previously suggested.

Discussion

Currently, there is significant data on self-awareness in social animals, but little information on solitary species (Ma et al., 2015). Although all animals that have passed the MSR are all social, sociality does not automatically suggest that animals are self-aware. Some social animals fail to demonstrate self-recognition. To confirm any hypothesis that compares social and solitary animals and their capacity for self-awareness, additional research must be conducted on MSR in solitary species. This paper recommends monitor lizards (Varanidae) for future MSR testing because they are highly solitary but also very intelligent (Pianka and King, 2004; Northcutt, 2013; Güntürkün et al., 2020; Howard and Freeman, 2022). In particular, the Komodo dragon (Varanus komodoensis) is an attractive candidate. They live solitarily and only occasionally congregate at large carcasses (MacLean, 1978). Less is known about the cognitive ability of Komodo dragons, so a self-recognition test would also shed light on this aspect of study.

The hypothesis presented in this paper also serves as preliminary support for a more comprehensive meta-analysis. A future study quantifying sociality on an ordinal or numeric scale instead of a binary social versus non-social categorization is highly recommended. This helps mitigate the lack of research in solitary species as using graded sociality allows for more precise comparisons within social species (for which information on self-recognition is abundant). For example, it is possible that a highly social animal like the Indian house crow is more capable of self-recognition than a semi-social animal like Clark’s nutcracker. This paper recommends starting the meta-analysis with corvids because the social behavior of species within the same family is more comparable. Corvids display varying levels of sociality and numerous corvid species have already been tested for self-recognition. Subsequent studies can quantify variables such as group size and association level for drastically different species, expanding toward a comprehensive scale including all the animals covered in this study.

Many uncertainties remain in the study of animal self-awareness. The mark test itself remains a debatable measure of self-awareness, with the major question: does failing the MSR test mean a lack of self-awareness? It is possible that some self-aware animals simply do not care about the mark but do possess awareness of their private mental thoughts and an understanding of self. As shown in tests with garter snakes, dogs, and octopuses, the MSR test is subject to sensory limitations, creating a possible bias against animals that do not use vision as their primary sense. Failing the visual MSR does not necessarily mean the species cannot self-recognize. Additionally, as is the case with the gorillas and rhesus macaques, it is unknown if trained self-directed behavior necessarily means natural self-recognition. Moreover, Gallup and Anderson’s (2019) review concludes that differences in self-awareness in different animals may be qualitative rather than quantitative. Thus, developing more objective and reliable self-recognition tests, perhaps designed individually for one species or a group of similar species, remains a future challenge.

Another area of future research is whether self-recognizing, non-human animals can know their internal mental states such as emotions. A basic level of self-awareness is confirmed to be present in non-human animals that conclusively pass the mirror test, but it is unknown if this can be extended to include their knowledge of internal thoughts and emotions.

A basic level of self-knowledge is guaranteed in animals that pass the mirror test, but it is unknown if they possess advanced understanding of private mental states. Despite uncertainties in the methodology of determining self-awareness and a scarcity of information on solitary species, the existing data appears firm in the pattern of social animals being more likely to be self-aware than non-social ones because no solitary species has shown self-recognition. Among the species analyzed in this article, the conclusively self-aware animals were social to some degree, with humans and chimpanzees being highly social and orangutans being semi-social. Other animals exhibiting strongly suggestive signs of self-awareness were also highly social. These are bonobos, bottlenose dolphins, and the bluestreak cleaner wrasse. Certain species showed signs of MSR in individual studies or after training, but the research lacks independent verification by additional studies to be considered strongly suggestive of self-awareness. Examples include the orca, Eurasian magpie, Asian elephant, ant, western gorilla, pigeon, rhesus macaque, and garter snake. The three solitary species, octopus, panda, and Malayan sun bear, analyzed in this paper failed to demonstrate self-recognition. Several social animals also failed to demonstrate self-recognition, such as New Caledonian crows, the gray parrot, and sea lions, although this does not affect the comparison with solitary species. This hypothesis is strengthened by the social intelligence hypothesis, which suggests that social animals are more likely to boast greater cognitive abilities than solitary species due to more opportunities for cognitive challenge in complex social environments. Given the existing literature, this article proposes social animals are more likely to be self-aware than solitary ones.

This paper found that only social animals have demonstrated self-awareness while no solitary species has ever shown this capability

Sociality and self-awareness in animals. Yanyu Lei. Front. Psychol., January 9 2023. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1065638

Abstract: Recognizing one’s mirror reflection as oneself appears to be a simple task, but beyond humans, very few animals have consistently demonstrated this capability. Mirror self-recognition is indicative of self-awareness, which is one’s capacity for self-directed knowledge. This Perspective reviews literature from the past 50 years on animal self-recognition and evaluates 20 different species. The goal was to determine a common characteristic shared by all self-aware animals that allow for this advanced cognitive capability. This paper found that only social animals have demonstrated self-awareness while no solitary species has ever shown this capability. This is supported by the social intelligence hypothesis, which posits that social animals are more cognitively sophisticated than solitary ones because their brains evolved to process the more complex social environment around them. Given the available information, this article proposes that social animals are more likely to be self-aware than solitary species.

Where Are the Workers? From Great Resignation to Quiet Quitting

Where Are the Workers? From Great Resignation to Quiet Quitting. Dain Lee, Jinhyeok Park & Yongseok Shin. NBER Working Paper 30833. January 2023. DOI 10.3386/w30833

Abstract: To better understand the tight post-pandemic labor market in the US, we decompose the decline in aggregate hours worked into the extensive (fewer people working) and the intensive margin changes (workers working fewer hours). Although the pre-existing trend of lower labor force participation especially by young men without a bachelor's degree accounts for some of the decline in aggregate hours, the intensive margin accounts for more than half of the decline between 2019 and 2022. The decline in hours among workers was larger for men than women. Among men, the decline was larger for those with a bachelor's degree than those with less education, for prime-age workers than older workers, and also for those who already worked long hours and had high earnings. Workers' hours reduction can explain why the labor market is even tighter than what is expected at the current levels of unemployment and labor force participation.

Why do humans make so many laws? On the origin of laws by natural selection.

On the origin of laws by natural selection. Peter De Scioli. Evolution and Human Behavior, January 9 2023. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2023.01.004

Abstract: Humans are lawmakers like we are toolmakers. Why do humans make so many laws? Here we examine the structure of laws to look for clues about how humans use them in evolutionary competition. We will see that laws are messages with a distinct combination of ideas. Laws are similar to threats but critical differences show that they have a different function. Instead, the structure of laws matches moral rules, revealing that laws derive from moral judgment. Moral judgment evolved as a strategy for choosing sides in conflicts by impartial rules of action—rather than by hierarchy or faction. For this purpose, humans can create endless laws to govern nearly any action. However, as prolific lawmakers, humans produce a confusion of contradictory laws, giving rise to a perpetual battle to control the laws. To illustrate, we visit some of the major conflicts over laws of violence, property, sex, faction, and power.

Introduction

Let us ponder down a path from the evolution of the human mind all the way to laws, governments, and societies. On such a long trek, we may become lost and separated at times but remember we are here to enjoy the views and to invigorate ourselves by struggling with immense perplexities. If we discover anything of use, it will be more than we could have hoped.

We will travel light to keep a brisk pace and focus on ideas and arguments. Set aside for a moment the heavy jargon and weighty traditions that have amassed on these subjects. Rest assured, we will return at the end to review numerous literatures under Notes. The Notes follow the sections of the article and review literature on each topic in order.

Modern societies depend on governments. Governments are made of laws. Therefore, if we can understand how and why an animal, Homo sapiens, makes so many laws about so many things, we will have come a long way toward our destination.

Partisanship on Social Media: In-Party Love Among American Politicians, Greater Engagement with Out-Party Hate Among Ordinary Users

Partisanship on Social Media: In-Party Love Among American Politicians, Greater Engagement with Out-Party Hate Among Ordinary Users. Xudong Yu, Magdalena Wojcieszak & Andreu Casas. Political Behavior, Jan 8 2023. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11109-022-09850-x

Abstract: Americans view their in-party members positively and out-party members negatively. It remains unclear, however, whether in-party affinity (i.e., positive partisanship) or out-party animosity (i.e., negative partisanship) more strongly influences political attitudes and behaviors. Unlike past work, which relies on survey self-reports or experimental designs among ordinary citizens, this pre-registered project examines actual social media expressions of an exhaustive list of American politicians as well as citizens’ engagement with these posts. Relying on 1,195,844 tweets sent by 564 political elites (i.e., members of US House and Senate, Presidential and Vice-Presidential nominees from 2000 to 2020, and members of the Trump Cabinet) and machine learning to reliably classify the tone of the tweets, we show that elite expressions online are driven by positive partisanship more than negative partisanship. Although politicians post many tweets negative toward the out-party, they post more tweets positive toward their in-party. However, more ideologically extreme politicians and those in the opposition (i.e., the Democrats) are more negative toward the out-party than those ideologically moderate and whose party is in power. Furthermore, examining how Twitter users react to these posts, we find that negative partisanship plays a greater role in online engagement: users are more likely to like and share politicians’ tweets negative toward the out-party than tweets positive toward the in-party. This project has important theoretical and democratic implications, and extends the use of trace data and computational methods in political behavior.

Discussion

Our project examined social media expressions of American politicians as well as users’ engagement with these tweets to offer comprehensive evidence on the effects of positive and negative partisanship on elites and citizens. We offer three noteworthy findings. First, American politicians are more likely to express support toward their own party than to speak out against the opponents, indicating that the overall charge of partisanship for these elites is positive when they discuss politics on social media. This robust pattern emerges when comparing the total number of tweets praising the in-party with that of tweets criticizing the out-party and also calculating the proportion of elite accounts/elites that post more tweets expressing in-party favorability than those expressing out-party negativity. Although many scholars observe that negative partisanship is on the rise in the US (e.g., Abramowitz & Webster, 2016; Iyengar et al., 2012), our evidence suggests that positive partisanship still dominates political expressions of American politicians on Twitter, so—at least in this context—our findings are more optimistic than the general observations. However, we note that a large share of elite tweets attacks the opposition, an issue we address in more detail below. Because we analyzed an exhaustive set of 564 political elites, identified all their tweets mentioning the in-party and the out-party, and employed validated classifiers to analyze those tweets, we are confident that our results are a robust and accurate representation of political expressions by American politicians on Twitter.

Second, in an exception to this general pattern, we find that politicians who are ideologically more extreme are more likely to express negative partisanship than their more moderate counterparts: the former group is most motivated to attack the out-party. This largely holds for two measures of extremity and is consistent with prior literature that ideological polarization contributes to negative feelings toward the opposition (Abramowitz & Webster, 2018; Webster & Abramowitz, 2017). Combined with the fact that negative partisanship does not trail by a large margin, it implies that if the ideological division between the two parties keeps widening, negative partisanship may increase and may outstrip positive partisanship in elite opinion expressions. Moreover, in line with previous evidence that threats to party identity strengthen negative partisanship (Amira et al., 2021), members of the party in the opposition—i.e., Democrats—show greater negative partisanship than those of the ruling party and they become less negative toward the out-party after winning the House back in the 2018 midterm election. This finding suggests that negative partisanship may be used by the opposition as a tool to unite the party and against the common enemy (Bankert, 2022), yet more research on the temporal variations in and factors influencing positive and negative partisanship among politicians is needed to shed more light on this consequential finding.

Third, despite the overall dominance of positive partisanship among the elites, it is negative partisanship that drives ordinary citizens’ liking and sharing of elite messages. Tweets that attack the out-party receive more likes and retweets than those that favor the in-party. Although this contradicts previous finding that citizens penalize politicians for attacking the out-party (Costa, 2021), the inconsistency could be due to different methodologies and different demographics of the general public vs. (politically active) Twitter users. That said, we suspect our finding is not constrained to Twitter. Extensive work has established that “negativity bias” holds across studies, cultures, samples, and in divergent contexts (e.g., Ito et al., 1998; Soroka et al., 2019; Trussler & Soroka, 2014). More specific to our work, although the most politically active Twitter users follow in-party accounts, are more sorted, and have colder feelings toward the out-party than average Twitter users (Pew, 2019a), which could partly explain our finding, the very same characteristics apply to politically active and interested citizens in general (Levendusky, 2009), whether on Twitter or not. Lastly, a recent study (Rathje et al., 2021) found similar patterns across Twitter and Facebook, suggesting that greater engagement with out-party animosity is not unique to Twitter users.

When interpreting the results, several limitations need to be noted. First, as the data were collected before the 2020 election, it is unclear if these patterns would emerge after Joe Biden became the president. It is possible that Twitter suspending the account of Donald Trump and other events may have changed the nature of elite expressions. Second, as the American political system, media system, and party structures are unique, the findings of our study should not be generalized to other countries. More international and comparative research should be done to test whether politicians and citizens in different countries behave similarly or differently.

Third, we focus on tweets that explicitly mention the two parties and key politicians but do not account for policies, media organizations, or other factors associated with a party. It is very challenging to construct a comprehensive and unbiased list of political topics discussed from 2016 to 2020, and assessing how politicians talk about policies and other things is an important task for future work.

Fourth, we do not know the partisan affiliations of those users who engaged with elite tweets. We are interested in the more foundational evidence about elite expressions and citizen engagement; the questions surrounding political homophily are secondary and cannot be tested in our data. We speculate that users are more likely to engage with messages attacking the out-party because they primarily follow and interact with likeminded others (e.g., Eady et al., 2019; Mosleh et al., 2021; Wojcieszak et al., 2022). But regardless of this ideological consistency, our evidence shows that negativity toward the out-party, per se, is engaging and gets more attention (see also Rathje et al., 2021). In short, although the specific mechanisms behind these engagements cannot be disentangled in our data, we suspect it is the mere negativity combined with ideological consistency. It is likely that tweets negative toward the out-party infuriate out-party members, yet there are no reasons for those users to like and share these tweets (i.e., the behaviors we examined). Future work should explore whether out-party members are activated by such posts and fight back by commenting and quote tweeting.

Despite these limitations, our findings have important implications for American politics. To begin with, although elite expressions are mainly positive, the difference between the strength of positive and negative partisanship is not substantial. Some of the most powerful and most widely followed politicians, such as Trump and Biden, are also the ones who are most negative toward the out-party. Donald Trump post 440% (162 vs. 30) and Joe Biden post 294% (563 vs. 143) more tweets negative toward the out-party than tweets positive toward the in-party, respectively. Therefore, out-party negativity may actually reach a larger audience than in-party positivity. If we simply use the number of followers as a rough indicator of readership (e.g., if a politician has one million followers and they post two out-party attacks, then we assume that these tweets are read two million times), overall, tweets attacking the out-party are read 27% more than tweets praising the in-party, although the former is outnumbered by the latter.Footnote20

As importantly, negative partisanship may be amplified through citizen-elite interactions and through other means of communication. In our data, citizens reward politicians for attacking the opposition with more likes and shares, encouraging politicians to express out-party hostility more fiercely; and more exposure to elite tweets attacking the out-party may, in turn, generate greater citizen engagement and enhance out-party hostility among citizens. In fact, tweets sent by extreme in-party elites—who are most negative toward the out-party—are also more likely to be shared (Wojcieszak et al., 2022). Other work also shows that news organizations are more likely to cover extreme politicians than moderate politicians (Wagner & Gruszczynski, 2018). This amplification, by social media users, journalists, and news organizations, may further increase the general perception that American elites are hostile toward the other side. Questions as to whether users’ preferences for out-party negativity on social media are further exacerbated by Twitter’s algorithmFootnote21 or whether elite communication as mediated through mainstream media is more or less negative compared to social media are important directions for future work.

These two factors—the most powerful politicians are very negative toward the out-party and elite negative partisanship may be amplified by users and media—may ultimately create “illusion of polarization” in that citizens encounter a greater share of negative than positive elite information and expressions. Again, however, our over-time evidence systematically shows that this is an illusion, in that most elites, most of the time, post information and opinions that are not negative towards their political opponents. After accounting for the number of followers, the modal tone of the political elites is positive—politicians who mostly post positive tweets, as a whole, have 58% more followers than politicians who are mainly negative. Simply, the positive majority is not as influential and popular as the negative minority (e.g., an average negative politician has 43% more followers than an average positive politician).

We hope these findings inspire further research on the political use of social media, research that investigates the dynamics between politicians, media, and citizens using actual behavioral data and ideally, across different platforms. Only then will we be able to have a complete overview of the social media ecosystem, correctly identify problems, and come up with solutions.

The idea of pay transparency is to give workers the ability to renegotiate away pay discrepancies, but it actually shifts the bargaining power from the workers to the employer, naking wages more equal but lower

Pay-transparency laws do not work as advertised. The Economist, Jan 5 2023. https://www.economist.com/united-states/2023/01/05/pay-transparency-laws-do-not-work-as-advertised

Which is a pity, as California and Washington have just adopted them

Labour advocates champion pay-transparency laws on the grounds that they will narrow pay disparities. But research suggests that this is achieved not by boosting the wages of lower-paid workers but by curbing the wages of higher-paid ones. A forthcoming paper by economists at the University of Toronto and Princeton University estimates that Canadian salary-disclosure laws implemented between 1996 and 2016 narrowed the gender pay gap of university professors by 20-30%. But there is also evidence that they lower salaries, on average. Another paper by professors at Chapel Hill, Cornell and Columbia University found that a Danish pay-transparency law adopted in 2006 shrank the gender pay gap by 13%, but only because it curbed the wages of male employees. Studies of Britain’s gender-pay-gap law, which was implemented in 2018, have reached similar conclusions.

Another misconception about pay-transparency laws is that they strengthen the bargaining power of workers. A recent paper by Zoe Cullen of Harvard Business School and Bobby Pakzad-Hurson of Brown University analysed the effects of 13 state laws passed between 2004 and 2016 that were designed to protect the right of workers to ask about the salaries of their co-workers. The authors found that the laws were associated with a 2% drop in wages, an outcome which the authors attribute to reduced bargaining power. “Although the idea of pay transparency is to give workers the ability to renegotiate away pay discrepancies, it actually shifts the bargaining power from the workers to the employer,” says Mr Pakzad-Hurson. “So wages are more equal,” explains Ms Cullen, “but they’re also lower.”

Rolf Degen summarizing... Widely touted psychology study, suggesting, in essence, that the rich are jerks, bites the dust in another, sophisticated replication failure

Jung, M. H., Smeets, P., Stoop, J., & Vosgerau, J. (2023). Social status and unethical behavior: Two replications of the field studies in Piff et al. (2012). Journal of Experimental Psychology: General. Jan 2023. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0001333

Abstract: Prominent social psychologists and major media outlets have put forward the notion that people of high socioeconomic status (SES) are more selfish and behave more unethically than people of low SES. In contrast, other research in economics and sociology has hypothesized and found a positive relationship between SES and prosocial and ethical behavior. We review the empirical evidence for these contradictory findings and conduct two direct, well-powered, and preregistered replications of the field studies by Piff and colleagues (2012) to test the relationship between SES and unethical/selfish behavior. Unlike the original findings, we find no evidence of a positive relationship between SES and unethical/selfish behavior in the two field replication studies.

People are more strongly persuaded by self-generated arguments than by arguments of others, particularly if they find argument generation easy

Persuasive Benefits of Self-Generated Arguments: Moderation and Mechanism. Mengran Xu, Duane T. Wegener. Social Psychological and Personality Science, January 6, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1177/19485506221146612

Abstract: We aimed to derive a more systematic understanding of the persuasive advantages of self- versus other-generated arguments. Through three initial data collections (Ntotal = 492) and another two large preregistered studies (Ns = 528 and 496), we found that when people experienced a low level of difficulty (measured or manipulated) generating the arguments, self-generated arguments were more persuasive than other-generated arguments. However, when people experienced a high level of difficulty (measured or manipulated), the typical self-persuasion advantage was reduced significantly. Factor analyses identified perceptions of argument quality as a plausible and replicated mediator of the persuasive advantage of self-generated over other-generated arguments.

General Discussion

Through three initial data collections, a large preregistered replication measuring generation difficulty, and a preregistered study manipulating generation difficulty, we found that difficulty in generating the arguments reduced the self-persuasion advantage. To better understand reasons self-generated arguments might be more persuasive (when generation is easy), we examined an array of relevant perceptions of the arguments and of the process of generating (vs. receiving) them. Consistently across studies, when the difficulty of argument generation/reception was not particularly high, self-generated arguments were viewed as stronger, which then also uniquely predicted persuasion by those arguments. There was also some potential additional role for perceptions of knowledge fit.

Theoretical Implications

The current work offers several theoretical insights. First, it helps one better understand the long-standing effects of self-generated arguments. Researchers had observed that the self-persuasion advantage did not always happen, and some had speculated that difficulty in argument generation might play a role (e.g., Mann, 1967). Some prior work examined the meta-cognitive consequences of ease of generation (e.g., Müller et al., 2017; Wänke et al., 1997) without directly comparing reactions to the same self-generated and other-generated arguments or examining the perceptions of the arguments potentially responsible for such effects. Identifying difficulty as a moderator is important, as it also speaks to reasons why cognitive role-playing might sometimes be less effective than emotional role-playing (Mann, 1967). Participants might have had an easier time generating arguments for topics used in emotional role-playing (e.g., quitting smoking) than for topics used in the research on cognitive role-playing (e.g., justifying the number of commercial movie theaters that will be in business 3 years from now).

Traditional research mostly offered speculations on why active argument generation is more effective than passive argument reception. The current work identified perceived argument quality as a primary factor contributing to self-persuasion, with knowledge fit possibly being a secondary contributor. By using a wide spectrum of argument quality, novelty, and liking measures closely tied to perceptions of the arguments, we conceptually replicated previous results and buttressed previous arguments that perceptions of overall argument quality were at least partly responsible for persuasive advantages of self-generated over other-generated arguments (cf. Greenwald & Albert, 1968), even when controlling for knowledge fit (cf. Baldwin et al., 2013).

It is worth noting that Baldwin et al. (2013) argued that argument convincingness came from the extent to which the arguments match the participants’ own concerns on the issue. In the current work, this sense of match versus mismatch might have been captured to some degree by the knowledge fit factor. When constraining our EFA models to two factors, knowledge fit did load with the perceptions of argument quality. However, when allowing for a three-factor solution, knowledge fit loaded separately, and it was the argument quality perceptions that served as the primary mechanism responsible for self-generation effects. However, it remains possible that our measures of knowledge fit reflected more of a cognitive fit (i.e., the way the person thinks about the issue) than in the Baldwin et al. (2013) research (i.e., addressing the person’s concerns on the issue). To the extent that the various perceptions of knowledge fit play a role, however, the current work suggests that their contributions might rely on their connections to perceptions of the overall argument quality.

Limitations and Future Directions

All studies showed the same difficulty by generation interaction pattern, but there was also a consistent pattern across all studies, such that participants with relatively negative attitudes at Time 1 (i.e., those who generated counter-attitudinal arguments) showed a more pronounced difficulty by generation interaction compared with those with relatively positive initial attitudes. However, favorability of initial attitudes did not moderate the difficulty by generation patterns on the mediators. This consistent pattern is not what one would predict based on Briñol et al. (2012). However, the attitudes in the current research were likely quite different from those in Briñol et al. (2012). Briñol et al. (2012) used a familiar topic (tuition increase/decrease) for which people likely had rather strong, well-formed attitudes. In contrast, the topic we chose for our studies was more in line with the classic self-persuasion literature—something quite novel for participants. When participants were initially unfavorable toward the disappearance of paper money, this might simply reflect that they had more room to be convinced otherwise (even with the same perceptions of the mediators). This might have allowed participants with less favorable attitudes to show the most pronounced two-way interaction between difficulty and generation conditions, whereas more well-formed attitudes might have reduced self-persuasion. It would be worthwhile for future work to explore the potential moderators of when generating arguments for a somewhat counter-attitudinal position results in more versus less impact of the generated arguments.

In addition, the current difficulty moderation might relate to research on mere thought effects. Although the traditional effect of mere thought was to polarize attitudes, moderation can occur when people are required to think longer and experience more difficulty in generating new supportive thoughts, creating less confidence in those thoughts and less persuasion by them (Clarkson et al., 2011; cf. Tormala et al., 2007). Because it seemed odd to consider generation difficulty as influencing confidence in thoughts toward other-generated arguments, we did not assess confidence in thoughts. However, future research could have participants generate cognitive responses to the arguments and assess confidence in those thoughts. This could raise a host of intriguing questions, such as whether thought confidence is necessary for the effects of perceived argument quality.

When Psychotherapy Fails (which happens regularly)

When Psychotherapy Fails. Brechje Dandachi-FitzGerald, Henry Otgaar & Harald Merckelbach. Chapter in Toward a Science of Clinical Psychology pp 301–319. January 1 2023. https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-031-14332-8_16

Abstract: Psychotherapy aims to make patients better. As is true for any type of treatment, psychotherapy regularly fails to achieve this goal. Therapeutic failures may take many forms, and the list of possible reasons for failure is similarly extensive. As we will explain in this chapter, there is no conclusive definition of psychotherapeutic failure. Also, failures are sometimes inevitable and thus, cannot always be blamed on the therapist. This chapter is about failures, mistakes, adverse events, and disappointing outcomes during or after psychotherapy. Obviously, these are uncomfortable topics, as it is far more glorious to discuss treatment successes. Still, much can be done about psychotherapeutic failures, but remedies start with acknowledging that harmful therapy effects and therapeutic failures do exist and are important research subjects in their own right.

People who positively judge positive emotions experience better psychological health; those who negatively judge negative emotions experience worse psychological health

Willroth, Emily C., Gerald Young, Maya Tamir, and Iris Mauss. 2023. “Judging Emotions as Good or Bad: Individual Differences and Associations with Psychological Health.” PsyArXiv. January 6. doi:10.31234/osf.io/3ds84

Abstract: People differ in their initial emotional responses to events, and we are beginning to understand these responses and their pervasive implications for psychological health. However, people also differ in how they think about and react to their initial emotions (i.e., emotion judgments). In turn, how people judge their emotions – as predominantly positive or negative – may have crucial implications for psychological health. Across five MTurk and undergraduate samples collected between 2017 and 2022 (total N=1,647), we investigated the nature of habitual emotion judgments (Aim 1) and their associations with psychological health (Aim 2). In Aim 1, we found four distinct habitual emotion judgments that differ according to the valence of the judgment (positive or negative) and the valence of the emotion being judged (positive or negative). Individual differences in habitual emotion judgments were moderately stable across time and were associated with, but not redundant with, conceptually related constructs (e.g., affect valuation, emotion preferences, stress mindsets, meta emotions) and broader traits (i.e., extraversion, neuroticism, trait emotions). In Aim 2, positive judgments of positive emotions were uniquely associated with better psychological health and negative judgments of negative emotions were uniquely associated with worse psychological health concurrently and prospectively, above and beyond the other types of emotion judgments, and above and beyond conceptually related constructs and broader traits. This research gives insight into how people judge their emotions, how these judgments relate to other emotion-related constructs, and their implications for psychological health.

Individuals’ beliefs that they can infer trust and trustworthiness from appearance are unfounded

Attributions of Trust and Trustworthiness. Rick K. Wilson & Catherine C. Eckel. Political Behavior, Jan 5 2023. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11109-022-09855-6

Abstract: This study examines whether individuals can accurately predict trust and trustworthiness in others based on their appearance. Using photos and decisions from previous experimental trust games, subjects were asked to view the photos and guess the levels of trust and trustworthiness of the individuals depicted. The results show that subjects had little ability to accurately guess the trust and trustworthiness behavior of others. There is significant heterogeneity in the accuracy of guesses, and errors in guesses are systematically related to the observable characteristics of the photos. Subjects’ guesses appear to be influenced by stereotypes based on the features seen in the photos, such as gender, skin color, or attractiveness. These findings suggest that individuals’ beliefs that they can infer trust and trustworthiness from appearance are unfounded, and that efforts to reduce the impact of stereotypes on inferred trustworthiness may improve the efficiency of trust-based interactions.