Almost everything we have been told about misinformation is misinformation... and moral panic

Misinformation on Misinformation: Conceptual and Methodological Challenges. Sacha Altay, Manon Berriche, Alberto Acerbi. Social Media + Society, January 28, 2023. https://doi.org/10.1177/20563051221150412

Abstract: Alarmist narratives about online misinformation continue to gain traction despite evidence that its prevalence and impact are overstated. Drawing on research examining the use of big data in social science and reception studies, we identify six misconceptions about misinformation and highlight the conceptual and methodological challenges they raise. The first set of misconceptions concerns the prevalence and circulation of misinformation. First, scientists focus on social media because it is methodologically convenient, but misinformation is not just a social media problem. Second, the internet is not rife with misinformation or news, but with memes and entertaining content. Third, falsehoods do not spread faster than the truth; how we define (mis)information influences our results and their practical implications. The second set of misconceptions concerns the impact and the reception of misinformation. Fourth, people do not believe everything they see on the internet: the sheer volume of engagement should not be conflated with belief. Fifth, people are more likely to be uninformed than misinformed; surveys overestimate misperceptions and say little about the causal influence of misinformation. Sixth, the influence of misinformation on people’s behavior is overblown as misinformation often “preaches to the choir.” To appropriately understand and fight misinformation, future research needs to address these challenges.

MISCONCEPTIONS

A Large Number of People are Misinformed

Headlines about the ubiquity of misbeliefs are rampant in the media and are most often based on surveys. But how well do surveys measure misbeliefs? Luskin and colleagues (2018) analyzed the design of 180 media surveys with closed-ended questions measuring belief in misinformation. They found that more than 90% of these surveys lacked an explicit “Don’t know” or “Not sure” option and used formulations encouraging guessing such as “As far as you know . . .,” or “Would you say that . . .” Often, participants answer these questions by guessing the correct answer and report holding beliefs that they did not hold before the survey (Graham, 2021). Not providing, or not encouraging “Don’t know” answers is known to increase guessing even more (Luskin & Bullock, 2011). Guessing would not be a major issue if it only added noise to the data. To find out, Luskin and colleagues (2018) tested the impact of not providing “Don’t know” answers and encouraging guessing on the prevalence of misbeliefs. They found that it overestimates the proportion of incorrect answers by nine percentage points (25 to 16), and, when considering only people who report being confident in holding a misperception, it overestimates incorrect answers by 20 percentage points (25 to 5). In short, survey items measuring misinformation overestimate the extent to which people are misinformed, eclipsing the share of those who are simply uninformed.

In the same vein, conspiratorial beliefs are notoriously difficult to measure and surveys tend to exaggerate their prevalence (Clifford et al., 2019). For instance, participants in survey experiments display a preference for positive response options (yes vs no, or agree vs disagree) which inflates agreement with statements, including conspiracy theories, by up to 50% (Hill & Roberts, 2021; Krosnick, 2018). Moreover, the absence of “Don’t know” options, together with the impossibility to express one’s preference for conventional explanations in comparison to conspiratorial explanations, greatly overestimate the prevalence of conspiratorial beliefs (Clifford et al., 2019). These methodological problems contributed to unsupported alarmist narratives about the prevalence of conspiracy theories, such as Qanon going mainstream (Uscinski et al., 2022a).

Moreover, the misperceptions that surveys measure are skewed toward politically controversial and polarizing misperceptions, which are not representative of the misperceptions that people actually hold (Nyhan, 2020). This could contribute to fueling affective polarization by emphasizing differences between groups instead of similarities and inflate the prevalence of misbeliefs. When misperceptions become group markers, participants use them to signal group membership—whether they truly believe the misperceptions or not (Bullock et al., 2013). Responses to factual questions in survey experiments are known to be vulnerable to “partisan cheerleading” (Bullock et al., 2013; Prior et al., 2015), in which, instead of stating their true beliefs, participants give politically congenial responses. Quite famously, a large share of Americans believed that Donald Trump’s inauguration in 2017 was more crowded than Barack Obama’s in 2009, despite being presented with visual evidence to the contrary. Partisanship does not directly influence people’s perceptions: misperceptions about the size of the crowds were largely driven by expressive responding and guessing. Respondents who supported President Trump “intentionally provide misinformation” to reaffirm their partisan identity (Schaffner & Luks, 2018, p. 136). The extent to which expressive responding contributes to the overestimation of other political misbeliefs is debated (Nyhan, 2020), but it is probably significant.

Solutions have been proposed to overcome these flaws and measure misbeliefs more accurately, such as including confidence-in-knowledge measures (Graham, 2020) and considering only participants who firmly and confidently say they believe misinformation items as misinformed (Luskin et al., 2018). Yet, even when people report confidently holding misbeliefs, these misbeliefs are highly unstable across time, much more so than beliefs (Graham, 2021). For instance, the responses of people saying they are 100% certain that climate change is not occurring have the same measurement properties as responses of people saying they are 100% certain the continents are not moving or that the sun goes around the Earth (Graham, 2021). A participant’s response at time T does not predict their answer at time T + 1. In other words, flipping a coin would give a similar response pattern.

So far, we have seen that even well-designed surveys overestimate the prevalence of misbeliefs. A further issue is that surveys unreliably measure exposure to misinformation and the occurrence of rare events such as fake news exposure. People report being exposed to a substantial amount of misinformation and recall having been exposed to particular fake headlines (Allcott & Gentzkow, 2017). To estimate the reliability of these measures, Allcott and Gentzkow (2017) showed participants the 14 most popular fake news during the American election campaign, together with 14 made-up “placebo fake news.” 15% of participants declared having been exposed to one of the 14 “real fake news,” but 14% also declared having been exposed to one of the 14 “fake news placebos.”

During the pandemic, many people supposedly engaged in extremely dangerous hygiene practices to fight COVID-19 because of misinformation encountered on social media, such as drinking diluted bleach (Islam et al., 2020). This led to headlines such as “COVID-19 disinformation killed thousands of people, according to a study” (Paris Match Belgique, 2020). Yet, the study is silent regarding causality, and cannot be taken as evidence that misinformation had a causal impact on people’s behavior (France info, 2020). For instance, 39% of Americans reported having engaged in at least one cleaning practice not recommended by the CDC, 4% of Americans reported drinking or gargling a household disinfectant, while another 4% reported drinking or gargling diluted bleach (Gharpure et al., 2020). These percentages should not be taken at face value. A replication of the survey found that these worrying responses are entirely attributable to problematic respondents who also reported “recently having had a fatal heart attack” or “eating concrete for its iron content” at a rate similar to that of ingesting household cleaners (Litman et al., 2020; reminiscent of the “lizardman’s constant” by Alexander, 2013). The authors conclude that “Once inattentive, mischievous, and careless respondents are taken out of the analytic sample we find no evidence that people ingest cleansers to prevent Covid-19 infection” (Alexander, 2013, p. 1). This is not to say that COVID-19 misinformation had no harmful effects (such as creating confusion or eroding trust in reliable information), but rather that surveys using self-reported measures of rare and dangerous behaviors should be interpreted with caution.

Misinformation Has a Strong Influence on People’s Behavior

Sometimes, people believe what they see on the internet and engagement metrics do translate into belief. Yet, even when misinformation is believed, it does not necessarily mean that it changed anyone’s mind or behavior. First, people largely consume politically congenial misinformation (Guess et al., 2019, 2021). That is, they consume misinformation they already agree with, or are predisposed to accept. Congenial misinformation “preaches to the choir” and is unlikely to have drastic effects beyond reinforcing previously held beliefs. Second, even when misinformation changes people’s minds and leads to the formation of new (mis)beliefs, it is not clear if these (mis)beliefs ever translate into behaviors. Attitudes are only weak predictors of behaviors. This problem is well known in public policies as the value-action gap (Kollmuss & Agyeman, 2002). Most notoriously, people report being increasingly concerned about the environment without adjusting their behaviors accordingly (Landry et al., 2018).

Common misbeliefs, such as conspiracy theories, are likely to be cognitively held in such a way that limits their influence on behaviors (Mercier, 2020; Mercier & Altay, 2022). For instance, the behavioral consequences that follow from common misbeliefs are often at odds with what we would expect from people actually believing them. As Jonathan Kay (2011, p. 185) noted, “one of the great ironies of the Truth movement is that its activists typically hold their meetings in large, unsecured locations such as college auditoriums—even as they insist that government agents will stop at nothing to protect their conspiracy for world domination from discovery.” Often, these misbeliefs are likely to be post hoc rationalizations of pre-existing attitudes, such as distrust of institutions.

In the real world, it is difficult to measure how much attitude change misinformation causes, and it is a daunting task to assess its impact on people’s behavior. Surveys relying on correlational data tell us little about causation. For example, belief in conspiracy theories is associated with many costly behaviors, such as COVID-19 vaccine refusal (Uscinski et al., 2022b). Does this mean that vaccine hesitancy is caused by conspiracy theories? No, it could be that both vaccine hesitancy and belief in conspiracy theories are caused by other factors, such as low trust in institutions (Mercier & Altay, 2022; Uscinski et al., 2022b). A few ingenious studies allowed some causal inferences to be drawn. For instance, Kim and Kim (2019) used a longitudinal survey to capture people’s beliefs and behaviors both before and after the diffusion of the “Obama is a Muslim” rumor. They found that after the rumor spread, more people were likely to believe that Obama was a Muslim. Yet, this effect was “driven almost entirely by those predisposed to dislike Obama” (p. 307), and the diffusion of the rumor had no measurable effect on people’s intention to vote for Obama. This should not come as a surprise, considering that even political campaigns and political advertising only have weak and indirect effects on voters (Kalla & Broockman, 2018). As David Karpf (2019) writes “Generating social media interactions is easy; mobilizing activists and persuading voters is hard.”

The idea that exposure to misinformation (or information) has a strong and direct influence on people’s attitudes and behaviors comes from a misleading analogy of social influence according to which ideas infect human minds like viruses infect human bodies. Americans did not vote for Trump in 2016 because they were brainwashed. There is no such thing as “brainwashing” (Mercier, 2020). Information is not passed from brain to brain like a virus is passed from body to body. When humans communicate, they constantly reinterpret the messages they receive, and modify the ones they send (Claidière et al., 2014). The same tweet will create very different mental representations in each brain that reads it, and the public representations people leave behind them, in the form of digital traces, are only an imperfect proxy of their private mental representations. The virus metaphor, all too popular during the COVID-19 pandemic—think of the “infodemic” epithet—is misleading (Simon & Camargo, 2021). It is reminiscent of outdated models of communication (e.g., “hypodermic needle model”) assuming that audiences were passive and easily swayed by pretty much everything they heard or read (Lasswell, 1927). As Anderson (2021) notes “we might see the role of Facebook and other social media platforms as returning us to a pre-Katz and Lazarsfeld era, with fears that Facebook is “radicalizing the world” and that Russian bots are injecting disinformation directly in the bloodstream of the polity.” These premises are at odds with what we know about human psychology and clash with decades of data from communication studies.

Government financial assistance during COVID-19: Lending to small businesses (PPP) significantly increased households’ interest in crypto assets, particularly among new, retail investors

Bertomeu, Jeremy and Martin, Xiumin and Zhang, Sheryl, Uncle Sam’s Stimulus and Crypto Boom. SSRN, January 9, 2023. http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.4320431

Abstract: This study examines the impact of government financial assistance during the COVID-19 pandemic on the demand for crypto assets and the effect of crypto interest on the stated goals of stimulus programs. Government lending to small businesses (PPP) significantly increased households’ interest in crypto assets. Using a Bartik instrumental variable for PPP distribution, we find that a one standard deviation increase in PPP disbursement is associated with an increase in crypto-related Google searches. A 100% percent increase in PPP disbursements is also accompanied by a 2% increased number of new wallets, 10% higher trading volume, 23% higher miners’ revenue, and a shift from large to small addresses, suggesting that government assistance increases the demand for cryptos, particularly among new, retail investors. We further find that about 5-14% of PPP loans are diverted to crypto assets, rendering PPP less effective in maintaining employment. Our results are stronger for MSAs with a less educated population, supporting a house money explanation.

Keywords: Pay Check Protection, Crypto, Stimulus Program

JEL Classification: D82, D83, G10, G5, G24, G3, K0

More Than Half of Statistically Significant Research Findings in the Environmental Sciences are Actually Not; the median power of p-value tests is between 6% to 12%, which is the lowest yet identified for any discipline

More Than Half of Statistically Significant Research Findings in the Environmental Sciences are Actually Not. Teshome Deressa, David Stern, Jaco Vangronsveld, Jan Minx, Sebastien Lizin, Robert Malina, Stephan Bruns. EcoEvoRxiv, Jan 2023. https://doi.org/10.32942/X24G6Z

Abstract: Researchers have incentives to search for and selectively report findings that appear to be statistically significant and/or conform to prior beliefs. Such selective reporting practices, including p-hacking and publication bias, can lead to a distorted set of results being published, potentially undermining the process of knowledge accumulation and evidence-based decision making. We take stock of the state of empirical research in the environmental sciences using 67,947 statistical tests obtained from 547 meta-analyses. We find that 59% of the p-values that were reported as significant are not actually expected to be statistically significant. The median power of these tests is between 6% to 12%, which is the lowest yet identified for any discipline. Only 8% of tests are adequately powered with statistical power of 80% or more. Exploratory regressions suggest that increased statistical power and the use of experimental research designs reduce the extent of selective reporting. Differences between subfields can be mostly explained by methodological differences. To improve the environmental sciences evidence base, researchers should pay more attention to statistical power, but incentives for selective reporting may remain even with adequate statistical power. Ultimately, a paradigm shift towards open science is needed to ensure the reliability of published empirical research.

Do Political Elites Have Accurate Perceptions of Social Conditions? "Contrary to my expectations, I find that politicians tend to overestimate how many of those they govern are struggling financially"

Do Political Elites Have Accurate Perceptions of Social Conditions? Adam Thal. British Journal of Political Science, January 19 2023. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/british-journal-of-political-science/article/abs/do-political-elites-have-accurate-perceptions-of-social-conditions/06DFAD98A8E9D9B7A4685BD0D9A53028

Abstract: Politicians often oppose economic policies benefiting low-income Americans. However, the mechanisms behind this political inequality are unclear. I ask whether politicians oppose these policies, in part, because they underestimate how many of those they govern are struggling financially. I test this theory with an original survey of 1,265 state legislative candidates. Contrary to my expectations, I find that politicians tend to overestimate how many of those they govern are struggling financially. At the same time, there are some instances in which politicians—and Republicans in particular—do underestimate the level of financial hardship among those they govern. In an experiment, I randomly assign politicians to have their misperceptions corrected. The results suggest that politicians' policy preferences would be similar even if they had a more accurate understanding of reality. Overall, the findings suggest that politicians may frequently misperceive the state of reality in which those they govern live.

The percentage of Americans who reported using Twitter dropped from 32.4% to 29.5% after Elon Musk took over the company; the decline was driven by Democrats

Schulman, Jonathan, Hong Qu, David Lazer, Roy Perlis, Katherine Ognyanova, Matthew Baum, Samantha Cadenasso, et al. 2023. “The COVID States Project #97: Twitter, Social Media, and Elon Musk.” OSF Preprints. January 27. doi:10.31219/osf.io/knsd6

Abstract

Key Takeaways

1. Comparing our October 2022 survey conducted immediately before Elon Musk purchased Twitter to our December 2022-January 2023 survey, the percentage of Americans who reported using Twitter dropped from 32.4% to 29.5%. This decline was driven by Democrats, 38% of whom reported using Twitter in our survey before Musk took over the company, which dropped to 33% after.

2. 53% of Republicans trust Elon Musk to do what is right either somewhat or a lot, compared to just 24% of Democrats.

3. Democrats were 15% more likely than Republicans to trust Twitter to do what is right before Musk purchased the site, but trust among Republicans and Democrats converged to equal levels following Musk’s takeover, with 34% of both parties trusting Twitter to do what is right.

4. Republicans perceived a significant decrease in bias against conservatives on Twitter and an increase in neutrality after Musk took over, while Democrats saw a significant increase in bias against liberals and a decrease in neutrality since Musk bought Twitter.

5. Respondents regardless of party viewed other social media platforms as more neutral than Twitter.

Participants with elevated traits of psychopathy, narcissism and sadism showed a greater preference for meeting people offline; & dislike deceptive dating practices and often perceive themselves to be victimised in online & offline settings

Dating in the dark: A qualitative examination of dating experiences in dark tetrad personalities. Richelle Mayshak et al. Computers in Human Behavior, January 27 2023, 107680. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2023.107680

Abstract: Dark Tetrad (D4) traits have been shown to influence both perpetration and victimisation of dating related anti-social behaviours. To inform prevention and intervention measures against these behaviours, it is important to understand how persons with elevated D4 traits search for partners and what aspects of dating they appraise as positive versus negative. This study aims to qualitatively explore the role of personality in dating experience; specifically, preference for dating platform and perceived dating outcomes in those with elevated D4 traits. In total, 480 adults from Australia, (288 women, 186 men, and 6 non-binary) aged 18–18 – 70 years (M = 29.51, SD = 12.82), took part in an online qualitative and quantitative survey. Participants with elevated traits of psychopathy, narcissism and sadism showed a greater preference for meeting people offline. Applying template analysis, we generated three themes for positive experiences: finding a new partner, connecting with others, material and personal benefits. For negative experiences, we identified four themes: not being able to find a partner, misrepresentation, online and in-person victimisation, difficulties with navigating close relationships. Whilst persons with elevated D4 traits value connecting with others, they dislike deceptive dating practices and often perceive themselves to be victimised in online and offline settings. Future studies should investigate whether dating experiences differ across individuals who score within elevated versus lower range on D4 traits.

Rolf Degen summarizing... Another established social psychological finding, the presumed tendency for individuals to judge deviant ingroup members more harshly than similar behaving outgroup members, steadfastly refuses to be replicated

Group Membership and Deviance Punishment - Are Deviant Ingroup Members Actually Judged more Negatively than Outgroup Ones? Eric Bonetto et al. Meta-Psychology, Vol. 7 (2023), Jan 2023. https://doi.org/10.15626/MP.2021.2764

Abstract: Deviance Punishment is an important issue for social-psychological research. Group members tend to punish deviance through rejection, ostracism and – more commonly – negative judgments. Subjective Group Dynamics proposes to account for social judgement patterns of deviant and conformist individuals. Relying on a group identity management perspective, one of the model’s core predictions is that the judgment of a deviant target depends on group membership. More specifically, the model predicts that deviant ingroup members should be judged more negatively than outgroup ones. Although this effect has been repeatedly observed over the past decades, there is a current lack of sufficiently powered studies in the literature. For the first time, we conducted tests of Subjective Group Dynamics in France and the US to investigate whether ingroup deviants were judged more harshly than outgroup ones. Across six experiments and an internal mini meta-analysis, we observed no substantial difference in judgment between ingroup and outgroup deviant targets, d = -0.01, 95% CI[-0.07, 0.06]. The findings’ implications for deviance management research are discussed.

Keywords: Deviance, Punishment, Subjective Group Dynamics, Replication

We develop a deep learning model to detect emotions embedded in press conferences after the Federal Open Market Committee meetings and examine the influence of the detected emotions on financial markets

The Voice of Monetary Policy. Yuriy Gorodnichenko, Tho Pham, and Oleksandr Talavera. American Economic Review, Feb 2023, Vol. 113, No. 2: Pages 548-584. https://pubs.aeaweb.org/doi/pdfplus/10.1257/aer.20220129

Abstract: We develop a deep learning model to detect emotions embedded in press conferences after the Federal Open Market Committee meetings and examine the influence of the detected emotions on financial markets. We find that, after controlling for the Federal Reserve’s actions and the sentiment in policy texts, a positive tone in the voices of Federal Reserve chairs leads to significant increases in share prices. Other financial variables also respond to vocal cues from the chairs. Hence, how policy messages are communicated can move the financial market. Our results provide implications for improving the effectiveness of central bank communications.

JEL D83, E31, E44, E52, E58, F31, G14

Young men rated their own IQ significantly higher than women of the same age, while at an older age women rated their intelligence higher than men

Are sex differences in self-estimated intelligence an elusive phenomenon? Exploring the role of working memory, creativity, and other psychological correlates in young and older adults. Vaitsa Giannouli. Brain and Behavior, January 26 2023. https://doi.org/10.1002/brb3.2857

Abstract

Background: Although there is research examining the demographic predictors of self-estimated intelligence (SEI) in young adults, so far SEI in old age is little investigated. This study aims to examine the influence of additional variables such as self-estimated emotional intelligence (SEEQ), physical attractiveness, health, general optimism, religiousness, and working memory (WM) on SEI both in young and older adults.

Methods: A total of 159 young (90 women, Mage = 28.77, SD = 8.83) and 152 older adults (93 women, Mage = 71.92, SD = 6.84) completed a measure of SEI as well as questions regarding the abovementioned variables. Given that WM is considered a very strong predictor of intelligence, neuropsychological assessment included the measurement of WM and phonologically cued semantic retrieval–verbal storage and processing in WM, as assessed by the Digit Span Forward and Verbal Fluency Task. The visual storage in WM was assessed with a variation of the Visual Patterns Test, and the visual storage and processing in WM with the Corsi blocks task (backward). Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS-X) was also administered as a possible influence on cognitive performance and SEI.

Results: Young males rated their intelligence quotient (IQ) and emotional quotient (EQ) higher than young females. This was not confirmed for older adults, for which surprisingly the reversed pattern was found. Older women reported higher IQ and EQ than older men. Correlations showed for all participants that the higher they rated their IQ, the higher their ratings of EQ, physical attractiveness, health, and religiousness. No significant correlations between objective tests regarding WM and SEI were found, supporting SEI overestimations. Age, sex, physical attractiveness, and SEEQ were significant predictors of SEI.

Discussion: For the first time, a reverse sex difference across age groups in SEI is found. Implications for individuals and healthcare professionals involved in assessment are suggested.

4 DISCUSSION

Although so far findings support that males of all ages tend to estimate their general intelligence about 5–15 IQ points higher than do females, usually around 1 SD above the norm (Furnham, 2017; Furnham & Grover, 2020), this is not the case for this Greek sample of older adults. Males had higher SEI only for the group of young adults, while the reverse was found for older adults as in this group females reported higher SEI. In addition to that, EI followed the same pattern of self-estimations for the interaction of sex and age groups. The view of an “MHFN bias” was not fully confirmed as men in the present study awarded themselves significantly higher estimates for overall and EI, only when they belonged to the group of young adults (Furnham et al., 1999). This sex and age interaction could be explained by affect differences as measured by negative PANAS, which was higher for older men.

Thus, age seems to be of utmost importance when SEI is examined. So far, older adults are not represented in relevant research as convenience samples are usually used (Cherubini & Gasperini, 2017). According to the current findings, the age dimension plays a vital role for SEI and SEEQ in persons aged 65 years or over, so although it has been neglected in relevant literature, future research attempts should consider it as an equally important variable as sex. Although it is difficult to disentangle what may be historical cohort effects (e.g., lack of available access to education) from what might be a biopsychosocial effect of cognitive aging and the understandable downward estimation of one's intelligence, this study points to a new question that needs to be elucidated in future research: Are the findings due to cross-cultural differences, is it a historical cohort effect related to access to education (better and longer educated younger adults), or do the frequently observed sex differences in SEI not generalize to older populations?

When objective cognitive tests of WM are used (such as the Visual Patterns Test), it is interesting that SEI does not correlate with them, something that is an unexpected finding, given that higher objective performance should support estimates of higher IQ. A real strength of this study is that it is backed up by neuropsychological measurements. Thus, for the first time we are able to rule out the presence of neurological impairment in the study or that SEI is an accurate reflection of the difficulties the participants encountered in the neuropsychological battery. Although direct cognitive performance was assessed (as indicated by the four neuropsychological tests), the objective psychometrically measured cognitive ability does not shape self-perceptions such as SEI, a finding that is also reported in Greek older adults with mild cognitive impairments and healthy Greek older adults (Fragkiadaki et al., 2016; Giannouli & Tsolaki, 2022b).

Another point that needs to be taken into consideration is physical attractiveness, which differentiates age and sex groups, as it is highest for old females, followed by young males, young females, and old males. Physical attractiveness has a high correlation with SEI. Also, physical attractiveness may act as a proxy for general self-esteem, and it has been supported that self-esteem is a strong component of the SEI (Reilly et al., 2022). Another point that is remarkable is that there was no correlation between SEI and optimism, a finding that allows us to support that the participants just do not have an optimistic bias toward overestimation. This is in contrast with studies supporting a relationship between optimistic bias, narcissism, and subjectively assessed intelligence (Zajenkowski & Gignac, 2018).

As in a previous study (Furnham & Grover, 2020), demographic variables (sex, age, education), self-ratings (attractiveness, EQ, and health), and non/antiscientific beliefs (regarding religion that has been found to be of utmost importance for Greek older adults; Giannouli & Giannoulis, 2021a, 2021b; Giannoulis & Giannouli, 2020b) were included. Furthermore, as this is the first time that such variables are simultaneously examined in Greece in an extended sample of individuals with varying demographic characteristics, it is worth mentioning the interaction effects for all these self-ratings, as the effect of the sex factor depends on the other factor, which in our case is the age group for SEI, SEEQ, physical attractiveness, and health ratings.

Although high levels of religiousness in Greece are reported in prior research for the old age group (Van Herreweghe & Van Lancker, 2019), both younger and older adults of both sexes in this sample had moderate levels of self-reported religiousness, possibly due to the COVID-19 crisis-imposed restrictions that changed relevant religious behaviors, such as church attendance and public worship (Giannoulis & Giannouli, 2021). Findings revealed that perceived religiousness positively correlated with SEI, SEEQ, and health ratings, but no direct relationship to optimism has been found in contrast to assumed links. The fact that perceived religiousness may not play a role in motivating positive attitudes, including optimism, could be due to the severe health and financial conditions in Greece at the time of assessment of the participants.

This study was not only a replication study, as creativity was also assessed taking the form of attitudes and values. Another novelty of this study was the neuropsychological assessment of WM. For SEI, four were the significant predictors, namely, age (older), sex (male), physical attractiveness, and SEEQ, while no other variables were found to be significant. Among them, self-estimated creativity negatively correlates with SEI only for the group of younger adults, something that could be explained by a different perception of these two psychological constructs (intelligence, creativity) as unrelated and distinct (Furnham et al., 2008).

This may have important implications for psychiatric and neuropsychological assessment as women may show overconfidence in their cognitive abilities, and this may drive them to show less willingness to get assessed based on the higher SEI that older women report or to report distorted data for themselves and their cognitive self-image, but also there might be implications for the everyday living of community-dwelling older women and men, especially in shared environments by both sexes. Although there was a hypothesis that objective WM test performance (concerning visual and verbal aspects of WM) would correlate with SEI, this was not the case. Another interesting neuropsychological finding that should be mentioned here is that although sex is expected to influence verbal capacity performance (e.g., Verbal Fluency Task), sex did not differentiate women and men regarding their phonemic fluency, something that reaffirms that in the Greek population sex contributes only to total word production on the semantic task and that sex differences in specific categories may reflect and be explained by sociocultural factors (Kosmidis et al., 2004).

A point that could be considered as a limitation of this study is that “objective” (i.e., psychometric) intelligence was not directly tested due to the fact that a lengthy testing session is not appropriate for older adults, but also the administration of all of the supplemental subtests to young adults has been criticized for having long administration times and causing fatigue (Greene, 2000), and due to copyright–proprietary issues for the only IQ test in use in Greece (current version of WAIS). However, by including a neuropsychological battery such as verbal fluency and Corsi blocks, we can rule out these results being driven by perceived or actual neuropsychological impairment as a result of aging.

Another limitation is the debate regarding WM and the appropriateness of the included measures (digit forward, visual patterns, and backward Corsi block), which could be better classified as measuring something other than WM, and be more indicative of STM than WM (Shao et al., 2014), while verbal fluency measures are supported to be primarily linked to executive functions (Amunts et al., 2020). A third limitation of this research may be the fact that given that the questions on the 0–100 scale for the self-estimations were presented the one after the other, many participants may have responded automatically with the same or similar reports, without making conscious estimations. Additionally, all participants were Greek Orthodox Christians, so the role of religiousness should be examined through the prism of one single religion. Another point is the fact that overall SEI was measured, and not multiple intelligences following Gardner's theory, while prior test experience was homogeneously present for all participants and could not be included in the analyses as a possible influence (Furnham et al., 2009). Of course, neuropsychological test scores revealed age differences, something that is generally expected in neuropsychological research regardless of the examined cognitive function (Lezak et al., 2012), given that normal ageing degrades the information processed, thus impairing cognitive processing (Schneider & Pichora-Fuller, 2000).

Future research should extend the current findings with the simultaneous examination of personality factors, apart from the state affect factors. Additionally, creativity could be examined in a more detailed way, as the Creative Attitudes and Values may not reflect the “actual” creativity but the attitudes and values that shape involvement in creative behaviors and activities. One more point is that sex should not be confused with gender, which refers to the socially constructed characteristics of women and men, and not to the biological sex, and thus two these two concepts should be examined and inserted into the analyses, separately (Reilly et al., 2022).

Online shopping enhances the long-term subjective well-being of consumers by increasing their proportion of hedonic consumption; high consumer income can weaken this effect; effect is stronger for rural consumers

Click it, and increase hedonic consumption ratio: How does online shopping improve the long-term subjective well-being of consumers? Jiangzhe Wang, Xingping Jia. Journal of Consumer Behaviour, January 18 2023. https://doi.org/10.1002/cb.2086

Abstract: In the past few decades, consumers across the globe have become heavily reliant on e-commerce to purchase almost everything, from essential goods to hedonic goods. The prevalence of online shopping has significantly improved the consumption process and, by meeting consumers' needs, likely affects their long-term subjective well-being (SWB). Using individual-level data from the 2018 China Family Panel Studies, this study shows that online shopping enhances the long-term SWB of consumers by increasing their proportion of hedonic consumption. Consumer income can moderate the effect of online shopping on the long-term SWB of consumers, such that high consumer income can weaken this effect. In addition, the effect of online shopping on long-term SWB is stronger for rural consumers than for urban consumers. The authors close with a discussion of the implications of this study's findings for academics and policy makers.

In 2002 the most sexually active top 20 % of American heterosexual men had 12 lifetime sex partners while the top 5 % had 38; in 2012, the top 20 % reported 15 lifetime sex partners & the top 5 % of men reported 50

Sexual loneliness – a neglected public health problem? Joona Räsänen. Bioethics, January 20 2023. https://doi.org/10.1111/bioe.13134

A study published in the Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA) found that between 2000–2002 and 2016–2018, the proportion of 18 to 24-year-old individuals who reported having had no sexual activity in the past year increased among men (but not among women).1

In another recent study, similar results were reported: American men belonging to the youngest birth cohort who entered adulthood were more likely to be sexually inactive than their Millennial counterparts at the same ages just a few years prior.2

While the number of young men who report having no sexual experiences is increasing, there are also men who have more sex partners than ever before.

The National Survey of Family Growth data shows that in 2002 the most sexually active top 20 % of American heterosexual men had 12 lifetime sex partners while the top 5 % had 38 partners.3 Ten years later, in 2012, the most sexually active top 20 % now reported 15 lifetime sex partners and the top 5 % of men reported 50 lifetime sex partners. There was no change in the median number of sex partners.

The distribution of the number of sex partners among American heterosexual men was skewed already, but in just ten years, the distribution of sex partners among men became even more skewed. During the same time, there was no such change in the number of sex partners for heterosexual women.

Sex is concentrated within a small, yet sexually active, group of people. In one study, it was reported that the 5 % of the population with the highest number of vaginal sex acts (penile-vaginal-intercourse) accounted for more vaginal sex acts than the bottom 50 % of the population with the lowest number of vaginal sex acts. 4

Using the Gini index, it is found that the distribution of the number of sex partners both for men and women throughout their lifespan is as unequal as the distribution of wealth among the most unequal countries in the world (South Africa Gini 0.63 in 2014 and Namibia Gini 0.59 in 2015). The number of female sex partners is more unequally distributed among single men (Gini 0.60) than the number of male sex partners is among single women (Gini 0.58) although both male and female sex partners are highly concentrated among people.5

While sex is not like money or wealth in every aspect, the lack of access to sexual experiences can be seen as a concern for distributive justice6 and a problem for public health since an active sex life is beneficial for people’s health and well-being. There are numerous studies that show the link between active sex life and our mental and physical health.7 On the other hand, people experience negative emotional effects when being without access to sexual and romantic partners. Sexual loneliness decreases self-esteem and positive mood in both men and women. Especially for men, sexual loneliness might cause anger and aggression, which can manifest violently.

Lack of sex and relationship is related to many societal problems, and loneliness and lack of intimacy predispose men to violent behaviour. Misogyny is prevalent in places where competition for women is tough and men struggle to find a partner. Sex offenders, serial killers, terrorists and mass murderers have, likewise, often given sexual frustration as a reason for their actions. Lately, the U.S. Secret Service's National Threat Assessment Center released a report, stating that there is a growing terrorism threat from men who call themselves “involuntary celibates.”8

However, it is not only people in the U.S. that should be worried about the risk of such violence. Sexual loneliness among young men is increasing in many countries. For instance, in my native Finland, the number of men who have trouble finding a sex partner doubled from 1992 to 2015, and the number of young men who have not had intercourse has increased. 9 Yet, at the same time, Finnish men want more sex than they did before. 10

While bioethicists, clinicians and public health experts have recently gained interest in loneliness and its relation to our well-being 11– especially during the COVID-19 pandemic when people were forced to stay at home12– sexual loneliness is still a neglected topic in bioethics and related fields.

One possible aid for sexual loneliness might come from online dating apps such as Tinder. In theory, online dating could provide an efficient way to find a partner. However, online dating divides people heavily into winners and losers – perhaps even more so than traditional dating. While women can get attention from thousands of men online in just a few hours, men are lucky if anyone is interested in them.13 Because online dating apps are visual, rejections can be especially hurtful. It is no surprise that being unsuccessful on Tinder is associated with an increase in sadness and anxiety.14

Technology does not provide a solution to loneliness, in general,15 and will unlikely solve sexual loneliness either. Sexual loneliness has nevertheless become a pressing public health problem that needs serious bioethical analysis and thoughtful solutions. These bioethical analyses could include (but perhaps should not be limited to) critical evaluations of claims made by opposing ideological camps. For instance, consider the following claim, raised by Jordan Peterson: societies should alleviate sexual loneliness by enforcing socially-promoted and culturally-inculcated monogamy.16

Philosophical bioethicists could make valuable contributions to the discussion by analyzing claims like the one above and evaluating whether they are logically consistent and conceptually coherent with the agent’s other commitments. 17 The results could remain conditional: “If you want this-and-this, you ought (not) to do that-and-that.” However, since these conditional claims would stand or fall based on group preferences, attitudes, background assumptions and ideologies, disagreement on what to do would surely remain.

Men's sexual desire fluctuated as much as women's in the short term, while women's desire was more variable in the long term

Does Sexual Desire Fluctuate More Among Women than Men? Emily A. Harris, Matthew J. Hornsey, Wilhelm Hofmann, Patrick Jern, Sean C. Murphy, Fanny Hedenborg & Fiona K. Barlow. Archives of Sexual Behavior, Jan 25 2023. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10508-022-02525-y

Abstract: There is a lay assumption that women’s sexual desire varies substantially over time, whereas men’s is stable. This assumption is mirrored in prominent theories of desire, which posit that women are more variable than men in the extent to which they desire sex, and that women’s sexual desire is more contextually sensitive than men’s. We tested this assumption across three longitudinal studies. Study 1 assessed desire at 3 time points spanning 13 years (Nobservations = 5562), and Studies 2 and 3 (Nobservations = 11,282) assessed desire moment-to-moment over 7 days. When desire was measured over years, women were more variable in their sexual desire than men (Study 1). However, we found a different pattern of results when desire was measured over the short term. In Studies 2 and 3, we found no significant differences in women’s and men’s desire variability. The extent to which desire varied as a function of affective states (e.g., happiness) and relationship-oriented states (e.g., partner closeness) was similar for women and men, with some exceptions; women’s desire was more negatively associated with tiredness and anger in Study 2. These data qualify existing assumptions about sex differences in sexual desire variability.

General Discussion

Social psychological and lay theories of desire suggest that men’s desire is stable (and high), whereas women’s desire ebbs and flows depending on their social context (Baumeister, 2000; Regan & Berscheid, 1995). The present study sought to test this assumption, specifically addressing the following three questions: (1) Do women show more variability in sexual desire compared to men? (2) Compared to men, is women’s sexual desire more strongly related to their general affective states? And (3) Is women’s sexual desire more strongly tied to their relationship-oriented states compared to men’s desire?

In order to assess intra-individual changes in desire, we conducted three longitudinal studies assessing desire over 13 years (Study 1), and from moment to moment over 7 days (Studies 2 and 3). These studies collectively sampled women and men at 16,885 time points using diverse sampling methods, including community samples in Australia and the US and a population-based sample in Finland. We assessed general desire in Studies 1 and 3 and partner-specific desire in Study 2.

With regard to our first research question, when desire was measured over the longer term, women’s desire varied to a greater extent than men’s desire. In Study 1, desire was assessed three times over 13 years, with women showing significantly greater variability than men, consistent with previous research assessing changes in desire among newlyweds over four years (McNulty et al., 2019), and studies of desire during the transition to parenthood (Rosen et al., 2021). Thus, the theory that women’s desire is more variable than men’s desire is supported by longitudinal studies examining desire over many years. However, the effect was small, as can be seen in Fig. 2, and Study 1 was the most well-powered study to detect a small effect. As is often the case, the overlap in women’s and men’s distributions far exceeds the differences.

Study 1 raises the question of why desire may be more variable among women compared to men over the long term. One possibility, supported by Rosen et al. (2020), is that the transition to parenthood has a larger impact on women’s desire relative to men. We did not, however, find a significant interaction between sex and having children on desire in Study 1 (cf. McNulty et al., 2019; Rosen et al., 2021). A second possibility is that women’s desire may be more likely to decline with age as a function of feeling less attractive, due to the intersecting experiences of gendered beauty standards and ageism (Buote, 2010; van Anders et al., 2021). Relatedly, it may be that women’s desire is more likely to change over time as a function of relationship inequities if they are partnered with a man (Harris et al., 2022; van Anders et al., 2021). Additional waves of data and/or additional longitudinal studies are needed to further test the extent to which women’s desire varies more than men’s over the lifespan, and why.

When desire was measured over the short term, our results diverged from previous theorizing and quantitative results—we found no evidence that women’s desire was more variable than men’s desire in the short term. On average, both men and women show relatively large fluctuations in desire over seven days. Academic and lay assumptions about women’s desire being variable appear to be accurate. However, the assumption that men have stable desire was not supported by the data, at least in the short term. Men’s desire was as variable as women’s desire, and it was more variable than other states, such as stress and tiredness. Our findings suggest that female erotic plasticity theory, therefore, may not extend to desire in the short term.

To assess the second and third research questions, we tested whether sex moderates the associations between desire and affective and relationship-oriented states “in the moment.” In terms of affective states and desire, women and men showed similar patterns. The associations between desire and stress, attractiveness, happiness, and loneliness were significant and not moderated by sex. These findings counter assumptions that women’s desire is more sensitive to contextual factors compared to men. In particular, feeling attractive or satisfied with one’s body is often tied to women’s sexuality. Our findings suggest that researchers and the lay public may underestimate the importance of feeling attractive for men’s desire, consistent with qualitative research from Murray and Brotto (2021) showing that men in heterosexual relationships “desire to feel desired.” The effect of tiredness on desire was stronger for women in Study 2, but not in Study 3. Thus, while women’s desire was sensitive to their immediate affective states, men’s desire was equally so, perhaps with the exception of feeling tired.

In terms of the associations between relationship states and desire, there were some differences between men and women. Across Studies 2 and 3, we found no moderating effect of sex on the associations between desire and feelings about their relationship, with one exception. In Study 2, women’s anger towards their partner were more strongly (negatively) associated with desire than men’s. Thus, there may be some nuanced differences in the extent to which affective and relationship states are associated with desire. Overall, however, the patterns of association were strikingly similar for women and men, with only two of nineteen relationships moderated by sex.

Implications

Our findings provide an opportunity to build upon our current models of sex and desire over time. While the theorizing around women’s variability in desire is supported in the longer-term, it does not apply to moment-to-moment changes in desire. These findings support a distinction between short-term changes, or “state” desire, and medium- to long-term changes, or “trait” desire. Factors affecting desire “in the moment” may diverge from those affecting desire in the long term, consistent with work on gender and sex differences in absolute levels of desire (Dawson & Chivers, 2014).

Factors affecting momentary desire may also diverge from those affecting other fluid dimensions of sexuality. Women appear to show greater variability in their sexual attitudes, behavior, and attraction (e.g., Diamond et al., 2017) compared with men, but not desire, at least in the short term. One possible explanation is that desire is experienced similarly to other mood states, such as hunger or tiredness. As such, desire may be more likely to vary along with other momentary states, rather than individual differences in sex or gender. Other dimensions of sexuality, such as attitudes, behavior, and attraction, may be more sensitive to gendered pressures and expectations. Additional theorizing and research are needed to assess the relative influence of gendered expectations across different dimensions of sexuality.

Our findings regarding short-term desire variability have notable practical implications for women’s and men’s sexual self-concepts and sexual relationships. An assumption that men have stable desire and women have fluctuating desire may lead to inaccurate impressions of the world—that is, we may perceive women to be “hot and cold” and simultaneously underperceive men’s variability in desire. We may also discourage men from acknowledging fluctuations in desire if they are felt to be “not manly,” and men may subsequently engage in sexual activity despite experiencing a period of low sexual interest. Finally, for women partnered with men, sexual rejection may be more painful if women assume men have consistently high desire. That is, if a woman is under the assumption that her man partner has a consistently high sex drive, his disinterest in sex is likely to be attributed to external factors (such as her desirability) rather than internal factors (such as his naturally fluctuating sex drive). This may partially explain why women tend to have more negative responses to sexual rejection compared to men (de Graafe & Sandfort, 2004) and speaks to the importance of communication when engaging in sexual rejection (Impett et al., 2020). As such, acknowledging that desire changes in both men and women may diminish negative feelings in response to a partner’s sexual disinterest.

Limitations and Future Directions

The study of within-person changes in sexuality is still in its infancy. Research on desire discrepancy has shed light on the variable nature of desire—desire fluctuates, and these fluctuations are likely going to be different between partners, such that one partner may peak while another partner may drop (Mark, 2012, 2014; Ridley et al., 2006). Daily diary studies have uncovered practices and strategies that can “keep the spark alive,” buffering against drops in desire over time (Muise et al., 2013b). These previous studies, and findings from Studies 2 and 3, support a “state” conceptualization of desire, whereby desire can fluctuate throughout the day and in response to external events. Further, women’s and men’s desire appear to be equally “state-like,” such that variability in desire is similar for women and men in the short term.

We note, however, that our findings are specific to our conceptualization of desire as a state. We assessed desire using one to three items that were designed to assess a brief snapshot of a person’s current level of desire. The items tended to be highly correlated (Studies 1 and 3), and single-item measures demonstrate appropriate predictive validity in experience sampling studies (Song et al., 2022). Further, our findings are largely consistent with previous work conceptualizing desire in response to sexual stimuli, whereby patterns of desire change are similar for women and men (Dawson et al., 2013). As such, this study directly addresses sex differences in state desire variability.

We did not explicitly assess trait desire, so our findings cannot speak to the extent to which women’s and men’s trait levels of desire change over time. Previous work has found that gender and sex differences in average desire may be more likely to emerge when desire is conceptualized as a trait rather than a state (Dawson & Chivers, 2014). Thus, it may be that when operationalized as a trait, desire may be more stable and trait-like for men than women. However, there is an open question as to whether it is appropriate to conceptualize desire as a trait (Dawson & Chivers, 2014; Mark & Lasslo, 2018).

The measurement of state desire may be appropriate given the extent to which it fluctuates, however, our measures may be constrained in other ways. It is possible that participants in our studies were responding according to the demand characteristics of the studies. In Study 3, we controlled for social desirability and found that the results remained unchanged. An additional possibility is that desire levels were inflated by virtue of completing the daily surveys—that is, being asked to introspect on one’s desire may cause an increase in desire. While we think this is a possibility, we do not believe this would affect our conclusions, as we did not find ceiling effects of desire, and we were interested in sex differences in variability in desire rather than baseline levels of desire.

Finally, our findings speak more directly to theories relating to sex differences in desire variability. Additional data are needed to assess whether our results would hold when assessing participants’ gender. Further, studies of gender and sex differences tend to focus on women/females and men/males and tend to only sample, heterosexual participants. Future research is needed to explore gender and sex differences beyond the gender binary, and why differences may exist. For non-binary and/or allo-binary participants, it may be that desire is sensitive to contexts in which gender identity is affirmed or denied, which might in turn influence relevant affective states, such as happiness, attractiveness, and partner closeness. And, of course, this may be similar for men and women who do identify within the binary. It may be that heterosexual women’s desire varies over the life span, as a function of heteronormative pressures, whereas women not partnered with men may experience desire differently. Future research on experiences of desire with gender and sexually diverse samples is needed to help answer these questions and contribute to a growing field of feminist and queer research on desire (e.g., Chadwick et al., 2017; Holmberg & Blair, 2009; Mark et al., 2018).

Liberal political views may be seen as a subtle signal of wealth in today's society; the shift of wealthier people to the political left may coincide with a working-class shift to the right

Are Political Views the New Luxury Goods? Bence Nanay. Psychology Today, January 25, 2023. https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/psychology-tomorrow/202209/are-political-views-the-new-luxury-goods

- Conspicuous consumption is defined as overtly displaying signs of material wealth, while inconspicuous consumption signals wealth more subtly.

- Liberal political views may be seen as a subtle signal of wealth in today's society.

- The shift of wealthier people to the political left may coincide with a working-class shift to the right.

Remember that time when Rolex watches and Louis Vuitton handbags signaled wealth? Some (not all) rich people really want the rest of the world to know that they are rich. This is often called conspicuous consumption1: You spend money on things that make people see you as well-off.

The problem is that these often not-very-subtle indicators of wealth are becoming very easy to fake. You can get a pretty convincing Rolex replica for about a hundred bucks and a fake Louis Vuitton handbag sometimes for much less. What is the fan of conspicuous consumption supposed to do? If you continue wearing your Rolex, you may be mistaken for a replica-wearing wannabe. That's the last thing you would want.

One answer is to go subtle. This is sometimes dubbed inconspicuous consumption2: Wear a watch from an obscure but very high-end watchmaker, eat organic and single-origin quinoa, and so on. You will still be recognized as rich, but only by those who count. So you can show that you are rich without appearing to show that you are rich. No crassness, no fakes. No danger of being mistaken for a nouveau riche.

Political views: The next step in inconspicuous consumption

But inconspicuous consumption is still about material goods. The next step in showing one's wealth without appearing to show it is signaling wealth with the help of values, not material goods. And these values are often political views. It is obviously in the material interest of rich people to be against taxing the rich. However, if you say—often and loudly—that the rich should be taxed, this must mean that you are super wealthy. It signals your wealth much more efficiently than Rolex watches or organic, single-origin quinoa.

Some new research shows that this shift is real. In fact, it can also help us to understand some of the perplexing aspects of recent political realignments, especially people voting against their material interests, and how, as more well-off people vote left, more poorer people also vote right, which is a surprising reversal of the classic political landscape.

This new turn in consumerism may seem entirely harmless, maybe even amusing, but it is not without potentially dangerous consequences. If people perceive the elites as having left-wing values, then as a reaction, strong populist sentiments could be evoked with extreme right-wing propaganda. And we all know what that can lead to.

References

1 Veblen, Thorstein. The Theory of the Leisure Class. Retrieved from: https://moglen.law.columbia.edu/LCS/theoryleisureclass.pdf.

2 Elizabeth Currid-Halkett. (2019). The Sum of Small Things: A Theory of the Aspirational Class. Princeton, NJ: Princeton Univesity Press.

3 Enke, B., Polborn, M. & Wu, A. (2022). Values as Luxury Goods and Political Polarization. Retrieved from: https://www.nber.org/papers/w30001

Male flies that had got the brush-off from a female behaved more aggressively towards their fellow males

Sexual rejection modulates social interaction and reproductive physiology. Liora Omesi, Mali Levi, Elia Dayan, Yong-Kyu Kim, Lital Barak-Buchris, Reza Azanchi, Ulrike Heberlein, Galit Shohat-Ophir. bioRxiv Jan 22 2023. https://doi.org/10.1101/2021.04.27.441612

Abstract: In highly polyandrous species, in which females mate with multiple males within a single fertility period, there is typically a high level of sperm competition. To cope with this challenge, males apply various behavioral and physiological strategies to maximize their reproductive success. Previous studies in Drosophila melanogaster established a link between the composition of the social environment and the reproductive success of individual male flies. While most studies until now focused on the adaptive responses of male flies to the presence of rival males, little is known about whether the outcomes of sexual interactions with female partners alter male-male social interactions. Here we show that repeated failures to mate promote coordinated physiological and behavioral responses that can serve to increase reproductive success over mating rivals in the future competition. We exposed male flies to sexual rejection, successful mating or no sexual experience, and analyzed the behavioral repertoires of individuals within groups and the structure of their emerging social networks. We discovered that failures to mate promote the formation of distinct emergent group interactions and structures, where rejected male flies form low density social networks and actively minimize their encounters with other group members, while increasing their aggressive behavior. In addition, sexually rejected male flies elevate the production of seminal fluid proteins and extend mating duration with receptive females, altogether leading to reduced re-mating rates. Our results demonstrate the existence of a flexible mating response as possible coping strategy for living in a highly dynamic and competitive environment as the social domain.

Reading for pleasure in adolescence did not yield any benefits for mental health in a large longitudinal study

Murray, Aja L., Patrick Errington, Yi Yang, Daniel Mirman, Ingrid Obsuth, Tom Booth, Denis Ribeaud, et al. 2023. “Is Reading for Pleasure in Adolescence Good for Mental Health? A Counterfactual and Within-person Analysis in a Large Longitudinal Study.” PsyArXiv. January 25. psyarxiv.com/dsbec

Abstract: Reading has been proposed to be a protective factor in mental health; however, testing this is made challenging by the vulnerability of the reading-mental health association to confounding. In this study, we used two complementary approaches to address this: propensity score matching and random intercepts cross-lagged panel models (RI-CLPM) in a large longitudinal study: the Zurich Project on Social Development from Childhood to Adulthood (z-proso). For the counterfactual analyses, mental health outcomes of anxiety, depression, and psychosis-like symptoms were measured at ages 17 and 20 and reading engagement was measured at ages 15 and 17. Matching variables included a wide range of factors potentially related to reading and mental health outcomes and when matched with respect to these covariates, there was no consistent effect of reading for pleasure on anxiety, depression, and psychosis. Similarly, using an RI-CLPM to account for between-person stable confounding factors suggested no evidence for a positive effect of reading on later mental health across ages 13,15,17 and 20. The only significant effects were detrimental effects of reading on anxiety and psychosis at age 20 when using non-bi-partite matching. Future research over shorter time lags is recommended to explore whether reading has shorter term benefits for mental health.

The domains in which people most strongly chose mates who were similar to themselves were politics, religion, intelligence and substance use

A comprehensive meta-analysis of human assortative mating in 22 complex traits. Tanya B Horwitz, Matthew C Keller. bioRxiv, Mar 20 2022. https://doi.org/10.1101/2022.03.19.484997

Abstract: Assortative mating (AM) occurs when the correlation for a trait between mates is larger than would be expected by chance. AM can increase the genetic and environmental variation of traits, can increase the prevalence of disorders in a population, and can bias estimates in genetically informed designs. In this study, we conducted the largest set of meta-analyses on human AM published to date. Across 22 traits, meta-analyzed correlations ranged from r = .08 to r = .58, with social attitude, substance use, and cognitive traits showing the highest correlations and personality, disorder, and biometrical traits generally yielding smaller but still positive and nominally significant (p < .05) correlations. We observed high between-study heterogeneity for most traits, which could have been the result of phenotypic measurement differences between samples and/or differences in the degree of AM across time or cultures.

Humans show higher levels of fearfulness than other great apes, which has been adaptive for care-giving

The human fear paradox: Affective origins of cooperative care. Tobias Grossmann. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, April 18 2022. https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/behavioral-and-brain-sciences/article/abs/human-fear-paradox-affective-origins-of-cooperative-care/B6DC0651D8B6EC81C43AF41BC22EDD15

Abstract: Already as infants humans are more fearful than our closest living primate relatives, the chimpanzees. Yet heightened fearfulness is mostly considered maladaptive, as it is thought to increase the risk of developing anxiety and depression. How can this human fear paradox be explained? The fearful ape hypothesis presented herein stipulates that, in the context of cooperative caregiving and provisioning unique to human great ape group life, heightened fearfulness was adaptive. This is because from early in ontogeny fearfulness expressed and perceived enhanced care-based responding and provisioning from, while concurrently increasing cooperation with, mothers and others. This explanation is based on a synthesis of existing research with human infants and children, demonstrating a link between fearfulness, greater sensitivity to and accuracy in detecting fear in others, and enhanced levels of cooperative behaviors. These insights critically advance current evolutionary theories of human cooperation by adding an early-developing affective component to the human cooperative makeup. Moreover, the current proposal has important cultural, societal and health implications, as it challenges the predominant view in WEIRD societies that commonly construe fearfulness as a maladaptive trait, potentially ignoring its evolutionary adaptive functions.