People generally view others' “true selves” as good; however, people may show promiscuous condemnation and often judge acts as immoral when they are ambiguous

Promiscuous condemnation: People assume ambiguous actions are immoral. Neil Hester, B. Keith Payne, Kurt Gray. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Volume 86, January 2020, 103910. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2019.103910

Highlights
• Mixed evidence exists for whether people generally view others as good or evil.
• People generally view others' “true selves” as good.
• However, people may show promiscuous condemnation and often judge ambiguous acts as immoral.
• Nine experiments using ambiguous acts support promiscuous condemnation.
• We consider cognitive and functional reasons for promiscuous condemnation.

Abstract: Do people view others as good or evil? Although people generally cooperate with others and view others' “true selves” as intrinsically good, we suggest that they are likely to assume that the actions of others are evil—at least when they are ambiguous. Nine experiments provide support for promiscuous condemnation: the general tendency to assume that ambiguous actions are immoral. Both cognitive and functional arguments support the idea of promiscuous condemnation. Cognitively, dyadic completion suggests that when the mind perceives some elements of immorality (or harm), it cannot help but perceive other elements of immorality. Functionally, assuming that ambiguous actions are immoral helps people quickly identify potential harm and provide aid to others. In the first seven experiments, participants often judged neutral nonsense actions (e.g., “John pelled”) as immoral, especially when the context surrounding these nonsense actions included elements of immorality (e.g., intentionality and suffering). In the last two experiments, participants showed greater promiscuous condemnation under time pressure, suggesting an automatic tendency to assume immorality that people must effortfully control.

Keywords: Moral judgmentsSuspicionAmbiguityAltruismDual process models

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1. Introduction

Morality often seems black and white. After all, most people agree that cheating, lying, and murder are wrong. Although this consensus suggests that judging others' actions is easy, real life is rife with ambiguous cases in which people's actions are unclear. Consider these examples:

A man walks behind a woman on a dark city street.

A girl screams in your neighbor's basement.

A teenager looks around with their hands in their pockets before leaving a store.

In each of these examples, the most likely explanation is relatively benign: A man and a woman are walking home from work and happen to live on the same block. A girl moves a box and discovers a cockroach. A surly teenager looks around for her friends. Despite these innocuous explanations, people may not be able to resist assuming something more nefarious—a nighttime predator, a kidnapping victim, or a shoplifter. Of course, these are only a few carefully selected examples, but we suggest that the human mind has a general tendency to jump to conclusions of immorality. When judging ambiguous actions—that is, actions that have unclear intents and/or outcomes—we propose that people demonstrate promiscuous condemnation and assume that these acts are immoral. Promiscuous condemnation is not only consistent with the functional and cognitive underpinnings of morality, but also provides perspective on an emerging idea that people view others as intrinsically good.

1.1. Do people view others as generally evil or good?

People have long disagreed about whether humans are generally evil or good. Advocating for “generally evil” was Thomas Hobbes, who wrote that people were intrinsically evil and that, without some absolute and authoritarian government, the life of man would be “solitary, poor, nasty, brutish, and short” (Hobbes, 1651, pp. i. xiii. 9). In contrast, Jean-Jacques Rousseau believed that people were born good and instinctively compassionate (Rousseau, 1750). Social psychology long seemed to side with Hobbes, revealing the darker side of human nature. Humans show callous obedience to authority (Milgram, 1963) and easily form into combative groups that distrust each other (Sherif, 1961). Large groups of people fail to help others in need (Latané & Darley, 1968) and even supposedly good people ignore suffering when they are in a rush (Darley & Batson, 1973). Many people willingly express prejudice toward other races and religions (e.g., Allport, 1954), which in extreme cases has devastating consequences such as genocide and slavery.

The implicit negativity in early social psychological work was so strong that “positive psychology” arose explicitly as a counterpoint (Sheldon & King, 2001). Accordingly, recent work on the moral nature of humans has arced toward Rousseau. People often endorse that the “true self” of humans is good (De Freitas, Cikara, Grossmann, & Schlegel, 2017; Newman, De Freitas, & Knobe, 2015). In situations involving cooperation, people appear motivated to act prosocially, even toward non-relatives; they contribute their resources to help others and sacrifice resources to punish wrongdoers (Fehr & Fischbacher, 2003; Fehr & Gächter, 2000; Gintis, 2003; Van Vugt & Van Lange, 2006). Of course, there are questions about how well these structured economic games translate to the real world. How do we square these tightly-controlled situations with real-world tragedies, such as when George Zimmerman fatally shot Trayvon Martin, an unarmed black teenager? Although Martin was simply walking to the store to get some Skittles, Zimmerman assumed that the hoodie-wearing student was engaging in criminal activity.

The Trayvon Martin case does not stand alone. Police often stop, frisk, and attack unarmed suspects who are acting innocently. One explanation for these assumptions of evil is prejudice: white people may just assume the worst when interacting with black people, and numerous other forms of prejudice may account for other cases. However, even within their own groups, people readily suspect others of cheating or lying given minimal evidence of infidelity (Shackelford & Buss, 1997) or deception (DePaulo et al., 2003). In these ambiguous situations, a mere cue suggesting foul play may be enough to invite assumptions of immorality.

The idea of promiscuous condemnation is that people are quick to assume that others are acting immorally. This idea might seem to contradict people's altruistic actions and belief that others are intrinsically good. However, judgments of the “true self” differ from judgments of individual acts. Even if people believe that others are generally virtuous and cooperative, individual acts might still seem suspicious. Furthermore, people's generous or penny-pinching decisions in economic games need not translate to real-world examples of immorality, such as murder, fraud, and abuse. These games are unambiguous and leave little room for one's partner to cause “harm” in the common sense. When people talk about moral decay, they likely refer to the spread of crime and the corruption of children, not uncooperative decisions in anonymous economic games.

People seem to have a rosy outlook on people's deep-seated goodness; and, people generally seem to trust and cooperate with others in economic games. However, as soon as people judge an ambiguous action that might be immoral based on contextual cues, we suggest that people assume wrongdoing—that is, show promiscuous condemnation. We draw on recent research and theory in morality to consider the contextual cues that might make an ambiguous action seem immoral.

1.2. Cognitive elements of morality

Moral psychologists have long debated what basic elements constitute moral judgment and how they combine with each other (Cushman, 2013; Haidt, 2012; Mikhail, 2007; Schein & Gray, 2018). Though different theoretical perspectives disagree on some aspects of moral cognition, the influence of certain elements on moral judgments—such as intentional action and suffering—is relatively undisputed. Intentionally killing someone is murder, whereas accidentally killing them is manslaughter and elicits less blame (Cushman, 2008; Malle, Guglielmo, & Monroe, 2014). Attempted assault is a crime, but successful assault elicits more blame and punishment because it actually causes physical suffering (Cushman, 2008; Young & Saxe, 2010).

One theory of morality--the theory of dyadic morality--posits that people rely on a harm-based cogntive template when making moral judgments across diverse domains (Schein & Gray, 2018). This template is called the "moral dyad" because it involves two interacting people, an intentional actor (i.e., agent) causing damage to a suffering target(i.e., patient). Studies suggest that the moral dyad exerts a kind of cognitive gravity, such that the hint of immorality--through the implied presence of intention and/or suffering--leads people to infer the presence of other elements of immorality. This phenomena is called "dyadic completion" because people cognitively complete an incomplete dyad, seeing evidence of suffering when presented with intentional counternormative acts. This is why people see “victimless wrongs” such as defiling a holy book or watching animals as nevertheless having victims and causing suffering (especially under time pressure (Gray, Schein, & Ward, 2014). Another example of dyadic completion includes when someone with bad intentions (e.g., a drug dealer) is assigned greater causal responsibility for crashing into someone's car and causing them to suffer (Alicke, 2000). Also consistent with this idea is when, in the wake of suffering, people look for agents to blame, often turning to powerful entities such CEOs (Knobe, 2003) or God (Gray & Wegner, 2010).

Dyadic completion suggests that promiscuous condemnation should be appear more when more of these moral elements are present. As a bystander, it should seem more likely that an action is immoral if it is directed toward someone rather than performed alone? Likewise, people should assume more immorality when an action is done intentionally versus accidentally, and when an action seems to involve suffering versus not. Conversely, when people receive clear cues suggesting otherwise (e.g., the act is clearly performed alone or accidentally), we expect people to adjust their perceptions accordingly, only rarely judging these actions as immoral.

1.3. Differentiating between immorality and negativity

Manipulating these important elements of morality—the dyad (presence of both agent and patient), the agent's intention, and the patient's suffering—serves the key purpose of differentiating promiscuous condemnation from a more general “valence effect” in which people tend to rate ambiguous actions as negative instead of positive (see Baumeister, Bratslavsky, Finkenauer, & Vohs, 2001). We expect large effects of these morality-specific elements on participants' judgments—effects that we would not expect if people tend to assume negativity more broadly. In particular, we expect people to mostly assume that accidental actions are not immoral in their responses, because immorality typically requires intention (Schein & Gray, 2018). Finding this effect would help differentiate between immorality and negativity as the “driving force”, as accidents can still be quite negative.

To further clarify that our effects pertain to judgments of immorality, we also include experiments that ask about the actor's positive and negative character traits. If ambiguous actions are simply seen as more negative, rather than more immoral, then these actions should have limited influence on participants' evaluations of character. However, if participants show promiscuous condemnation and assume immoral actions, then these actions should strongly influence their judgments of character, as moral character is a powerful driver of global evaluations (e.g., Goodwin, Piazza, & Rozin, 2014; Uhlmann, Pizarro, & Diermeier, 2015).

1.4. The prosociality of promiscuous condemnation

At first glance, promiscuous condemnation appears to be an antisocial tendency: is it really fair to assume someone is acting immorally if he or she is parked in front of the neighbor's driveway or hanging out near the playground? In these situations, the base rate for immorality seems quite low: the strange car might just an unexpected visit from a friend, and the person at the playground might just be waiting for his wife and kids to arrive. However, showing promiscuous condemnation might actually be a prosocial tendency in these cases—not necessarily at odds with the altruistic cooperation and punishment observed in economic games (Fehr & Fischbacher, 2003; Fehr & Gächter, 2000). Promiscuous condemnation prepares bystanders to quickly provide aid if needed, preserving the well-being of family members, friends, and others (Schroeder, Penner, Dovidio, & Piliavin, 1995). Providing this aid not only protects others but also enhances one's own moral character, which is valuable for maintaining a good reputation (Brambilla & Leach, 2014; Goodwin et al., 2014). Even when it is not feasible to provide help, quickly identifying immorality can make it easier to avoid guilt-by-association (Fortune & Newby-Clark, 2008; Walther, 2002), also maintaining one's moral reputation.

Romantic partners who offer unique treatment are highly desired and people are willing to make significant sacrifices in partner attractiveness to receive unique treatment

One of a kind: The strong and complex preference for unique treatment from romantic partners. Lalin Anik, Ryan Hauser. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Volume 86, January 2020, 103899. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2019.103899

Abstract: Individuals prefer romantic partners who universally treat others well (i.e., partners who exhibit trait-level generosity) and also prefer partners who treat them uniquely. Previous work supports both preferences, yet the literature has largely ignored what happens when these preferences conflict. In the present work, we compare these two preferences in romantic relationships by pitting people's preference for trait-level generosity from their partner against their preference for unique treatment from their partner. Across 10 studies, we observe a strong, multifaceted, and somewhat selfish preference for unique treatment that often overwhelms the preference for trait-level generosity. People generally want their partner to offer them relatively better treatment than they offer to others (e.g., their partner orders a larger bouquet for their birthday than for the neighbor's birthday). However, in specific domains and situations, individuals are satisfied with receiving treatment from their partner that is the same as—or slightly worse than—the treatment their partner offers to others, so long as the treatment is unique (e.g., their partner sends everyone a text containing a special inside joke). Further, using a conjoint-analysis approach novel to studying partner selection, we find that partners who offer unique treatment are highly desired and that people are willing to make significant sacrifices in partner attractiveness to receive unique treatment. This preference also impacts how people evaluate and interact with their romantic partners and how satisfied they feel with their relationships.

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Specifically, Studies 1A–C suggest that individuals have a strong preference for unique treatment from their romantic partner that (a) extends above and beyond their preference for unique treatment from acquaintances and even close friends, and that (b) can foster a desire for their partner to offer objectively worse treatment to other people, even when equal treatment is possible. Then, using a conjoint-analysis approach novel to studying partner selection, we find that offering unique treatment is a highly desired partner dimension and that people are willing to make significant sacrifices in other aspects of partner attractiveness to receive unique treatment (Study 2).

We then attempt to unpack the type of “unique treatment” that individuals desire from their romantic partners. In Studies 3A–C, we try to decouple the preference for being treated uniquely well (i.e., receiving relatively better treatment) from the preference for being treated like a unique individual (i.e., receiving different treatment unique to oneself that is not necessarily better). We find that both preferences are at play in romantic relationships; in fact, individuals often prefer receiving objectively worse—but unique—treatment (e.g., a less-desirable birthday message [Study 3B] or a lower-quality gift [Study 3C] over superior treatment that their partner offers universally). We then show the consequences of desiring, offering, and receiving unique treatment: these preferences and behaviors significantly affect both the way couples interact on social media (Study 4) and the relationship satisfaction of real couples (Study 5). Finally, we demonstrate that the preference for unique treatment does not persist in the negative domain (Study 6), suggesting that there are boundary conditions to this preference.

12.1. Theoretical implications

First, we contribute to the literature on mate value judgments by revealing that people have a strong preference for unique treatment from romantic partners. Specifically, we take a sparsely examined relational perspective, which contrasts existing work on mate value (i.e., the classic perspective) that has focused almost exclusively on target effects (i.e., how others generally see a given person). Instead, we examine relationship effects (i.e., how someone views another person above and beyond their target and perceiver effects). As we compare this relational perspective with the classic view, we make a clear distinction between a person who treats everyone well—including the perceiver (target effect)—and a person who displays favorable treatment toward the perceiver over and above the treatment they offer others (relationship effect).

While there is ample past work suggesting (a) that individuals prefer romantic partners who exhibit trait-level generosity (i.e., are warm, kind, and affectionate in general) and (b) that receiving unique treatment is pleasurable and plays a significant role in close relationships, uniqueness has been greatly underemphasized in work on mate value judgments. By taking a relational perspective, we show that people make important tradeoffs between trait-level generosity and unique treatment. In practical terms, this means that when forced to choose between a partner who offers favorable treatment (e.g., is kind, warm, and generous) toward everyone and a partner who offers less-favorable treatment but is more exclusive with their treatment, people often prefer the latter.

Our work also supports previous work affirming that people have a strong desire to feel unique and different (Fromkin, 1972), especially in relationships (Finkenauer, Engels, Branje, & Meeus, 2004; Miller, 1990). Moreover, the evidence presented here suggests that this desire is even stronger than previously thought. The fact that people are willing to compromise their own treatment (Studies 3B and 3C), make significant tradeoffs in other partner criteria (Study 2), and even desire worse treatment for others (Studies 1A–C) in order to feel unique serves as a testament to the strength of this preference. Moreover, we find that unique treatment is positively associated with real relationship satisfaction (Study 5). These results support previous work positing compatibility (i.e., a unique connection with another) as an essential factor for forming satisfying relationships (e.g., Carter & Buckwalter, 2009; Sprecher, 2011). Further, we add that the desire to be treated uniquely only persists in the positive domain. When receiving negative treatment from their partner, people more often prefer to receive the same treatment as others (Study 6).

We also add to the literature on partner selection. While a large body of work has looked at the personality traits that people prefer in romantic partners and mates (Buss, 1989; Buss & Barnes, 1986; Gangestad & Simpson, 2000; Hill, 1945; Hoyt & Hudson, 1981; Hudson & Henze, 1969; McGinnis, 1958), this field has largely ignored the quality of treating one's partner differently than one treats others. As it turns out, offering unique treatment is one of the most highly sought-after partner dimensions, on par with essential personality traits such as honesty, trustworthiness, and having values similar to those of one's potential partner (Study 2). Furthermore, we offer a new methodological approach for studying partner selection: using a conjoint analysis featuring headshots and personality descriptions to pit personality traits against physical attractiveness. Through this method, we find that people are willing to make major sacrifices in partner attractiveness in order to be with someone who treats them uniquely.

Finally, we make a significant contribution by shedding light on what “uniqueness” means in the romantic domain and clarifying what type of unique treatment people desire from romantic partners. While much work suggests that individuals want special treatment from their partners (e.g., Carter & Buckwalter, 2009; Sprecher, 2011; Tidwell et al., 2013), it is not clear whether this treatment must be relatively better than the treatment others receive or just different from the treatment others receive. Our results show that both types of treatment are relevant. While people do enjoy when their partner treats them relatively better than others, they are often satisfied with being treated like a unique individual, even if the resulting treatment is objectively worse than other, universally offered treatments.

12.2. Practical implications

The degrees to which individuals desire, offer, and receive unique treatment affect how they interact with their romantic partners and feel about their relationships. While individuals are reasonably well calibrated to others' desire for unique treatment over non-unique treatment, they are not perfect forecasters. Specifically, people seem to underestimate the degree to which unique treatment would boost their partner's reply likelihood and overestimate the emotional benefit of supplying favorable treatment that was not unique (Study 4). A mentioned, these prediction errors could foster suboptimal communication habits and confusion about a partner's behavior—especially for partners without an established history. Furthermore, since people vary in the degree to which they desire unique treatment from their romantic partner, misunderstandings and conflict may arise if an individual's preference is not known or fully appreciated by their partner. Thus, in romantic relationships it is crucial for individuals to understand their partner's preferences surrounding unique treatment (including how much they desire such treatment), think about instances in their daily life where relative treatment is salient and could affect their partner (e.g., on social media), and take time to consider their own treatment preferences. If partners discuss these preferences and feelings openly, they can work to find compromises in their expectations of each other's behavior, and likely have healthier, more satisfying relationships as a result.

“Take care, honey!”: People are more anxious about their significant others' risk behavior than about their own

“Take care, honey!”: People are more anxious about their significant others' risk behavior than about their own. Mirjam Ghassemi, Katharina Bernecker, Veronika Brandstätter. Journal of Experimental Social Psychology, Volume 86, January 2020, 103879. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jesp.2019.103879

Abstract: This research investigated people's affective reaction to and cognitive evaluation of risks taken by close others. Five experimental studies showed that individuals were more anxious when a significant other (e.g., their partner) intended to engage in behavior implying risk to health or safety than when they intended to engage in the same behavior themselves. This discrepancy did not emerge if the other was emotionally distant (e.g., an acquaintance), suggesting that the self-other discrepancy in anxiety is moderated by the quality of the relationship. Neither a perceived higher personal control, nor a perceived lower probability of encountering negative events, as suggested by research on self-other biases in risk assessment, accounted for the effect. However, it was partially mediated by individuals' tendency to imagine more severe consequences of others' (vs. own) risk behavior. Results are discussed with regard to their theoretical implications for the study of risk taking and close relationships.


7. General discussion

This series of studies points to the existence of a self-other discrepancy
in people's affective reaction to risk that has received little
attention to date. In five experimental studies involving hypothetical
risks, and in an event-sampling study in the field involving actual risk,
individuals reported more anxiety in response to a behavior implying
risk to health or safety when it was intended by a close other than when
it was intended by themselves. This discrepancy seems to be specific for
close relationships: Across studies, individuals expressed increased anxiety
about the risk behavior of a significant other (like the partner, a
family member, or close friend), but not the risk behavior of a distant
other (like an acquaintance). This result emerged equally for men and
women, speaking to the generalizability of the effect.
We tested several variables in their potential to account for the effect.
Neither self-other discrepancies in the perceived probability of
experiencing aversive consequences of risk, nor self-other discrepancies
in the capacity to exert control reliably mediated the effect. In fact,
there was only relatively weak evidence for self-other biases in risk
assessment in our studies. Already previous studies have pointed out
that the emergence of biases such as unrealistic comparative optimism
is tied to specific circumstances, for instance, that participants think of
a non-specified compared to a specified other, or that studies use a
particular type of answer scale (Lermer, Streicher, Sachs, & Frey, 2013).
Our studies methodologically deviated from studies on unrealistic
comparative optimism in an important way. Whereas these studies typically
ask participants to rate their probability of experiencing an
event relative to the probability of the average person of their gender
and age (Helweg-Larsen & Shepperd, 2001; Shepperd et al., 2013), our
participants either rated their own or another person's risk. Our findings
were highly consistent with those reported by Klein and Ferrer (2018),
who did not find self-other discrepancies in deliberate, but in affective
and experiential perceptions of risk.
In two studies, we assessed participants' deliberate perceptions of
the severity of consequences of engaging in risk, and did not find discrepancies
in appraisals made for self and others. However, when
asking participants to think of three consequences that might result
from taking the risk, participants stated less severe consequences for
their own (vs. others') risk taking. This difference partly explained their
increased anxiety about their significant other's risk taking. To note,
that individuals also thought of more severe consequences of a nonsignificant
other's than their own risk taking suggests that additional
factors need to be involved in explaining a discrepancy in anxiety that
emerges specifically between self and close others. A likely candidate
for this is the personal relevance of the others' outcomes, which varies
with closeness of the relationship. Thus, we assume the discrepancy in
anxiety to be driven by two factors: That more severe outcomes come to
mind for others' (vs. own) risk taking, and that these outcomes are affectively
relevant.
How can the difference in results based on the way that severity of
consequences was measured be explained? It seems that when being
asked to think deliberately about the likelihood and severity of consequences,
people evaluate risk similarly for self and others. However,
when being asked to freely list three potential consequences, the ones
that come to mind when thinking about others' (vs. own) risk taking are
more severe. This might suggest that the ease of retrieving severe
consequences differs. This discrepancy between deliberate judgments
and intuitive responses reminds us of previous work pointing out that
risk can be apprehended in two different ways, one analytical and one
experiental (Slovic, Finucane, Peters, & MacGregor, 2004).
Notably, it is possible that thoughts of more severe consequences of
others' (vs. own) risk taking are a consequence, rather than a predictor
of higher anxiety; future studies need to clarify causality (Fiedler,
Harris, & Schott, 2018). What follows is the question why individuals
think of more aversive consequences for others' risk taking than for
their own. Though speculative at this point, one reason might be a
systematic difference in perspective; studies suggest that visualizing
action from a first-person perspective emphasizes agency and control to
a stronger extent than visualizing it from a third-person perspective
(Kokkinara, Kilteni, Blom, & Slater, 2016). Another reason might be
that participants are more aware of the benefits associated with their
own (vs. others') risk taking, and the resulting feeling of positivity
might interfere with thoughts of aversive consequences. Indeed, research
shows that people like to conclude that an action is not risky
when it seems beneficial to them, as they use their feeling of “goodness”
or “badness” as a heuristic for their judgment of risk (Finucane,
Alhakami, Slovic, & Johnson, 2000; Slovic et al., 2004). Both explanations
point to implicit, automatic processes, which are unlikely to
be accessible via participants' deliberate evaluations of risk.

7.1. Strengths, limitations, and future directions

A strength of these studies is their experimental design, precluding
that the hypothesized effect is based on individual differences (e.g., risk
taking propensity). A further strength concerns the fact that we verified
the effect across a range of health and safety risks. In future research, it
would be interesting to investigate affective reactions to other kinds of
risks. We do not expect that a discrepancy in affective reactions
emerges in response to all kinds of risks (e.g., social, financial), but this
is a question that needs to be answered empirically. Such investigations
would not only provide evidence on the scope of the effect, but would
also provide insight into its cause of occurrence.
Limitations of our studies are the use of single-item measures, the
reliance on non-representative samples with an over-proportion of
women, and the assessment of anxiety by means of self-report. Affective
states are highly subjective, pointing to the validity and relevance of
studying individuals' experience. However, this form of assessment can
be prone to bias, for instance, when individuals change their answer to
be consistent with societal norms or their ideal self (Van de Mortel,
2008). We tried to minimize these biases by controlling for trait social
desirability, which we did not find to have an effect, and by using between-
subjects designs, avoiding direct comparisons between self and
others. Nevertheless, future studies should complement self-reports by
physiological assessments or observer ratings of anxiety.
An endeavor for future research will be to investigate the implications
of the effect for close relationships. Our studies show that, as a
result of increased anxiety, individuals think that their significant other
should engage in the same risk less than they should themselves.
Starting from this, it would be worth investigating if and how the discrepancy
in anxiety influences the way dyads communicate in the
prospect of risk. When intending a behavior that contains risk, it might
often be the partner, parent, or best friend that expresses worry, or even
tries to convince the individual not to take the risk. Worry communicated
by a significant other may alert a person to existing threats
(Parkinson, Phiri, & Simons, 2012; Parkinson & Simons, 2012; Van
Kleef, 2009). Beyond a situational appraisal inherent in an affective
display, relational information is conveyed that might motivate the
acting person to behave with caution out of a sense of responsibility
(Parkinson & Simons, 2012). In this way, the effect might have a protective
function for close relationships. However, if the “worrier” later
intends to engage in risk him or herself, these differing standards may
likewise become a source of conflict.
Differing standards, or more specifically, people giving (good) advice
to others that they fail to live up to themselves, has been researched
under the term action hypocrisy (Howell, Sweeny, &
Shepperd, 2014). While the here studied effect might evoke interpersonal
behavior that looks like action hypocrisy, we assume the underlying
processes to differ. Action hypocrisy denotes a discrepancy
between advice giving and action in a context where action is a desirable
response. It results from varying psychological distance to own and
others' actions, and accordingly, the decision problem being construed
on different levels of abstraction. Due to higher psychological distance
to others' versus own actions, recommendations to others are to a
higher degree based on idealistic concerns (salient at a high-level
construal), while personal decisions are to a higher degree based on
pragmatic considerations (salient at a low-level construal). Two
predictions can be derived from this: First, intentions for distant (i.e.,
future vs. present) personal actions should, due to higher psychological
distance, be more similar to recommendations made to others. Second,
recommendations to close others should be more similar to personal
decisions than recommendations to distant others (Howell et al., 2014).
The second prediction stands in contrast to the here reported findings
that speak to a discrepancy between self and close, but not distant
others. Thus, different psychological processes seem to yield in the
observation that people's recommendations do not match their own
actions.
An applied context in which a gap between recommendations and
personal decisions as a result of differing levels in anxiety might be
particularly relevant to study is that of medical decision making. When
faced with an important medical decision, individuals typically turn to
their partner or close family members for consultation. Despite the
important role that companions play in health decisions, only few
studies have examined decision patterns made by patient-companionphysician
triads (Clayman & Morris, 2013; Laidsaar-Powell et al.,
2013). Based on our findings, it could be expected that companions
systematically favor less risky treatments (e.g., in terms of mortality
rate) than patients themselves (for a similar finding with physicians, see
Ubel, Angott, & Zikmund-Fisher, 2011).
To sum, this research adds an interpersonal perspective to the study
of risk that may contribute to our understanding of how people deal
with and affectively respond to risk. Further research is needed for a
complete understanding of the proccesses underlying the described
discrepancy in affective reaction towards own and close others' risk.
Based on the present findings, we suspect that people experiencing risk
differently for close others than for themselves may have implications
for the dynamics in close relationships.

No Compelling Evidence That Women with More Attractive Faces Show Stronger Preferences for Masculine Men

Docherty, Ciaran, Anthony J. Lee, Amanda Hahn, and Benedict C. Jones. 2019. “No Compelling Evidence That Women with More Attractive Faces Show Stronger Preferences for Masculine Men.” PsyArXiv. November 13. doi:10.31234/osf.io/d8g2u

Abstract: Many researchers have suggested that more attractive women will show stronger preferences for masculine men, potentially because such women are better placed to offset the potential costs of choosing a masculine mate. Perhaps the most compelling evidence for this proposal has come from work reporting a positive association between third-party ratings of women’s facial attractiveness and women’s preference for masculinized versus feminized versions of men’s faces as hypothetical long-term partners. Because this finding was based on only a small sample of women (N = 35), we attempted to replicate this result in a much larger sample (N = 454). We found that women, on average, preferred masculinized versions of men’s faces to feminized versions and that this masculinity preference was slightly stronger when women assessed men’s attractiveness as short-term, rather than long-term, mates. However, we found no compelling evidence that women’s masculinity preferences were related to their own attractiveness. These results underline the importance of ensuring that studies of individual differences in mate preferences are adequately powered.

Introduction

Trade-off theories of women’s preferences for masculine men propose that men displaying more masculine physical characteristics are more likely to be healthy, physically strong, and able to compete for resources, but also less likely to invest time and effort in their mates and offspring (Little et al., 2001; Penton-Voak et al., 2003). According to such theories, women may then differ systematically in how they weigh up the costs and benefits of choosing a masculine mate (Little et al., 2001; Penton-Voak et al., 2003).

One factor that is widely thought to influence how women resolve this trade off between the potential costs and benefits of choosing a masculine mate is women’s own physical attractiveness (Little et al., 2001; Penton-Voak et al., 2003). The rationale for predicting these attractiveness-contingent masculinity preferences is that more physically attractive women will be better able to retain and secure investment from masculine men and/or better able to replace masculine men in the event of relationship dissolution (Little et al., 2001; Penton-Voak et al., 2003). In other words, more attractive women are better able to minimize the potential costs of choosing a masculine mate.

Several studies have investigated possible correlations between women’s own attractiveness and their preferences for facial masculinity by measuring women’s own attractiveness via self-ratings. However, results from studies using this methodology are mixed. While Little et al. (2001) found that women who rated their own attractiveness higher showed stronger preferences for men with masculine facial characteristics (see also Little & Mannion, 2006), subsequent studies did not replicate this significant positive correlation between women’s self-rated attractiveness and masculinity preferences (Penton-Voak et al., 2003; Zietsch et al., 2015).

Other work has tested for evidence that women’s own physical attractiveness predicts the strength of their masculinity preferences by assessing women’s own attractiveness via third-party attractiveness ratings of face photographs. Using this methodology, Penton-Voak et al. (2003) found that more attractive women showed stronger preferences for men with masculine facial characteristics when assessing men’s attractiveness for hypothetical long-term, but not short-term, relationships. This result was interpreted as strong evidence for trade-off theories of women’s preferences for masculine men because the potential costs of choosing a masculine mate are generally assumed to be more pronounced for long-term, than short-term, relationships (Penton-Voak et al., 2003).

Many other findings that have been widely interpreted as evidence for trade-off theories of women’s preferences for masculine men, such as putative effects of hormonal status and/or conception risk, have not been observed in large-scale replication studies (see Jones et al., 2019 for a recent review of these non-replications). Consequently, and because we know of no large-scale replication of Penton-Voak et al. (2003), we tested for possible relationships between third-party attractiveness ratings of women’s face photographs and their preferences for men with masculine facial characteristics as hypothetical long-term and short-term relationships.

Multinationals, Monopsony and Local Development:Evidence from the United Fruit Company

Multinationals, Monopsony and Local Development:Evidence from the United Fruit Company. Esteban M endez-Chacon, Diana Van Patten. November 4 2019. https://1ac50a88-25ab-4011-94bc-c9af1856189b.filesusr.com/ugd/27755d_6703d03eed644d7891c29962c6b67d62.pdf

Abstract: This paper studies the short- and long-run effects of large firms on economic development. We use evidence from one of the largest multinationals of the 20th Century: The United Fruit Company (UFC). The firm was given a large land concession in Costa Rica — one of the so-called “Banana Republics”— from 1889 to 1984. Using administrative census data with census-block geo-references from 1973 to 2011, we implement a geographic regression discontinuity (RD) design that exploits a quasi-random assignment of land. We find that the firm had a positive and persistent effect on living standards. Regions within the UFC were 26% less likely to be poor in 1973 than nearby counterfactual locations, with only 63% of the gap closing over the following 3 decades.Company documents explain that a key concern at the time was to attract and maintain a sizable workforce, which induced the firm to invest heavily in local amenities that likely account for our result. We then build a dynamic spatial model in which a firm’s labor market power within a region depends on how mobile workers are across locations and run counterfactual exercises. The model is consistent with observable spatial frictions and the RD estimates, and shows that the firm increases aggregate welfare by 2.9%. This effect is increasing in worker mobility: If workers were half as mobile,the firm would have decreased aggregate welfare by 6%. The model also shows that a local monopsonist compensates workers mostly through local amenities keeping wages low, and leads to higher welfare levels than a counterfactual with perfectly competitive labor markets in all regions, if we assume amenities have productivity spillovers.

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We find that households living within the former UFC regions have had better economic outcomes (housing, sanitation, education, and consumption capacity), and were 26% lesslikely to be poor than households living outside. This effect is persistent over time: Since the UFC closed, the treated and untreated regions have converged slowly, with only 63% of the income gap closing over the following 3 decades.3 Historical data collected from primary sources suggests that investments in local amenities carried out by the UFC — hospitals, schools, roads — are the main drivers of our results. For instance, we document that investments per student and per patient in UFC-operated schools and hospitals were significantly larger than in local schools and hospitals run by the government, and sometimes even twice as large. Access to these investments was restricted, for the most part, to UFC workers who were required to live within the plantation. This might explain the sharp discontinuity in outcomes right at the boundary.4 We do not find evidence of other channels, such as selective migration or negative spillovers on the control group, being the main mechanisms behind our results. Why were these investments in local amenities higher than in the rest of the country? While the company might have invested in hospitals to have healthier workers, it is lessclear why it would benefit from more schooling. Evidence form archival company annual reports suggests that these investments were induced by the need to attract and maintain a sizable workforce, given the initially high levels of worker turnover.5 For instance, after describing annual turnovers of up to 100% per year, the 1922 report states

“These migratory habits do not permit them to remain in the plantation from one year to the next, and as soon as they become physically efficient in our methods and acquire money they either return to their homes or migrate elsewhere and must be replaced.”

Later, the 1925 report states

“We recommend a greater investment in corporate welfare beyond medical measures. An endeavor should be made to stabilize the population...we must provide measures for taking care of families of married men, by furnishing them with garden facilities, schools, and some forms of entertainment. In other words, we must take an interest in our people if we might hope to retain their services indefinitely.”

[...]

Infrastructure investments included pipes, drinking water systems, sewage system, street lighting, macadamized roads, a dike (Sanou and Quesada, 1998), and by 1942 the company operated three hospitals in the country17 [...] and although a higher level of spending does not necessarily imply a higher quality of health care, UFC’s medical services were known of being among the best in the country (Casey, 1979).

From 2017... Same-sex marriage approval was associated with less self-reported suicide attempts

From 2017... Difference-in-Differences Analysis of the Association Between State Same-Sex Marriage Policies and Adolescent Suicide Attempts. Julia Raifman et al. JAMA Pediatr. 2017;171(4):350-356. Apr 2017, doi:10.1001/jamapediatrics.2016.4529

Key Points
Question  Are state same-sex marriage policies associated with a reduction in adolescent suicide attempts?

Findings  This difference-in-differences analysis of representative data from 47 states found that same-sex marriage policies were associated with a 7% reduction in the proportion of all high school students reporting a suicide attempt within the past year. The effect was concentrated among adolescents who were sexual minorities.

Meaning  Same-sex marriage policies are associated with reduced adolescent suicide attempts.

Abstract
Importance  Suicide is the second leading cause of death among adolescents between the ages of 15 and 24 years. Adolescents who are sexual minorities experience elevated rates of suicide attempts.

Objective  To evaluate the association between state same-sex marriage policies and adolescent suicide attempts.

Design, Setting, and Participants  This study used state-level Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance System (YRBSS) data from January 1, 1999, to December 31, 2015, which are weighted to be representative of each state that has participation in the survey greater than 60%. A difference-in-differences analysis compared changes in suicide attempts among all public high school students before and after implementation of state policies in 32 states permitting same-sex marriage with year-to-year changes in suicide attempts among high school students in 15 states without policies permitting same-sex marriage. Linear regression was used to control for state, age, sex, race/ethnicity, and year, with Taylor series linearized standard errors clustered by state and classroom. In a secondary analysis among students who are sexual minorities, we included an interaction between sexual minority identity and living in a state that had implemented same-sex marriage policies.

Interventions  Implementation of state policies permitting same-sex marriage during the full period of YRBSS data collection.

Main Outcomes and Measures  Self-report of 1 or more suicide attempts within the past 12 months.

Results  Among the 762 678 students (mean [SD] age, 16.0 [1.2] years; 366 063 males and 396 615 females) who participated in the YRBSS between 1999 and 2015, a weighted 8.6% of all high school students and 28.5% of students who identified as sexual minorities reported suicide attempts before implementation of same-sex marriage policies. Same-sex marriage policies were associated with a 0.6–percentage point (95% CI, –1.2 to –0.01 percentage points) reduction in suicide attempts, representing a 7% relative reduction in the proportion of high school students attempting suicide owing to same-sex marriage implementation. The association was concentrated among students who were sexual minorities.

Conclusions and Relevance  State same-sex marriage policies were associated with a reduction in the proportion of high school students reporting suicide attempts, providing empirical evidence for an association between same-sex marriage policies and mental health outcomes.

Pain and pleasure: Although the mechanisms for affect and motivation are separate, they causally interact

Pain and Pleasure. Murat Aydede. To appear in the Routledge Handbook of Emotion Theory, edited by A. Scarantino—Dec2018, v2.6. https://faculty.arts.ubc.ca/maydede/Pain%20and%20Pleasure.pdf

If you look at anybody’s typical list of emotions, you won’t see pains and pleasures among them. Indeed, even among the atypical emotions that people working on emotions regularly cite, pains and pleasures show uponly rarely. And yet, very few people will fail to acknowledge the critical, or perhaps the essential, role pains and pleasures play in our emotional lives. This chapter will explain the sense in which pains and pleasures are elementary forms of emotions.Let’s first distinguish pain and pleasure experiences, properly so-called, from their sources—typically, the physical objects, events, activities, etc., that cause such experiences. Smelling a rose is a pleasure, getting pricked by a rose bush thorn a pain —it is said. But it is primarily the experiences generated by these events that are said to be pleasant or painful. These experiences are mental events or episodes caused by various physical stimuli. It is harmless, in fact sometimes quite appropriate, to extend the terms to refer to such stimuli in most ordinary contexts as causes of such experiences. But here we will focus on pains and pleasures as experiences. As experiences, they are presumed to be conscious mental episodes.1

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Function [of affect]

One natural proposal is that hedonic valence is a “teaching signal”of sorts:18 it tells the agent to ‘want,’ or form a ‘desire’ to bring about, what is thus valenced —this involves, and for most animals, exhausts learning when and how to perform those sequences of actions similar to those that have actually lead to the obtaining of the valenced experience. Liking helps attribute incentive salience to environmental stimuli and sustain it (Berridge 1996, Dickinson & Balleine 2010). The sustaining bit is important. A learning-capable agent that acts out of an existing want or desire(learned, acquired, or otherwise) needs to somehow trackthe consequences of its behavior, that is, whether its actions result (or have resulted) in the satisfaction or frustration of its ‘desires’—generating more 'likes' or 'dislikes.' Plausibly, this is the other side of the same coin —of learning what desires to form on the basis of experienced valence. So, experienced valence is also a signal for desire satisfaction or frustration (cf. Schroeder 2004). Thus, although the mechanisms for affect and motivation are separate, they causally interact. We quite generally want what we like, and, more often than not, we like what we want.

Further research on he function of affect is likely to reveal in the future that there is a deeper unitary role affect plays in learning, motivation, and subjective wellbeing.


Impact
The discovery of dissociable underlying mechanisms has obvious important implications for a better understanding of affective disorders such as depression, clinical anxiety, and bipolar disorders as well as addiction and obsessive-compulsive behavior.For example, the well-received incentive sensitization theoryof addiction (Robinson & Berridge 1993, 2008) directly came out of hypotheses about the separability of affect from motivation —one way to characterize addiction is as a big increase in motivation to seek and consume substances that is vastly disproportionate to the increasingly diminishing affective payoff. The advances in basic affective neuroscience are poised to deliver surprising results about the causes of various emotional and affective disorders, which promises not only to greatly facilitate proper, faster,and more detailed diagnosis but also to offer huge potential for developing treatment options.There is increasing research on the extensive mechanisms shared by the brain’s default-mode network and the affective circuitry, both of which are connected, unsurprisingly, to pervasive affective disorders such as depression and anhedonia in general. There is evidence that optimal metastability in the brain’s large-scale dynamical oscillation plays a role in subjective affective wellbeing. (Kringelbach & Berridge 2017).19



Conclusion
Above, we had a schema about the general structure of pains and pleasures:

     [sensation or cognition or both] + affect20

The question to ask is: (Q) Does every instance of this schema yield an emotion?In the absence of clear and uncontroversial criteria about what qualifies as an emotion, it is hard to answer this question. If I rely on my pre-theoretical intuitions, I am inclined to answer itin the negative. But we all know that when it comes to emotions, people’s intuitions (pre-theoretical or otherwise) are all over the place. Perhaps we can simply stipulate that any sensory affect is an elementary emotion. This would be fine but it shifts the main research question in emotion theory: what, then, makes a mental episode into a non-elementary emotion?If we can set the sensory case aside in this way by designating them as elementary, perhaps we can identify all cognitive affectwith emotions? This suggestion is probably better —as all emotions are known to involve some cognitive uptake about what is going on in the environment of their emoters, which is usually not amodality specific affair and involves cognitive appraisals. But what about very simple forms of cognitive affect? For example, I’ve just learned there is less car theft in my neighbourhood this year than last year —I am certainly pleased that this is so. Have I undergone an emotion? Saying yes would seem to stretch the meaning of ‘emotion’. The best we can justifiably say, it seems to me, is that some pains and pleasures are emotions, some not—and leave it at that for present purposes.

The key point not to lose sight of is that the core brain mechanisms that generate negative or positive affectas attached to mental processes and the mechanisms connecting affect to learning, decision-making, motivation, and action, are the core building blocks of all emotions. We need to investigate what further elaboration of the basic affective processes is needed to explain the full range of emotions.2

Face-to-face opening phase in Japanese macaques’ social play enhances and sustains participants’ engagement in subsequent play interaction

Face-to-face opening phase in Japanese macaques’ social play enhances and sustains participants’ engagement in subsequent play interaction. Sakumi Iki, Toshikazu Hasegawa. Animal Cognition, November 12 2019. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10071-019-01325-7

Abstract: A face-to-face “opening phase” in human interaction serves as a platform for the interactants to initiate and manage their interaction collaboratively. This study investigated whether, as is the case in humans, a face-to-face opening phase in animal interaction serves to manage a subsequent interaction and establish interactants’ engagement. We compared the dyadic play fighting of Japanese macaques (Macaca fuscata) initiated with and without a face-to-face opening phase. Our observations showed that play sessions with a face-to-face opening phase lasted longer than did sessions without one. Furthermore, our results indicate that facing toward playmates was a sign of interactants’ engagement. In sessions with a face-to-face opening phase, both players were likely to gain an advantage over their playmates, whereas in sessions without such an opening phase, only an individual who unidirectionally faced toward another individual who looked away when play began was likely to maintain an advantage over a long period. Our findings demonstrate that a face-to-face opening phase has a socio-cognitive function to establish and sustain interactants’ social engagement during subsequent interaction not only in humans but also in Japanese macaques.

Keywords: Face-to-face interaction Social cognition Communication Social play Play fighting Macaca fuscata

Chimpanzees help others with what they want, children with what they need; uniquely human socio‐ecologies based on interdependent cooperation gave rise to uniquely human prosocial motivations to help others paternalistically

Chimpanzees help others with what they want; Children help them with what they need. Robert Hepach, Leïla Benziad, Michael Tomasello. Developmental Science, November 11 2019. https://doi.org/10.1111/desc.12922

Abstract: Humans, including young children, are strongly motivated to help others, even paying a cost to do so. Humans’ nearest primate relatives, great apes, are likewise motivated to help others, raising the question of whether the motivations of humans and apes are the same. Here we compared the underlying motivation to help of human children and chimpanzees. Both species understood the situation and helped a conspecific in a straightforward situation. However, when they knew that what the other was requesting would not actually help her, only the children gave her not what she wanted but what she needed. These results suggest that both chimpanzees and human children help others but the underlying motivation for why they help differs. In comparison to chimpanzees, young children help in a paternalistic manner. The evolutionary hypothesis is that uniquely human socio‐ecologies based on interdependent cooperation gave rise to uniquely human prosocial motivations to help others paternalistically.




General Discussion

Previous experimental work had investigated the rate of helping in human and non-human
primates but has not directly compared the manner of helping. In the current studies we used a
novel paradigm giving both children and chimpanzees a choice not of whether to help but rather
how to respond to others’ needs. Our results replicate previous work in showing that both children
and chimpanzees show concern for others and comply with others’ request for help when these
align with the requester’s actual need (Warneken et al., 2007; Yamamoto et al., 2012). However,
the crucial difference between the two groups was evident in the nature of their tendency to be
paternalistic. Only human children showed paternalism and intervened for the benefit of the
recipient and corrected her behaviour. Crucially, children did not automatically correct others’
request for help but took into account how much better they could evaluate the situation.
Children’s paternalism was strongest when they shared the same view of the situation as the
requesting adult. Overall, children complied with the adult’s request in the majority of conditions
unless the requested tool did not serve to fulfil the adult’s actual need in which case children were
more motivated to correct the request. Chimpanzees, on the other hand, did not show preference
for either object and performed at chance across conditions unless the conspecific requested the
functional tool when that tool was needed to retrieve a reward. Together these results suggest that
while both children and chimpanzees show concern for others, the underlying manner in which
each group provides this help is different when their understandings of the situation differ.
The current results replicate previous work on chimpanzees’ helping behaviour, both with
regards to their response to others’ requests for help as well as their lack in concern to
systematically improve others’ long-term well-being. Chimpanzees are sensitive to others’
immediate needs and requests for help (Yamamoto et al., 2009, 2012). These previous findings
replicated in the current study where chimpanzees helped more in the need compared to the noneed
control condition when the conspecific requested the functional tool. However, in the
paternalism condition chimpanzees did not correct requests for help that were dysfunctional. In
other words, chimpanzees were not paternalistic to interfere ‘for the good of the recipient’ (Grill,
2007). This lack in paternalism to improve the requester’s well-being by means of correcting the
request for help is comparable to previous findings that chimpanzees do not systematically
improve a conspecific’s well-being in the so-called prosocial choice task in chimpanzees (House
et al., 2014; Jensen et al., 2006). The results of the current study with human children also
replicate and crucially extend previous work.
By age three children concern themselves with others’ long-term well-being and correct
dysfunctional requests for help (Hepach et al., 2013; Martin et al., 2016; Martin & Olson, 2013).
In one study, the authors found that 3-year-old children complied with the adult’s request less
often when this resulted in a negative consequence and half the children corrected the adult by
providing the intact tool instead (Martin & Olson, 2013). Note that the child and the adult did not
share the same perspective which may have put additional constraints on children’s decision
resulting in correction rates between 52 and 69 % (see Martin & Olson, 2013, for details). In the
current study, we found different rates of correcting in children between the occluded and nonoccluded
contexts. This allows us to specify that the rate of correcting others is greatest if both
parties share the same perspective, as is the case in the current study’s non-occluded context.
Children at the age of three may thus hesitate to override an adult’s request for help if they cannot
be certain that their view of the situations matches that of the adult. Therefore, in the current
study’s occluded context children may have complied with the adult’s request because, from their
perspective, the adult may have had a privileged view of the tools that children did not have. This
context sensitivity resonates with previous findings from a study in which children’s and the
adult’s perspective matched and children’s complying behaviour and responses to unjustified
requests for help were as low as 25 % (Hepach et al., 2013). Thus, based on the current results we
can conclude that children are less likely to correct the adult when they do not have the same view
of the situation as the adult (e.g., Martin & Olson, 2013) but, in contrast, correct the adult more
often when both the child and the adult share the same perspective (see also Hepach et al., 2013).
The current studies are the first to assess and directly compare the phenomenon of
paternalism between young children and chimpanzees. At the same time, there are a number of
methodological considerations of the current studies that warrant discussion. One crucial premise
of a paternalism context is that the potential helper knows that only the functional tool can fulfill
the requester’s need even if the requester reaches for the dysfunctional tool. Given the speciesunique
testing constraints we chose different approaches for chimpanzees and children.
Chimpanzees’ underwent extensive training in which subjects were exposed to multiple days of
using the functional tool to successfully obtain juice. Helpers only proceeded to the test phase if
they correctly identified the functional tool on multiple successive sessions during the training
phase. In this way, we sought to ensure that helpers had ample experience of using the functional
tool and thus, in the helping and paternalism context of the test phase, knew that only the
functional tool would fulfill the requester’s need. In contrast, young children were only tested in a
single session and thus the time we could allocate to training them on the apparatus and the tools
was more limited in comparison to chimpanzees. Therefore, we included control questions during
the training phase to ensure that all children knew that only the functional tool worked to retrieve
the reward from the box. During the test phase, we reminded children of the adult’s goal of
wanting to retrieve the reward from the box and of the fact that one tool was needed to
successfully to do so. To this end the adult experimenter pointed to both tools from a distance
saying: “Yes, I need that one”. Crucially, the adult pointed ambiguously and did not provide any
clues as to which tool he required. Together, the extensive multi-session training and testing for
chimpanzees could have made the functional tool more salient for chimpanzees than for children
who received a total of four reminders during a single testing session that one tool (not which) was
needed for the adult to successfully retrieve the reward. This would have resulted chimpanzees
overall choosing the functional tool more often than children (which is not what we found).
Together, these methodological differences between children and chimpanzees prompt a
more critical reflection on whether the differences in observed paternalism where a mere
consequence of methodological differences between the paradigms in which each group was
tested. It is important to point that children - in the paternalism context when the adult reached for
the dysfunctional tool but needed the functional tool - were not paternalistic per se but took into
account what view of the situation they had in comparison to the adult. Children’s paternalism was
rather selective and occurred significantly more often in the non-occluded context, where both
tools were fully visible, compared to the non-occluded context, where occluders changed the
visual perspective of the child and adult on the two tools. If the study’s procedure prompted
children to be paternalistic to correct the adult then one would have expected similar levels of
paternalism between the occluded and non-occluded contexts. But this is not what we found.
Children corrected the adult in the paternalism context significantly more often on the nonoccluded
compared to the occluded context. This suggests that asking children during the training
phase to identify the correct tool did not automatically result in them providing this tool. One
avenue for future research is to manipulate the conditions that result in paternalism in children.
Children’s paternalistic helping may depend on how certain they are that the adult’s request will
not sufficiently fulfill his/her need. In addition, it is important to investigate age effects whether
older children are more motivated to be paternalistic, even in occluded context, than the 3-year-old
children in our study (see also Martin et al., 2016). Similarly, additional research is needed to
follow up on the question of whether there are circumstances under which chimpanzees will show
paternalism. This could include varying the social relationship between the requester and the
helper to include mother-child dyads or dyads of close allies and friends (see also Engelmann &
Herrmann, 2016).
In addition to a difference in how chimpanzees and young children help others it is
important to consider other factors that may explain the species difference observed in the current
studies. It is possible that chimpanzees have greater difficulties taking the perspective of the
requester than young children, which could explain their lack of paternalistic helping. On such an
account both children and chimpanzees are motivated to help others and even help
paternalistically but chimpanzees may not be able to think about the requester’s goals and
constrains in ways that are comparable to young children. While ultimately more research is
needed to fully address this point, there are two reasons to think that a mere lack in a cognitive
ability to take others’ visual perspective is not the best explanation of the current pattern of results
for chimpanzee subjects. First, the extensive training in the current study ensured that subjects
proceeded to the test phase only if they had completed a training phase with the occluders during
which they themselves had to walk to the non-occluded side to identify the functional tool (so they
clearly knew the positions from which their own view was or was not occluded). Second, previous
work with comparable experimental set-ups shows that chimpanzees are able, in addition, to
discern the positions from which others can and cannot see things (Hare, Call, Agnetta, &
Tomasello, 2000; Kaminski, Call, & Tomasello, 2008) and can represent others’ false beliefs
(Krupenye, Kano, Hirata, Call, & Tomasello, 2016), suggesting that subjects in the occluded
context of the current study knew whether the requesting conspecific could or could not see the
functional tool.
It is important to emphasize that the lack of paternalism in the current sample of
chimpanzees does not indicate a lack of concern for others. On the contrary, the results from the
helping condition in the current study replicate previous work with chimpanzees who help
conspecifics to fulfill their instrumental goals in instrumental responding to others needs and
helping more in need compared to control scenario (Melis et al., 2011b; Warneken et al., 2007;
Yamamoto et al., 2012). The results of the current study add to our understanding of the
underlying motivation of chimpanzee helping behavior. Chimpanzees, as opposed to young
children, help others by fulfilling the request. This suggests that for chimpanzees the cost of
denying a conspecific the tool that he/she requested does not outweigh the benefits of having
corrected the request to provide the tool that is functional to fulfilling the actual need. One
interesting avenue for future research is the questions under which chimpanzees are paternalistic
and do correct others. Previous work has shown that chimpanzee helping behavior to increase
toward conspecifics who have benefitted the induvial in the past (Schmelz, Grueneisen, Kabalak,
Jost, & Tomasello, 2017). In such scenarios of dependence chimpanzees may correct others’
dysfunctional requests for help because they themselves want to be helped by having their need
rather than their request being fulfilled.
In summary, the current results suggest that while human children and chimpanzees share
a sensitivity to others’ immediate requests for help, humans additionally take into account others’
long-term well-being. Only human children showed evidence for paternalism. Such paternalistic
interference with another’s goal-directed behavior bears a cost given that it temporarily upsets and
frustrates the recipient who did not get what he requested. In a highly interdependent species this
cost is trumped by the benefit of correcting others’ ill-fated requests for help, given that there is a
mutual understanding among collaborating partners to care about each other’s needs above and
beyond fulfilling each other’s immediate requests for help. Our hypothesis, therefore, is that the
strongly interdependent nature of human social life has led, via natural selection, to helpful
individuals who are not so much interested in fulfilling a conspecific’s every wish and desire, but
rather at keeping them in good shape as potential collaborative partners for the future.

Educating participants about the biasing effects of facial stereotypes reduces the explicit belief that personality is reflected in facial features, but does not reduce the influence of facial appearance on verdicts

Jaeger, Bastian, Alexander Todorov, Anthony M. Evans, and Ilja van Beest. 2019. “Can We Reduce Facial Biases? Persistent Effects of Facial Trustworthiness on Sentencing Decisions.” PsyArXiv. November 12. doi:10.31234/osf.io/a8w2d

Abstract: Trait impressions from faces influence many consequential decisions even in situations in which they have poor diagnostic value and in which decisions should not be based on a person’s appearance. Here, we test (a) whether people rely on facial appearance when making legal sentencing decisions and (b) whether two types of interventions—educating decision-makers and changing the accessibility of facial information—reduces the influence of facial stereotypes. We first introduce a novel legal decision-making paradigm with which we measure reliance on facial appearance. Results of a pretest (n = 320) show that defendants with an untrustworthy (vs. trustworthy) facial appearances are found guilty more often. We then test the effectiveness of different interventions in reducing the influence of facial stereotypes. Educating participants about the biasing effects of facial stereotypes reduces the explicit belief that personality is reflected in facial features, but does not reduce the influence of facial appearance on verdicts (Study 1, n = 979). In Study 2 (n = 975), we present information sequentially to disrupt the intuitive accessibility of trait impressions. Participants indicate an initial verdict based on case-relevant information and a final verdict based on all information (including facial photographs). The wide majority of initial sentences were not revised and therefore unbiased. However, most revised sentences were in line with facial stereotypes (e.g., a guilty verdict for an untrustworthy-looking defendant). On average, this actually increased facial bias in verdicts. Together, our findings highlight the persistent influence of facial appearance on legal sentencing decisions.

Measuring the impact and success of human performance is common in various disciplines, including art, science, sports & social media; users commonly have “hot streaks” of impact, i.e., extended periods of high impact tweets

Garimella, K., & West, R. (2019). Hot Streaks on Social Media. Proceedings of the International AAAI Conference on Web and Social Media, 13(01), 170-180. Jul 2019. https://www.aaai.org/ojs/index.php/ICWSM/article/view/3219

Abstract: Measuring the impact and success of human performance is common in various disciplines, including art, science, and sports. Quantifying impact also plays a key role on social media, where impact is usually defined as the reach of a user’s content as captured by metrics such as the number of views, likes, retweets, or shares. In this paper, we study entire careers of Twitter users to understand properties of impact. We show that user impact tends to have certain characteristics: First, impact is clustered in time, such that the most impactful tweets of a user appear close to each other. Second, users commonly have “hot streaks” of impact, i.e., extended periods of high impact tweets. Third, impact tends to gradually build up before, and fall off after, a user’s most impactful tweet. We attempt to explain these characteristics using various properties measured on social media, including the user’s network, content, activity, and experience, and find that changes in impact are associated with significant changes in these properties. Our findings open interesting avenues for future research on virality and influence on social media.

Adoption: Both Italian & British listeners judged gay-sounding speakers as warmer and as having better parenting skills, yet Italian participants consistently preferred straight over gay-sounding applicants

The Social Costs of Sounding Gay: Voice-Based Impressions of Adoption Applicants. Fabio Fasoli, Anne Maass. Journal of Language and Social Psychology, November 11, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1177/0261927X19883907

Abstract: In three studies (total N = 239) we examined the unexplored question of whether voice conveying sexual orientation elicits stigma and discrimination in the context of adoption. Studies 1 and 2 were conducted in Italy where same-sex adoption is illegal and controversial. Study 3 was conducted in the United Kingdom where same-sex adoption is legal and generally more accepted. The three studies show that listeners draw strong inferences from voice when judging hypothetical adoption seekers. Both Italian and British listeners judged gay-sounding speakers as warmer and as having better parenting skills, yet Italian participants consistently preferred straight over gay-sounding applicants, whereas British participants showed an opposite tendency, presumably reflecting the different normative context in the two countries. We conclude that vocal cues may have culturally distinct effects on judgment and decision making and that people with gay-sounding voices may face discrimination in adoption procedures in countries with antigay norms.

Keywords: voice, sexual orientation, parenting, adoption, gaydar

Foundations of Arrogance: We contend that humankind can benefit from a better understanding of the cognitive limitations and motivational biases that, operating together, appear to contribute to arrogance

Foundations of Arrogance: A Broad Survey and Framework for Research. Nelson Cowan et al. Review of General Psychology, September 19, 2019. https://doi.org/10.1177/1089268019877138

Abstract: We consider the topic of arrogance from a cross-disciplinary viewpoint. To stimulate further research, we suggest three types of arrogance (individual, comparative, and antagonistic) and six components contributing to them, each logically related to the next. The components progress from imperfect knowledge and abilities to an unrealistic assessment of them, an unwarranted attitude of superiority over other people, and related derisive behavior. Although each component presumably is present to some degree when the next one operates, causality might flow between components in either direction. The classification of components of arrogance should reduce miscommunication among researchers, as the relevant concepts and mechanisms span cognitive, motivational, social, and clinical domains and literatures. Arrogance is an important concept warranting further study for both theoretical and practical reasons, in both psychopathology and normal social interaction. Everyone seems to have qualities of arrogance to some degree, and we consider the importance of arrogance on a spectrum. We contend that humankind can benefit from a better understanding of the cognitive limitations and motivational biases that, operating together, appear to contribute to arrogance. We bring together information and questions that might lead to an invigorating increase in the rate and quality of cross-disciplinary research on arrogance.

Keywords: arrogance, narcissism, hubris, overconfidence, overplacement, humility

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How Do the Components Relate to the Origins and Purposes of Arrogance?

Next, we examine arrogance with an eye toward the purposes it may serve for the individual and the group, which may help explain why varieties of arrogance seem so prevalent.  In evolution, some traits that serve no apparent or useful function (referred to as byproducts) can be inextricably linked to other adaptations (Lewis, Shawaf, Conroy-Beam, Asao, & Buss, 2017). It is an open question whether extreme arrogance in some people is a byproduct of certain adaptive traits, which might include self-enhancing optimism and overconfidence, or whether extreme arrogance is, in itself, a useful adaptation that promotes survival and reproduction in some contexts. Possible benefits of different types of arrogance that we consider are the personal value of an illusion of control, the personal value of high self-esteem, and society.s need for leaders; for this last category, we consider associated costs also. Moreover, benefits and costs depend on the type of arrogance, with Component 2 sometimes being helpful to all, but later components rarely helpful, at least to society. (It is not known whether the later components of arrogance sometimes assist in personal gains, which seems possible, for example, in the case of intrasexual competition for mates; see Buss, 1988).


Personal Value of an Illusion of Control

The imperfect knowledge of the environment (Component 1) could emerge simply because perfect knowledge (e.g., with no perceptual illusions or false memories) would be computationally too costly for the brain. It is therefore not surprising that our brains are designed to operate often with place of complete information. That incomplete information does mean, however, that our control of the environment is not always what we believe it is (Component 2). An illusion of greater control of the environment would be one outcome that could be of use.

Individual and comparative arrogance might originate because the feeling of controlling the environment and being competent energizes the individual, protecting and furthering that individual more than a feeling of being out of control or incompetent. People therefore sometimes believe that good things will happen to them and bad things will only happen to those who deserve it (Lerner & Miller, 1978). Exemplifying the illusion of control, Langer (1975) conducted a series of studies showing that when elements usually associated with control were introduced into games of chance, participants responded as if they had some control over the outcome. They bet more on their own hand when competing against what appeared to be a less confident opponent, when given a choice as compared with no choice, when the choice they were given was familiar, and when their involvement in the game was personal rather than by proxy. All of these influences occurred even though none of them had any effect on the chances of winning.  Weinstein (1982) found that students thought positive events were more likely to happen to them compared with peers, and negative events, less likely. These views proved to be modifiable by exposing participants to information about other individuals' risk-avoiding behaviors. Thus, as the authors suggested, such views could occur because of an initial dearth of perspective-taking, our Component 4 (Chambers, Windschitl, & Suls, 2003).

A sense of control, whether warranted or illusory, may be important for health. Lachman and Weaver (1998) found that more control was felt in people of higher social class, who also lived longer; but the sense of control had an important effect, and individuals from the lowest income group who had a high sense of control had commensurate health and well-being, like people in higher-income groups.  Whether illusions of control per se foster health, however, may remain controversial (Randall & Block, 1994) and in need of further study. It is possible that some degree of the illusion of control is healthy, whereas too great an illusion places a person in a range in which the accompanying components of comparative and antagonistic arrogance exceed what is optimal.

Personal Value of High Self-Esteem

An individual might become arrogant in individual and comparative senses to produce positive self-esteem based on Components 2 through 5. To our knowledge, there has been little work on this topic per se but there has been some related work on narcissism, for which the conclusion is still unclear. One can imagine that self-esteem might be low but may be supported by thoughts and actions that at least attempt to counteract low self-esteem (e.g., in the use of social media; see Andreassen, Pallesen, & Griffiths, 2017).  This kind of thinking has led to suggestions of a mask model, in which low self-esteem at an implicit, unconscious level is overridden (or masked) by a high level of selfesteem at an explicit level, together producing arrogant behavior. It is difficult to evaluate the mask model, however, because it is unfortunately difficult to measure self-esteem at an implicit level, so this field is still in the process of growth and change (e.g., Brummelman, Thomaes, & Sedikides, 2016), without unambiguous support for the mask model (Brown & Brunell, 2017). It is far from clear whether arrogance indicates that the individual hates himself or herself .deep down,. loves himself or herself, some combination of these, or neither; it is an important topic for future research.

Higgins (1987) took a different approach to self-esteem, showing that there are physiological effects and feelings resulting from discrepancies between a person.s self-concept and how the person ideally would like to be, and ought to be. Discrepancy with the former tended to produce depression, whereas discrepancy with the latter tended to lead to agitation and anxiety. In our tentative appraisal, the difference could be that how one would like to be is a personal concept that interacts with Component 2, whereas how one ought to be is a social comparison on which one hopes for superiority (Component 5).

One possibility for further study is that especially arrogant people of any variety may have a large discrepancy between how they would like to be and how they ought to be, perhaps tending to act as they like (reducing one discrepancy) and inventing rationalizations to stave off the feeling of agitation arising from how they ought to be.  Alternatively, the arrogant people may do less comparison than most people of the actual, ideal, and ought-to self-concepts, or may not perceive much discrepancy (consistent with Components 2-4). However, NPD can be comorbid with depression (Dawood & Pincus, 2018), suggesting that a grandiose stance that includes arrogance might occur along with comparison of the actual and ideal. Note that what is called ideal in this case could be a selfish motive (e.g., becoming ultra-rich or acknowledged as superior to others). The relation between self-esteem and components of arrogance certainly requires further study.

Society's Need for Leaders

Types of arrogance may have evolved as a mechanism to fulfill society.s need for leaders, at least in some types of societies. It could be that finding a good leader is like walking a fine line; one wants a person with enough confidence (related to Component 2) to be highly motivated and (Components 3-6) that can demotivate everyone who is not included in the favored group. Authoritative leaders can help create ties between people, settle disagreements, and make decisions for the group (King, Johnson, & van Vugt, 2009). Research suggests that people tend to favor overconfident leaders over their lesser confident counterparts (Reuben, Rey-Biel, Sapienza, & Zingales, 2012). An overconfident individual may envision success in the future, and this may prompt the individual to expend more effort toward achievement (Lockhart, Goddu, & Keil, 2017).

Overconfidence may also help individuals reach leadership status (Reuben et al., 2012) and feel inspired to take on opportunities that are presented to them (Ehrlinger & Dunning, 2003). Reuben et al. examined how group members identified leaders while completing a task. They found that overconfidence was beneficial for those interested in becoming group leaders (who tended to be men). Research on characteristics of CEOs shows that they often possess a high level of overconfidence (Malmendier & Tate, 2008).  The drawbacks of some varieties of arrogant leadership, however, are clear. Hiller and Hambrick (2005) reviewed the concept of core self-evaluations (CSEs), an amalgam of self-esteem, self-efficacy, locus of control, and emotional stability. They posited that excessive levels of the CSE traits may lead to arrogant behaviors and decisions from executives and other high-ranking businessmen and businesswomen.  It is believed that these hyper-CSE executives typically have extreme performance records (e.g., great successes or terrible failures) due in part to their arrogant behaviors, such as risky initiatives and hasty, centralized decision making (Component 4, ignoring the perspectives of others). Resick, Whitman, Weingarden, and Hiller (2009) also examined the high end of CSE and found that such high levels of self-confidence are necessary to lead high-stakes endeavors. According to Resick et al. (2009), though, some of these leaders have these views due to high self-confidence, whereas others have a more fragile self-view that they attempt to mask with arrogance. They found that CEOs who displayed the positive traits associated with CSE were more comfortable sharing the success with others; CEOs who displayed the negative traits associated with hyper- CSE were less likely to provide special recognition for other members of the organization (with Component 5 sometimes at least implicitly leading into Component 6, denigrating others). Arrogance thus can result in positive group benefits, but some varieties of it can produce risk for the group or a cost for some people in the group.  Johnson et al. (2010) provided some of the first empirical data confirming a negative relationship between workplace arrogance in self-rating and other ratings and job performance. Their first two studies involved developing the WARS. The scale was based on coworkers. judgment of the degree to which 26 generalizations fit the individual in question (e.g., "Believes that s/he knows better than everyone else in any given situation"; "Makes decisions that impact others without listening to their input"). Their third and fourth studies used the scale to explore the relationship between arrogance and task performance. There was a significant, negative relationship between arrogance and task performance and cognitive ability. Because the arrogance of these employees did not result in heightened ability at work or positive perception by others, it seems unlikely that arrogance was of instrumental use. Other studies also support the conclusion that arrogance has overall negative effects, rather than beneficial uses. Arrogant people often suffer socially as a result of being disliked by others (Hareli & Weiner, 2000) and are more likely to induce harm and loss for their businesses as a result of risk-taking behaviors, jeopardizing their health through overconfidence and unrealistic optimism (Dunning, Heath, & Suls, 2004). They perform poorly on exams while being overly confident (Hacker, Bol, Horgan, & Rakow, 2000). There are relevant studies also on harm caused by counterproductive workplace behavior (e.g., Sackett, Berry, Wiemann, & Laczo, 2006) and the "dark triad" of narcissism, Machiavellianism, and psychopathy (e.g., Paulhus & Williams, 2002), consistent with our Components 4 through 6.

Relevant evidence may also come from investigations of grandiose narcissism which, like our fourth through sixth components of arrogance, can include behaviors of self-inflation at the expense of others. Using multiple sources of evidence regarding the level of grandiose narcissism of all past presidents of the United States, Watts et al. (2012) found that those who had more of this quality were more effective politically, but at the cost of being more unethical, much more likely to provoke reactions such as impeachment, and less likely to win a second term. Their arrogance may also have a negative effect on the group. For example, Matthews, Reinerman-Jones, Burke, Teo, and Scribner (2018) stated on the basis of several studies that "Nationalism is socially harmful when associated with chauvinistic arrogance, bellicosity, and prejudice towards foreigners and other out-groups" (p. 91).