Rolf Degen summarizing: Although people tend to forego larger future rewards in order to gain immediate pleasure, they sometimes willingly cherish the delay

Deliberating trade-offs with the future. Adam Bulley & Daniel L. Schacter. Nature Human Behaviour volume 4, pages238–247(2020), Mar 17. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-020-0834-9

Abstract: Many fundamental choices in life are intertemporal: they involve trade-offs between sooner and later outcomes. In recent years there has been a surge of interest into how people make intertemporal decisions, given that such decisions are ubiquitous in everyday life and central in domains from substance use to climate change action. While it is clear that people make decisions according to rules, intuitions and habits, they also commonly deliberate over their options, thinking through potential outcomes and reflecting on their own preferences. In this Perspective, we bring to bear recent research into the higher-order capacities that underpin deliberation—particularly those that enable people to think about the future (prospection) and their own thinking (metacognition)—to shed light on intertemporal decision-making. We show how a greater appreciation for these mechanisms of deliberation promises to advance our understanding of intertemporal decision-making and unify a wide range of otherwise disparate choice phenomena.

How do teenagers perceive their intelligence? Narcissism, intellect, well-being and gender as correlates of self-assessed intelligence among adolescents

How do teenagers perceive their intelligence? Narcissism, intellect, well-being and gender as correlates of self-assessed intelligence among adolescents. Marcin Zajenkowski. Personality and Individual Differences, March 17 2020, 109978. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.paid.2020.109978

Abstract: Self-assessed intelligence (SAI) and its correlates have been extensively studied in adults. However, our understanding of how younger people perceive intelligence is limited. The current study aimed to fill this gap by investigating how SAI is associated with objective intelligence, gender, personality traits, and well-being in a sample (N = 428) of high-school students. The results revealed that SAI was not correlated with objectively measured intelligence (Raven's test); however, it was associated with other constructs. First, there were gender differences, i.e. boys' self-estimates of their intelligence were higher than that of girls. Furthermore, SAI was strongly related to grandiose narcissism and moderately related to the personality trait intellect. Additionally, high SAI was associated with high levels of well-being. Finally, SAI accounted for the link between narcissism and well-being as well as that between intellect and well-being. The lack of correlation between SAI and IQ score is consistent with previous findings suggesting that the conception of intelligence in adolescence differs from academic definitions of cognitive ability. On the other hand, the strong association between SAI and narcissism suggests that the concept of intelligence might primarily be a manifestation of boldness and a narcissistic attitude in adolescence.

4. Discussion

The current study examined how self-assessed intelligence is associated with objective intelligence, gender, personality traits, and well-being in a group of high-school students. The results indicated that most of the SAI-related effects observed previously in adults can also be found in adolescents. However, the most important difference was a lack of correlation between self-assessed and objectively assessed intelligence, given that prior meta-analytic investigation has shown these two constructs to moderately overlap in adult populations (Freund & Kasten, 2012). Moreover, previous studies have also found a positive relation between objective cognitive abilities and self-assessed abilities in children and adolescents (Chamorro-Premuzic et al., 2010; Gold & Kuhn, 2017; Spinath et al., 2006). However, as mentioned above, in these latter studies the participants were asked to self-rate more narrow abilities rather than general intelligence. Additionally, the study by Gold and Kuhn (2017) included a slightly older sample than the one tested here. It should also be acknowledged that in the present research a non-verbal IQ test measuring fluid intelligence was used. According to the aforementioned findings, a mature conception of intelligence as abstract thinking and problem solving with both verbal and non-verbal material is formed later, e.g. around college time (Chen et al., 1988; Nicholls et al., 1986). It is possible then, that our participants' understanding of intelligence differed from adult conceptions of intelligence. Consequently, they may not have considered the skills required to succeed in Raven's test to be key characteristics of intelligence.

Despite the null correlation with objective intelligence, SAI displayed a pattern of associations with other variables. Specifically, boys self-rated their intelligence higher than girls self-rated theirs, whereas there was no gender difference in objective intelligence. Adult males similarly self-rate their intelligence higher than females self-rate theirs, despite negligible gender differences in objective general intelligence (Szymanowicz & Furnham, 2011). This effect has been described as the “male hubris, female humility” effect (Furnham, 2001). Specifically, it has been proposed that people view intelligence as male-normative and that gender differences in perceived intelligence may stem from the differential socialization of males (encouraged to be bold) and females (encouraged to be submissive) (Furnham, 2001). Studies investigating estimations by individuals' family members support this view. Typically, male family members (grandfathers, fathers, and brothers) are perceived to have higher general intelligence than that of their female counterparts (e.g. Furnham & Rawles, 1995). Moreover, parents tend to rate their sons' IQ as being higher than that of their daughters (Furnham & Gasson, 1998; Furnham, Reeves, & Budhani, 2002). The current results suggest that this effect occurs relatively early and might already be observed among 16-year olds. However, further research is required to establish the exact developmental stage at which gender differences in perceived intelligence are formed. For instance, in a study by Furnham and Budhani (2002) involving only a slightly younger sample (mean age 15.40 years, SD = 0.95) than the one used here, there were no gender differences in self-assessed general intelligence even though male self-estimations were higher than females' on more narrow abilities, i.e. spatial and mathematical ones.

In the present sample, SAI was associated with two personality traits: narcissism and intellect. Furthermore, narcissism explained the highest amount of variance in SAI. This result is in line with recent findings showing narcissism to be the strongest correlate of SAI among personality traits (Howard & Cogswell, 2018; Zajenkowski et al., 2019). The finding is interesting given that narcissism is essentially unrelated to objective IQ (Zajenkowski et al., 2019). Grandiose narcissism is a trait primarily defined by egocentrism, pronounced feelings of importance and entitlement (Campbell & Foster, 2007). People with high grandiose narcissism desire agentic attributes, such as dominance, sense of control, and social status (Campbell & Foster, 2007). Because intelligence is a key asset for the attainment of such attributes, narcissistic individuals are highly concerned with their intelligence (Zajenkowski et al., 2019). It has been shown that positive self-views in the domain of intelligence help them to maintain positive feelings (Zajenkowski et al., 2019). Additionally, narcissistic individuals view intelligence as a crucial factor that influences mainly interpersonal success, i.e. popularity among peers, social status, and relationship satisfaction (Zajenkowski et al., 2019). Thus, intelligence appears to be an important resource in gaining other people's admiration. The current results extend previous findings by showing that the concept of intelligence is an important building block of the narcissistic self-concept in young people. Even though the concept of intelligence is not fully formed in adolescence, it is already linked with a narcissistic attitude. This finding suggests that in people's minds the two phenomena, i.e. thinking positively about one's intelligence and narcissistic grandiosity, go together and that their coexistence occurs at a relatively early developmental stage.

In the present study, SAI was also positively associated with the trait intellect, which is consistent with other research on adults (e.g. Zajenkowski & Matthews, 2019). However, in contrast with previous studies (DeYoung, Quilty, Peterson, & Gray, 2014; Zajenkowski et al., 2019), intellect was unrelated to objective intelligence. According to DeYoung and colleagues (2014), intellect is part of a broader trait of openness/intellect and reflects intellectual engagement with semantic and abstract information, enjoyment of cognitive activity, and one's perceived cognitive abilities. Thus, to some extent intellect overlaps with self-assessed abilities. However, it also contains a more specific element related to intellectual curiosity. Zajenkowski et al. (2019) suggested that this element might differentiate narcissism from intellect in their relations with SAI. This view was supported by the finding that individuals with high intellect report high motivation and concentration on IQ tests, whereas highly narcissistic people do not genuinely engage with demanding cognitive tests (Zajenkowski et al., 2019). Thus, intellect seems to partially reflect a non-narcissistic attitude towards SAI that might be linked with cognitive engagement.

Another important finding of the current study concerns the positive link between SAI and well-being. The authors of a recent meta-analysis of SAI correlates have suggested that SAI could be regarded as a specific form of self-efficacy (Howard & Cogswell, 2018). Because modern jobs and work success rely on cognitive competence, intelligence has become a highly valued characteristic in society and one's self-worth is becoming increasingly dependent on one's intellectual abilities. This line of reasoning may also be relevant to the school environment, where the evaluation of cognitive performance is an essential part of the education system. Thus, SAI appears to play a central role in modern society and because of that may have an influence on self-esteem and well-being. Certainly, the present study indicates that the concept of intelligence is an important source of life satisfaction among high-school students. Additionally, SAI also accounted for the associations between narcissism and well-being and between intellect and well-being. The mechanisms underlying both findings might be different. Specifically, intellect, high intelligence might facilitate cognitive engagement and because of that be a source of pleasant feelings. In case of narcissism, it has been shown that grandiose narcissists pursue agentic goals such as high social status and believe that intelligence is a key attribute in attaining such goals (Zajenkowski et al., 2019). Therefore, intelligence inflated self-views enable grandiose narcissists to experience positive feelings. It is possible that high cognitive ability is linked to the sense of agency and social position already among adolescent narcissists and because of that, it increases their well-being. This hypothesis could be further examine by investigating how narcissistic students are perceived by their peers. Specifically, it would be interesting to explore whether one's popularity depends on how other students evaluate his/her intelligence.

The present study is not free of limitations. First, it used only one measure of objective intelligence. Future research should therefore include a wider range of IQ tests capturing other aspects of cognitive ability (e.g. verbal) to deepen our knowledge of adolescents' insight into their intelligence. In a similar vein, the measurement of SAI could be extended to include more narrow abilities. Previous studies on SAI using a multiple intelligence measures approach have produced interesting and more nuanced findings on adolescents (Furnham & Budhani, 2002). Finally, the current study had more female than male participants; future samples should be more balanced in terms of gender.

Bilateral neural interactions, excitatory & inhibitory, are present across the motor network during unimanual movements; an increase in task difficulty requires more efficient communication between hemispheres

Are unimanual movements bilateral? Sabrina Chettouf et al. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, Volume 113, June 2020, Pages 39-50, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2020.03.002

Highlights
• Bilateral neural interactions, excitatory and inhibitory, are present across the motor network during unimanual movements.
• An increase in task difficulty requires more efficient communication between hemispheres.
• Anatomical properties of transcallosal fiber tracts enable essential interhemispheric information exchange.
• Left (pre)motor areas play a key role in complex motor tasks.

Abstract: Motor control is a fundamental challenge for the central nervous system. In this review, we show that unimanual movements involve bi-hemispheric activation patterns that resemble the bilateral neural activation typically observed for bimanual movements. For unimanual movements, the activation patterns in the ipsilateral hemisphere arguably entail processes that serve to suppress interhemispheric cross-talk through transcallosal tracts. Improper suppression may cause involuntary muscle co-activation and as such it comes as no surprise that these processes depend on the motor task. Identifying the detailed contributions of local and global excitatory and inhibitory cortical processes to this suppression calls for integrating findings from various behavioral paradigms and imaging modalities. Doing so systematically highlights that lateralized activity in left (pre)motor cortex modulates with task complexity, independently of the type of task and the end-effector involved. Despite this lateralization, however, our review supports the idea of bi-hemispheric cortical activation being a fundamental mode of upper extremity motor control.

Keywords: UnimanualInterhemisphericMotor cortexMotor coordinationCorpus callosumBilateral activationElectroencephalography (EEG)Magnetoencephalography (MEG)Transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS)Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI)Structural MRI

4. Discussion

The question whether unimanual movements have a bilateral neural representation comes with quite some history. For many years it has been considered textbook knowledge that movement execution with one hand is characterized by largely – if not entirely – contralateral activation in the brain. This idea dates back to the nineteenth century and is based on early studies on animal brains and/or human pathology using invasive electrical stimulation (Jackson et al., 1870; Schiff, 1859). Gustav Fritsch together with Eduard Hitzig (1870) and, independently, David Ferrier (1873) stimulated the cortex surface of different (anesthetized) mammals and evoked movements in different parts of the contralateral side of the body. These studies allowed researchers to identify ordered motor maps within this contralateral hemisphere, in particular by Clinton Woolsey and Wilder Penfield in non-human mammals and in humans, respectively (Penfield and Boldrey, 1937; Woolsey and Fairman, 1946). In fact, Penfield and Boldrey (1937) identified the human motor homunculus just anterior to central sulcus (M1), i.e. the representation of body parts in brain areas containing an ensemble of neurons that, when activated, result in motor output. Especially in finely controlled limb muscles (fingers, hands, arms, legs), but also in the tongue, are these areas relatively large. These seminal studies were followed by studies on the SMA, where muscle activation on the contralateral side of the body could be evoked through electrical stimulation, much like stimulation of M1 (Woolsey, 1952).

4.1. Crossed and uncrossed fibers

By now, pyramidal tracts are the best-studied efferent pathways of the cortical motor system (Davidoff, 1990; Nyberg‐Hansen and Rinvik, 1963; Woolsey et al., 1972). Most of these tracts are bilaterally symmetrical and the bulk of fibers cross over to the opposite side at the pyramidal decussation – figures vary between about 70%–90% that undergo this crossing but the majority of studies tend towards higher percentages though this depends on the end-effector under study. For example, primates’ hand and finger muscles seem to have more uncrossed fibers (Al Masri, 2011; Hong et al., 2010; Nathan et al., 1990)). The remaining fibers (∼10-30 %) do not cross before they reach the spinal cord (Carson, 2005). The presence of these non-crossing fibers underlies the appealing idea that the ipsilateral hemisphere is involved in movements not only at the contralateral side of the body, but also at the ipsilateral side as extensively outlined here. An example for a possible model including ipsilateral control, i.e. an alternative to the combination of interhemispheric excitation and intrahemispheric inhibition, is shown in Fig. 1, panel A. Interestingly, in a very recent paper Bundy and Leuthardt (2019) discussed the functional role of the ipsilateral hemisphere in motor control. They argued that the descending pathways primarily elicit movements and speculated about how the interaction through the CC may facilitate unimanual movements. And, they concluded that a balance between the excitatory and inhibitory function of interhemispheric interactions is mandatory for proper motor function. Our systematic review confirms these suggestions but also highlights that the story is not that simple. Our reading of the literature has identified three key findings that seem to underlie the hypothesized excitatory and inhibitory bilateral neural interactions, namely (a) the increase in task complexity of the unimanual task under investigation requires more efficient communication between hemispheres, (b) the anatomical properties of transcallosal fiber tracts enable this interhemispheric information exchange, and (c) the left (pre)motor areas play a key role when performing more complex motor tasks, irrespective of whether the left or right hand is being used.

In Fig. 1, we also depict another alternative, namely possible inhibitory cortico-cortical projections from S1 to M1 within a hemisphere (panel C). We added this model because of culminating evidence for synchronized or fine-tuned interactions between the periphery and S1 via feedback afferent pathways (see, e.g., Baker (2007) and references therein). Discussing this and other related animal studies in more detail is, however, beyond the scope of the current review.

4.2. Bilateral interaction

When executing a unimanual movement the human motor network shows consistent bilateral activation. This finding has been confirmed with all neuroimaging modalities reviewed here. It hence seems likely that inhibitory and faciliatory processes are needed to suppress the outflow of activity in the ipsilateral hemisphere to avoid bimanual motor (co-) activation.

TMS studies have revealed both an increase and a decrease in IHI. These conflicting IHI patterns might be explained by differences in experimental settings, especially the type of conditioning stimuli. The intensity of the stimuli could be adjusted to compensate for the increased MEP amplitude induced at the stimulus side because of the unimanual movements (Nelson et al., 2009; Sattler et al., 2012) and may hence yield a reduced IHI. By contrast, when conditioning stimuli are not adjusted to compensate for the stimulus-induced increase in MEP amplitude, IHI may increase (Hinder et al., 2010a, b; Liang et al., 2014; Uehara et al., 2014; Vercauteren et al., 2008). According to Brocke et al. (2008) these inhibitory processes are accompanied by measurable changes in the local neurovascular signal. As we summarized, unimanual movements are associated with BOLD activation in the contralateral and deactivation in the ipsilateral sensorimotor cortices. It has been suggested that this deactivation in the ipsilateral hemisphere could be caused by transcallosal inhibition involving GABAergic interneurons (Matsumura et al., 1992), an idea that might deserve future exploration.

BOLD changes of bilateral premotor areas seem strongly correlated with each other, as well as with the changes in M1 contralateral to the moving hand. This agrees with EEG and MEG assessments that revealed a decrease in both alpha and beta power, and an increase in coherence between bilateral premotor and sensorimotor cortices when performing unimanual movements. This bilateral coupling becomes more pronounced with increasing task complexity. There, symmetry appears broken in that left PM is especially active during both left- and right-hand complex movements. This is particularly interesting in view of the so-called ‘motor dominance theory’ that suggests that the left hemisphere is more capable than the right one to support motor activity; it hence might always be involved in motor execution, be that with the right or the left hand (Callaert et al., 2011; Ziemann and Hallett, 2001).

4.3. Task dependency

The direction and location of both inhibition and facilitation appears to depend on the motor task that is performed. Overall, an experimentally induced increase in task complexity, in particularly an increase in motor timing requirements, seems to be accompanied with more (efficient) communication between hemispheres. For unimanual movements we envision the following scenario when task complexity increases: Inhibition of the ipsilateral hemisphere likely increases, while inhibition of the contralateral hemisphere likely reverses into facilitation when the motor task becomes more challenging. Several research groups forwarded the idea that activation patterns of complex motor control operate at a ‘high level’ (Donoghue and Sanes, 1994; Gerloff et al., 1998a; Hummel et al., 2003; Manganotti et al., 1998; Sadato et al., 1996), but this level remains ill defined. Hummel et al. (2003) suggested that a task-complexity related increase in ipsilateral activation is not caused by motor memory load but by processing increasingly difficult transitions between movements. Interestingly, however, task-dependent activations, both excitatory and inhibitory, are not restricted to bilateral M1s, but are also present in other parts of the motor network, in particular in SMA and PM (Andres and Gerloff, 1999). The role of SMA in the preparation and performance of sequential movements has been demonstrated by, e.g., Gerloff et al. (1997), where stimulation with rTMS over SMA induced errors in motor performance in the more complex sequences. And, the role of left PM has been discussed above.

4.4. Outlook

4.4.1. Multimodal approaches

As highlighted in the Introduction, the CC is the main gateway for interhemispheric communication. A positive correlation was reported between the callosal thickness of the CC and the hand performance of the (right) dominant hand, but not of the (left) non-dominant hand (Kurth et al., 2013; Sehm et al., 2016). According to the aforementioned motor dominance theory one might speculate that this pattern of results will also be observed with left-handed participants. One could then assume that the left hemisphere is more involved in the support of motor activity and that the thickness of the CC is mainly related to the passage from left to right M1.

Stronger structural connectivity (higher FA) is associated with the reduction of unwanted mirror movements. Likewise, age-related atrophy implies weaker structural connectivity yielding stronger functional connectivity and poorer performance (Fling et al., 2012; Langan et al., 2010; Sullivan et al., 2010).

Earlier work investigated whether the CC exerts an inhibitory or excitatory role in the interhemispheric communication and concluded that there is evidence in the literature for both outcomes, although most studies support the excitatory function of the CC in interhemispheric communication (Bloom and Hynd, 2005; Carson, 2005; van der Knaap and van der Ham, 2011). As likewise hypothesized in the introduction, if transcallosal pathways are primarily excitatory and if the motor network shows (almost) symmetric, bilateral activation patterns while moving unimanually, then this indicates some type of intrahemispheric inhibition mediated through intrahemispheric pathways probably involving the premotor areas (Daffertshofer et al., 2005; Stinear and Byblow, 2002).

Combining the findings of multimodal approaches to study unimanual movements may help indeed to better understand how the brain enables the fine-tuned motor coordination that we are capable of. Still, several questions concerning the control of unilateral hand movements remain unanswered. Based on this review, we suggest that future research should investigate the role of the left hemisphere in greater detail, in particular the left PM. There is some evidence that this area plays a key role in the control of unimanual movements, but more research is needed, specifically with both left- and right-handed participants, to confirm this.

Only a few studies linked structural and functional connectivity in one experiment while performing unimanual movements (cf. Supplementary Material S2, Table 5). This is unfortunate because – as we outlined here – unimanual movements are likely to rely on the interhemispheric cross-talk through transcallosal tracts. We do suggest to intensify the research that combines different modalities as this may be key to unravel all the factors involved in unimanual motor control.

4.4.2. Integrating other populations

Our main aim was to specify the determinants and functional role of the often reported, bilateral activation patterns in the cortex during normal unimanual motor control in healthy humans. For this review we only included non-invasive studies, since invasive approaches may alter the normally functioning brain and, by this, the normal control of unimanual behavior. Yet, there is much to learn by combining our finding with the plenitude of studies in non-human primates, let alone studies on impaired motor control as observed in, e.g., stroke patients. For instance, Grefkes and Ward (2014) identified that lesions in M1 can lead to proportional changes in ventral PM activity. In fact, they argued that inactivation of either ipsi- or contralateral M1 or contralateral ventral PM deteriorates hand function recovery post stroke (there experimentally induced macaque monkeys). Interestingly, studies on partly hemiparetic stroke patients revealed unimanual movement of the affected (contralesional) side to display clearly bilateral neural activity. While this may indicate the ‘emergence’ of ipsilateral control to compensate motor impairment post stroke, one has to realize that motor learning of the non-affected side can limit the recovery of the affected one (Boddington and Reynolds, 2017; Dodd et al., 2017), which arguably speaks for a (dis-)balance of interhemispheric excitation versus intrahemispheric inhibition (Grefkes and Ward, 2014; Koch et al., 2016), as advocated here.

Biochemichemistry & behavioral decision-making in flies: When consensus of neurons in a network is reached, the network is pushed chemically, transforming deliberation into an all-or-nothing output

Biochemical computation underlying behavioral decision-making. Stephen C Thornquist, Maximilian J Pitsch, Charlotte S Auth, Michael A. Crickmore. bioRxiv Mar 15 2020. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.03.14.992057

Abstract: Computations in the brain are broadly assumed to emerge from patterns of fast electrical activity. Challenging this view, we show that a male fly's decision to persist in mating, even through a potentially lethal threat, hinges on biochemical computations that enable processing over minutes to hours. Each neuron in a recurrent network measuring time into mating contains slightly different internal molecular estimates of elapsed time. Protein Kinase A (PKA) activity contrasts this internal measurement with input from the other neurons to represent evidence that the network's goal has been achieved. When consensus is reached, PKA pushes the network toward a large-scale and synchronized burst of calcium influx, which we call an eruption. The eruption functions like an action potential at the level of the network, transforming deliberation within the network into an all-or-nothing output, after which the male will no longer sacrifice his life to continue mating. We detail the continuous transformation between interwoven molecular and electrical information over long timescales in this system, showing how biochemical activity, invisible to most large scale recording techniques, is the key computational currency directing a life-or-death decision.

Predictions drive neural representations of visual events ahead of incoming sensory information

Predictions drive neural representations of visual events ahead of incoming sensory information. Tessel Blom, Daniel Feuerriegel, Philippa Johnson, Stefan Bode, and Hinze Hogendoorn. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, March 16, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1917777117

Significance: Visual information takes time to travel from the retina and through the visual system, such that the sensory information available to the brain lags behind events in the present moment. Prediction has long been considered a fundamental principle in neuroscience. Using time-resolved EEG decoding, we show that predictive mechanisms are sufficient to activate sensory-like neural representations of anticipated future events, and that these representations are activated before the arrival of afferent sensory information. This reveals that predictive neural mechanisms might allow the visual system to overcome its neural processing delays and interact with our environment in real time.

Abstract: The transmission of sensory information through the visual system takes time. As a result of these delays, the visual information available to the brain always lags behind the timing of events in the present moment. Compensating for these delays is crucial for functioning within dynamic environments, since interacting with a moving object (e.g., catching a ball) requires real-time localization of the object. One way the brain might achieve this is via prediction of anticipated events. Using time-resolved decoding of electroencephalographic (EEG) data, we demonstrate that the visual system represents the anticipated future position of a moving object, showing that predictive mechanisms activate the same neural representations as afferent sensory input. Importantly, this activation is evident before sensory input corresponding to the stimulus position is able to arrive. Finally, we demonstrate that, when predicted events do not eventuate, sensory information arrives too late to prevent the visual system from representing what was expected but never presented. Taken together, we demonstrate how the visual system can implement predictive mechanisms to preactivate sensory representations, and argue that this might allow it to compensate for its own temporal constraints, allowing us to interact with dynamic visual environments in real time.

Keywords: predictionneural delaystime-resolved decodingvisual system

Per capita meat consumption in Switzerland has been rather consistent for decades, although the percentage of vegetarians has risen to 14 per cent according to a recent survey

Mann, S. and Necula, R. (2020), "Are vegetarianism and veganism just half the story? Empirical insights from Switzerland", British Food Journal, Mar 2020. https://doi.org/10.1108/BFJ-07-2019-0499

Abstract
Purpose: Per capita meat consumption in Switzerland has been rather consistent for decades, although the percentage of vegetarians has risen to 14 per cent according to a recent survey. This study tries to resolve this apparent contradiction

Design/methodology/approach: The study is based on household consumption data from Switzerland and focuses on the distribution of consumption rather than on average amounts, using descriptive statistics and a mixed-effects model which explains the coefficient of variation between single consumer consumption amounts.

Findings: Vegetarianism and veganism are not only overestimated through surveys but also associated with a segment of the population that is consuming increasing amounts of meat. This dual development leads to a stable per capita meat consumption.

Originality/value: Our results indicate that greater scientific attention should be paid to this segment of heavy meat eaters.

Is there anything more affected, aggressive, & relentlessly concrete than a Parisian intellectual behind his/her turgid text? The Parisian is a provincial when he pretends to speak for the universe.

Is there anything more affected, aggressive, & relentlessly concrete than a Parisian intellectual behind his/her turgid text? The Parisian is a provincial when he pretends to speak for the universe. Camille Paglia's Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, 1990.

[...] Furthermore, arguments by the French about the rationalist limitations of their own culture have been illegitimately transferred to England and America, with poor results. The English language was created by poets, a five-hundred-year enterprise of emotion and metaphor, the richest internal dialogue in world literature. French rhetorical models are too narrow for the English tradition. Most pernicious of French imports is the notion that there is no person behind a text. Is there anything more affected, aggressive, and relentlessly concrete than a Parisian intellectual behind his/her turgid text? The Parisian is a provincial when he pretends to speak for the universe. Behind every book is a certain person with a certain history. I can never know too much about that person and that history. Personality is western reality. It is a visible condensation of sex and psyche outside the realm of word. We know it by Apollonian vision, the pagan cinema of western perception. Let us not steal from the eye to give to the ear.

Word-worship has made it difficult for scholarship to deal with the radical cultural change of our era of mass media. Academics are constantly fighting a rearguard action. Traditional genre-criticism is moribund. The humanities must abandon their insular fiefdoms and begin thinking in terms of imagination, a power that crosses the genres and unites high with popular art, the noble with the sleazy. There is neither decline nor disaster in the triumph of mass media, only a shift from word to image—in other words, a return to western culture’s pre-Gutenberg, pre-Protestant pagan pictorialism.

That popular culture reclaims what high culture shuts out is clear in the case of pornography. Pornography is pure pagan imagism. Just as a poem is ritually limited verbal expression, so is pornography ritually limited visual expression of the daemonism of sex and nature. Every shot, every angle in pornography, no matter how silly, twisted, or pasty, is yet another attempt to get the whole picture of the enormity of chthonian nature. Is pornography art? Yes. Art is contemplation and conceptualization, the ritual exhibitionism of primal mysteries. Art makes order of nature’s cyclonic brutality. Art, I said, is full of crimes. The ugliness and violence in pornography reflect the ugliness and violence in nature.

Pornography’s male-born explicitness renders visible what is invisible, woman’s chthonian internality. It tries to shed Apollonian light on woman’s anxiety-provoking darkness. The vulgar contortionism of pornography is the serpentine tangle of Medusan nature. Pornography is
human imagination in tense theatrical action; its violations are a protest against the violations of our freedom by nature. The banning of pornography, rightly sought by Judeo-Christianity, would be a victory over the west’s stubborn paganism. But pornography cannot be banned, only driven underground, where its illicit charge will be enhanced. Pornography’s amoral pictorialism will live forever as a rebuke to the humanistic cult of the redemptive word. Words cannot save the cruel flux of pagan nature.

The western eye makes things, idols of Apollonian objectification. Pornography makes many well-meaning people uncomfortable because it isolates the voyeuristic element present in all art, and especially cinema. All the personae of art are sex objects. The emotional response of spectator or reader is inseparable from erotic response. As I said, our lives as physical beings are a Dionysian continuum of pleasure-pain. At every moment we are steeped in the sensory, even in sleep. Emotional arousal is sensual arousal; sensual arousal is sexual arousal. The idea that emotion can be separated from sex is a Christian illusion, one of the most ingenious but finally unworkable strategies in Christianity’s ancient campaign against pagan nature. Agape, spiritual love, belongs to eros but has run away from home.

We are voyeurs at the perimeters of art, and there is a sadomasochistic sensuality in our responses to it. Art is a scandal, literally a “stumbling block,” to all moralism, whether on the Christian right or Rousseauist left. Pornography and art are inseparable, because there is  voyeurism and voracity in all our sensations as seeing, feeling beings.  The fullest exploration of these ideas is Edmund Spenser’s Renaissance epic, The Faerie Queene. In this poem, which prefigures cinema by its radiant Apollonian projections, the voyeuristic and sadomasochistic latency in art and sex is copiously documented. Western perception is a daemonic theater of ritual surprise. We may not like what we see when we look into the dark mirror of art.

"Society is woman’s protection against rape, not, as some feminists absurdly maintain, the cause of rape"; the rapist is a man with too little socialization rather than too much

"Society is woman’s protection against rape, not, as some feminists absurdly maintain, the cause of rape"; the rapist is a man with too little socialization rather than too much. Camille Paglia's Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, 1990.

[...] Every woman’s body contains a cell of archaic night, where all knowing must stop. This is the profound meaning behind striptease, a sacred dance of pagan origins which, like prostitution, Christianity has never been able to stamp out.  Erotic dancing by males cannot be comparable, for a nude woman carries off the stage a final concealment, that chthonian darkness from which we come.

Woman’s body is a secret, sacred space. It is a temenos or ritual precinct, a Greek word I adopt for the discussion of art. In the marked- off space of woman’s body, nature operates at its darkest and most mechanical. Every woman is a priestess guarding the temenos of daemonic mysteries. Virginity is categorically different for the sexes. A boy becoming a man quests for experience. The penis is like eye or hand, an extension of self reaching outward. But a girl is a sealed vessel that must be broken into by force. The female body is the prototype of all sacred spaces from cave shrine to temple and church. The womb is the veiled Holy of Holies, a great problem, as we shall see, for sexual polemicists like William Blake who seek to abolish guilt and covertness in sex. The taboo on woman’s body is the taboo that always hovers over the place of magic. Woman is literally the occult, which means “the hidden.” These uncanny meanings cannot be changed, only suppressed, until they break into cultural consciousness again. Political equality will succeed only in political terms. It is helpless against the archetypal. Kill the imagination, lobotomize the brain, castrate and operate: then the sexes will be the same. Until then, we must live and dream in the daemonic turbulence of nature.

Everything sacred and inviolable provokes profanation and violation.  Every crime that can be committed will be. Rape is a mode of natural aggression that can be controlled only by the social contract. Modem ferninism’s most naive formulation is its assertion that rape is a crime of violence but not of sex, that it is merely power masquerading as sex. But sex is power, and all power is inherently aggressive. Rape is male power fighting female power. It is no more to be excused than is murder or any other assault on another’s civil rights. Society is woman’s protection against rape, not, as some feminists absurdly maintain, the cause of rape. Rape is the sexual expression of the will-to-power, which nature plants in all of us and which civilization rose to contain. Therefore the rapist is a man with too little socialization rather than too much. World-wide evidence is overwhelming that whenever social controls are weakened, as in war or mob rule, even civilized men behave in uncivilized ways, among which is the barbarity of rape.

Androphilic women’s vaginal, vulvar & clitoral responses tend to be gender-nonspecific, meaning that their genital responses to male and female sexual stimuli are relatively similar

Assessing gender-specificity of clitoral responses. Kelly Suschinsky, Samantha Dawson, Meredith Chivers. The Canadian Journal of Human Sexuality, e20190061, March 11, 2020. https://doi.org/10.3138/cjhs.2019-0061

Abstract: Androphilic (i.e., sexually attracted to men) women’s vaginal and vulvar responses tend to be gender-nonspecific, meaning that their genital responses to male and female sexual stimuli are relatively similar. Men’s genital responses are gender-specific, in that penile responses are greater to preferred sexual stimuli than nonpreferred sexual stimuli. To date, however, no research has been conducted on the specificity of clitoral responses (i.e., the organ homologous to the penis). The purpose of the current study was to assess gender-specificity of self-reported sexual arousal, vaginal, and clitoral responses in androphilic women. We expected women’s self-reported and vaginal responses to be gender-nonspecific and their clitoral responses to be gender-specific. Forty androphilic women were presented with 90 sec sexual (female masturbation and male masturbation) and neutral (nature scene) audio-visual stimuli. Responses were recorded continuously throughout the stimuli using a keypad and combination vaginal and clitoral photoplethysmograph. Consistent with our predictions, self-reported sexual arousal and vaginal responses were gender-nonspecific, such that androphilic women responded similarly to the male and female masturbation stimuli. Counter to our prediction, clitoral responses were also gender-nonspecific. Given that this is the first study to use clitoral photoplethysmography to assess gender-specificity, we discuss the results in the larger context of sexual psychophysiological research, including the importance of contextual features in stimuli, and offer directions for future research.

KEY WORDS: Clitoral photoplethysmography, gender-specificity, sexual arousal, vaginal photoplethysmography

Trends in Time Spent Alone in Finland: Between 1987 & 2010 the time spent alone increased by 124 min per day, due mostly to structural factors, such as aging and an increase in the number of single households

Disconnected Lives: Trends in Time Spent Alone in Finland. Timo Anttila, Kirsikka Selander & Tomi Oinas. Social Indicators Research, Mar 14 2020. https://rd.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11205-020-02304-z

Abstract: Discussions about social isolation have been extensive over the past few decades. A less sociable nature of social ties has been identified in Western societies. The phenomenon has been associated with demographic changes such as aging and living alone as well as changes in the use of new technologies. In this study we employ representative Finnish Time Use Surveys from three decades, 1987–1988 (n = 1887), 1999–2000 (n = 2673) and 2009–2010 (n = 1887) to examine the trends in social isolation, measured as time spent alone. Our results showed that between 1987 and 2010 the time spent alone increased by 124 min per day. The increase was linear and occurred in nearly all population groups. Structural factors, such as aging and an increase in the number of single households, are strongly associated with increased time spent alone. Time spent alone has increased, especially during leisure activities. Specifically, time spent watching television and using computers is associated with the decreasing tendency for face-to-face interaction.

Discussion

Many international studies have examined the change in social interaction and its less sociable nature in recent decades. This phenomenon has been identified largely in Western societies, and has been associated with societal changes such as demographic changes (aging), cultural changes (individualization) and changes in the use of new technologies. And indeed, several researchers have raised their concern over how the new information technologies reduce our time with face-to-face interaction. Also, economic development has generated wealth and modern welfare states provide social security, both of which have enabled people to live alone.

Our approach focuses on structural factors of social isolation and uses an objective indicator measuring time spent with face-to-face interaction. The detailed information from ‘with-whom’ coding in time use surveys and a nationally representative data set from three decades are clear strengths of the study. Time use surveys are underutilized in studying changes in social connections. Our study significantly contributes to the scarce literature on trends in time spent alone. Although time use surveys have included columns for participants to report time spent alone for decades (Fisher 2015), to our knowledge, the literature is restricted to only few descriptive studies (Turcotte 2007; Clark 2002).

The strength of time use diary data in assessing objective face-to-face social interaction is evident. Compared to retrospective survey questions on the time devoted to social interaction, time use diary data provides detailed information about time spent together with someone or alone and, in addition, connects this time to specific activities (Kingston and Nock 1987; Michelson 2005; Glorieux et al. 2011). At the same time, we emphasize that time spent alone cannot be judged as a purely good or bad phenomenon. People may seek solitude as it enables them to be free of social commitments and thus to just relax. Solitude, as one deliberately seeking to spend time alone, can be a constructive stimulus, e.g. for psychological well-being and creativity.

This study identified a number of factors associated with a decrease in face-to-face interaction. Our results showed that structural factors, such as aging and an increase of single households, are strongly associated with increased time spent alone. We expected that rapid urbanization would also effect social context of time use. However, the living area did not have an effect in time spent alone after controlling for other factors. The increase in time spent alone has been faster for men than for women. There are also important gender differences between weekdays and weekends. Men report more time alone on weekdays than women. On weekends, however, differences between genders do not exist and the situation has been stable over the study period.

With regard to weekly variation in time spent alone, our results showed that differences between weekdays and weekends have stayed rather steady. Time spent alone has increased on both weekdays and weekends, but on average, weekends still provide more shared time. Public debate on changing societal rhythms and the thesis of 24/7 society implicitly predicts that the special nature of weekdays is disappearing and that the special nature of weekdays and weekends is increasingly less determined by collectively shared rhythms of work, consumption or leisure time. An earlier Finnish time use study (Anttila and Oinas 2018) showed, however, that despite the deregulation of working hours and opening hours, the time structure of weekends has not begun to resemble weekdays to any significant degree. Weekend time is still spent resting, free of work, and socialising.

With regard to social connections, new technologies may be considered disruptive, because they reduce the time potential for face-to-face activities (Stern 2008). Our analysis showed that time spent alone increased in particular during leisure activities. The most remarkable increase was found in activities that can be classified as passive leisure. Television and computers seem to be technologies that are associated with the decreasing tendency for face-to-face interaction. The findings are in line with previous studies showing a connection between digital media use and time spent alone (Thulin and Vilhelmson 2019).

At the same time, we acknowledge, that activities in social media are possibly associated with several beneficial social networks, including discussion networks that are more likely to contain and connect people from different backgrounds (Vriens and van Ingen 2018). In addition, new social media is efficient in regard to network maintenance in quantitative terms, as it decreases the average amount of time devoted per connection and therefore potentially increases the number of friends and acquaintances.

Further Research

During the study period the technologies found in homes have changed, and along with new technology new activities have occurred. The density of televisions in households was in association with leisure time spent alone as family members watch television from their own TV screens. Thus, our results suggest that the increase in time spent alone not only reflects a growing proportion of the Finnish people living alone but also that more people who live in family homes are spending time apart from each other in front of separate screens when at home. This ‘alone together’ is interesting finding, which calls for future research. We observe the increasingly common phenomenon of groups of people in the same space, but paying more attention to content on digital devices than to the people with whom they are in close proximity. Being alone with other people is a very relevant concept. We propose further research with more sophisticated research design to address this issue. For example, time use surveys with household sample allow for construction of shared time episodes, which estimate how many household members were at home, but perhaps reporting being alone.

It is evident that family routines and cultural traditions differ between countries. For example, an earlier comparative study on children’s time use (Gracia et al. 2019) shows that Finnish children do have a markedly different organization of their daily lives than British children, and especially compared to Spanish children, because of cultural differences in their daily structure of time. The study showed that after controlling for multiple demographic and socioeconomic factors, Finnish children spent 127 min per day with parents compared with 235 min in the United Kingdom and 280 daily minutes in Spain. By contrast, Finnish children spent a large proportion of their time alone (235 daily minutes), representing more than 1 h per day, compared to Spain and the UK. We propose that researchers take advantage of rich harmonized time-diary data from different countries to study between-country differences in the social context of time use.

Limitations

The objective nature of our indicator is a limitation in our study. The data here cannot address the subjective qualities or meanings that a person attaches to time spent alone. For instance, not all people who spend time alone are isolated or feel lonely which heightens the need to have a better understanding of peoples’ views on time alone. More in-depth information about the qualities in time spent alone cannot be accessed with diary data and qualitative approaches are needed. Other possible limitations relate to comparability across surveys from three decades. However, we found linear increase in the time spent alone, which occurred in nearly all population groups. In the more detailed analysis on daily timing of time spent alone, the results remained stable over the years. We also conducted further analysis separately for weekdays and weekends and the results indicated only minor differences. Another possible limitation is the restriction of the analyses to September–November as in 1987–1988 data there was no ‘with-whom’ information available for other months. For years 1999–2000 and 2009–2010, we find that time spend alone varied significantly depending on time of year. However, the autumn season (September to November) did not differ significantly from the rest of the year. Thus, the seasonal restriction should not bias our analyses i.e. underestimate or overestimate the amount of time spend alone.

Recommendations

This study attempts to contribute one more piece to the puzzle of how social connections are changing in the information age. Our contribution to public discussion is to provide important views on societal processes that create both hindrances to, and opportunities for, face-to-face social interaction, which is critical for the well-being of individuals and communities.

The knowledge on societal processes producing social isolation can give useful input to policy programmes and interventions that can improve social connectedness and social capital. The topic is important in many respects. For example, social interaction is central to human well-being and is critically involved in the maintenance of health. Social isolation has been compared to obesity and smoking in terms of potential association with negative health effects (Holt-Lunstad et al. 2015). Roeters et al. (2014) found that for both women and men, spending a high proportion of leisure time alone is associated with negative mental health consequences. Young adults and older people are identified as risk groups for social isolation. Children’s time spent alone can strengthen their individual autonomy or self-reflection, but, on the other hand, when children spend excessive amount time alone, the risks of suffering from well-being problems increase. Our results showed that in the youngest age group (10–20 years old) the amount of time spent alone increased by 75 min over the study period. In the oldest age group people spent almost 10 h per day without face-to-face interaction. This amount of alone time may raise health concerns. Researchers have found that older people with fewer human contacts are more likely to die—even if their perceived loneliness is controlled—than are people with richer social connections (Steptoe et al. 2013). Thus, identifying the risk groups of social isolation can help target those factors that are the most crucial to preventing welfare inequalities and promoting equal prospects for well-being.

We men are different, able to separate sex & emotion, gladly going to temptation, promiscuity, & disease, able to seek "ecstasy in the squalor of public toilets, for women perhaps the least erotic place on earth."

We men are different, able to separate sex & emotion, gladly going to temptation, promiscuity, & disease, able to seek "ecstasy in the squalor of public toilets, for women perhaps the least erotic place on earth." Camille Paglia's Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson, 1990.

Ms Paglia didn't know that not only gay males seek sordid abandoned buildings, dirty industrial environments to have sex; heterosexual porn also use such stage to represent more authenthic, more savage, more thrilling sex. See a paper about the prevalence of paraphilic interests & how the high prevalence of some paraphilic patterns might render their pathologization problematic:

The Prevalence of Paraphilic Interests in the Czech Population: Preference, Arousal, the Use of Pornography, Fantasy, and Behavior. Klára Bártová et al. The Journal of Sex Research, Jan 9 2020. https://www.bipartisanalliance.com/2020/01/the-prevalence-of-paraphilic-interests.html

That said, let me add what she says in her book about the distance betwwen feminist women ideals and masculinity & related ideas...

The male genital metaphor is concentration and projection. Nature gives concentration to man to help him overcome his fear. Man approaches woman in bursts of spasmodic concentration. This gives him the delusion of temporary control of the archetypal mysteries that brought him forth. It gives him the courage to return. Sex is metaphysical for men, as it is not for women. Women have no problem to solve by sex. Physically and psychologically, they are serenely self-contained.  They may choose to achieve, but they do not need it. They are not thrust into the beyond by their own fractious bodies. But men are out of balance. They must quest, pursue, court, or seize. Pigeons on the grass, alas: in such parkside rituals we may savor the comic pathos of sex. How often one spots a male pigeon making desperate, self-inflating sallies toward the female, as again and again she turns her back on him and nonchalantly marches away. But by concentration and insistence he may carry the day. Nature has blessed him with obliviousness to his own absurdity. His purposiveness is both a gift and a burden. In human beings, sexual concentration is the male’s instrument for gathering together and forcibly fixing the dangerous chthonian superflux of emotion and energy that I identify with woman and nature. In sex, man is driven into the very abyss which he flees. He makes a voyage to nonbeing and back.

Through concentration to projection into the beyond. The male projection of erection and ejaculation is the paradigm for all cultural projection and conceptualization—from art and philosophy to fantasy, hallucination, and obsession. Women have conceptualized less in history not because men have kept them from doing so but because women do not need to conceptualize in order to exist. I leave open the question of brain differences. Conceptualization and sexual mania may issue from the same part of the male brain. Fetishism, for instance, a practice which like most of the sex perversions is confined to men, is clearly a conceptualizing or symbol-making activity. Man’s vastly greater com¬ mercial patronage of pornography is analogous.

An erection is a thought and the orgasm an act of imagination. The male has to will his sexual authority before the woman who is a shadow of his mother and of all women. Failure and humiliation constantly wait in the wings. No woman has to prove herself a woman in the grim way a man has to prove himself a man. He must perform, or the show does not go on. Social convention is irrelevant. A flop is a flop. Ironically, sexual success always ends in sagging fortunes anyhow. Eveiy male projection is transient and must be anxiously, endlessly renewed. Men enter in triumph but withdraw in decrepitude. The sex act cruelly mimics history’s decline and fall. Male bonding is a self-preservation society, collegial reaffirmation through larger, fabricated frames of reference.  Culture is man’s iron reinforcement of his ever-imperiled private projections.

Concentration and projection are remarkably demonstrated by urination, one of male anatomy’s most efficient compartmentalizations.  Freud thinks primitive man preened himself on his ability to put out a fire with a stream of urine. A strange thing to be proud of but certainly beyond the scope of woman, who would scorch her hams in the process.  Male urination really is a kind of accomplishment, an arc of transcendance. A woman merely waters the ground she stands on. Male urination is a form of commentary. It can be friendly when shared but is often aggressive, as in the defacement of public monuments by Sixties rock stars. To piss on is to criticize. John Wayne urinated on the shoes of a grouchy director in full view of cast and crew. This is one genre of self- expression women will never master. A male dog marking every bush on the block is a graffiti artist, leaving his rude signature with each lift of the leg. Women, like female dogs, are earthbound squatters. There is no projection beyond the boundaries of the self. Space is claimed by being sat on, squatter’s rights.

The cumbersome, solipsistic character of female physiology is tediously evident at sports events and rock concerts, where fifty women wait in line for admission to the sequestered cells of the toilet. Meanwhile, their male friends zip in and out (in every sense) and stand around looking at their watches and rolling their eyes. Freud’s notion of penis envy proves too true when the pubcrawling male cheerily relieves himself in midnight alleyways, to the vexation of his bursting female companions. This compartmentalization or isolation of male genitality has its dark side, however. It can lead to a dissociation of sex and emotion, to temptation, promiscuity, and disease. The modem male homosexual, for example, has sought ecstasy in the squalor of public toilets, for women perhaps the least erotic place on earth.

Man’s metaphors of concentration and projection are echoes of both body and mind. Without them, he would be helpless before woman’s power. Without them, woman would long ago have absorbed all of creation into herself. There would be no culture, no system, no pyramiding of one hierarchy upon another. Earth-cult must lose to sky-cult, if mind is ever to break free from matter. Ironically, the more modem woman thinks with Apollonian clarity, the more she participates in the historical negation of her sex. Political equality for women, desirable and necessary as it is, is not going to remedy the radical disjunction between the sexes that begins and ends in the body. The sexes will always be jolted by violent shocks of attraction and repulsion.

Androgyny, which some feminists promote as a pacifist blueprint for sexual utopia, belongs to the contemplative rather than active life. It is the ancient prerogative of priests, shamans, and artists. Feminists have politicized it as a weapon against the masculine principle. Redefined, it now means men must be like women and women can be whatever they like. Androgyny is a cancellation of male concentration and projection.  Prescriptions for the future by bourgeois academics and writers carry their own bias. The reform of a college English department cuts no ice down at the corner garage. Male concentration and projection are visible everywhere in the aggressive energy of the streets. Fortunately, male homosexuals of every social class have preserved the cult of the masculine, which will therefore never lose its aesthetic legitimacy. Major peaks of western culture have been accompanied by a high incidence of male homosexuality—in classical Athens and Renaissance Florence and London. Male concentration and projection are self-enhancing, leading to supreme achievements of Apollonian conceptualization.

People comfortable with closeness who were single or sexually or relationally dissatisfied reported greater sexual nostalgia (fantasies with past partners); chronic sexual nostalgia detracted from satisfaction

Sexual Nostalgia as a Response to Unmet Sexual and Relational Needs: The Role of Attachment Avoidance. Amy Muise et al. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, March 14, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167220907468

Abstract: Romantic relationships help people meet needs for connection and emotional and sexual fulfillment. In the current research, we investigate an unexplored response to feeling sexually and relationally unfulfilled: reflecting on positive sexual experiences with past partners (or sexual nostalgia). Across three studies, people low in attachment avoidance (i.e., comfortable with closeness) who were (a) single or (b) sexually or relationally dissatisfied reported greater sexual nostalgia, whereas people high in attachment avoidance (i.e., value autonomy) did not calibrate their feelings of sexual nostalgia based on their current relationship status or satisfaction. Sexual fantasies about past partners (i.e., sexual nostalgia) were distinct from other types of sexual fantasies (Study 1) and the effects could not be attributed to general nostalgia (Study 2) or sexual desire (Study 3). Chronic sexual nostalgia detracted from satisfaction over time. The findings have implications for theories of nostalgia and attachment and for managing unfulfilled needs in relationships.

Keywords: nostalgia, attachment, satisfaction, sexuality, relationships


Discussion

Given that romantic relationships are difficult to maintain
and that couples often report declines in their desire and satisfaction over time (e.g., McNulty et al., 2016), it is likely
that most people will encounter times in their lives when
they feel they have unfulfilled sexual and relational needs. In
the current research, we explored whether reflecting on or
reminiscing about past sexual partners (which we termed
sexual nostalgia) is one response to having unfulfilled sexual
or relational needs. Study 1 revealed that sexual nostalgia
involves sexual memories or sexual fantasies about a past
partner and provided evidence that fantasies about past partners are distinct from other types of sexual fantasies. In participants’ descriptions of past partner sexual fantasies, the
most commonly reported theme was that people tend to draw
on these fantasies when feeling lonely or dissatisfied in a
current relationship. The data across all three studies converged with this theme from the qualitative data and indicated that when people are single or feeling dissatisfied with
their sex life or relationship, they reported more sexual nostalgia (however, in Study 3, the effects were driven by men).
Also, consistent with past research on general nostalgia and
attachment theory (e.g., Wildschut et al., 2010), people low
in attachment avoidance—those who are comfortable with
closeness—calibrated their feelings of sexual nostalgia based
on their current feelings of fulfillment, whereas those high in
avoidance did not. That is, people low in avoidance reported
greater sexual nostalgia when they were single, or feeling
unfulfilled in their current relationship, but for people high in
avoidance, their feelings of sexual nostalgia did not differ
based on their current fulfillment.


Extending Nostalgia to the Sexual Domain

Previous research has found that nostalgia is often triggered
by negative feelings, such as loneliness and disconnection,
and drawn on as a way to restore positive self-regard and
social connection (Wildschut et al., 2006). We extended past
work on nostalgia to sexuality to test whether sexual nostalgia is heightened in response to low sexual and relational
fulfillment. The current findings do not simply mirror past
work on nostalgia in the sexual domain but indicate that reminiscing about past sexual experiences is a unique way that
people might cope with feeling dissatisfied in their current
relationship or situation. In Study 2, we demonstrated that
sexual nostalgia is distinct from general nostalgia and that
people do not draw on general nostalgia in response to a lack
of fulfillment in their relationship or sex life. The associations with sexual nostalgia for a past partner also seem to be
distinct from reminiscing about an earlier time in the current
relationship—the function, if any, of reflecting on nostalgic
sexual experiences with a current partner is an interesting
avenue for future research.

One reason why nostalgic memories are thought to be powerful for restoring social connection when threatened or lonely is because they affirm that a person is loved and accepted and momentarily make a valuable past experience part of one’s present (Sedikides et al., 2008). Our findings from Study 1 that fantasies about past partners are distinct from other types of sexual fantasies suggest that fantasizing about a past partner might provide something unique when feeling dissatisfied that other sexual fantasies cannot provide. Sexual fantasies in general can serve a compensatory function (e.g., Birnbaum, 2007); women in longer (compared with shorter) marriages are more likely to fantasize about a person other than their spouse (Pelletier & Herold, 1988), which may compensate for lower relationship satisfaction or sexual boredom (Trudel, 2002). Given that fantasies about past partners are based on real experiences, these types of fantasies might have the unique ability to validate one’s sense of their sexual self and their desirability. Past research on general nostalgia has shown that feelings of nostalgia can lead people to connect with their authentic self (Baldwin et al., 2015), and in this sense, sexual nostalgia might lead people to feel sexually authentic. In addition, feelings of disconnection from a specific close other can be tempered by substituting another connection (Baumeister & Leary, 1995), and in the context of romantic and sexual relationships, past partners might be the most appropriate substitute on which to reflect.

Although there is evidence that reflecting on nostalgic
experiences leads to positive self-regard, feelings of love and
protection (Wildschut et al., 2006), and feeling that one’s life
is meaningful (Routledge et al., 2008), nostalgic memories
also give rise to negative emotions. When people wrote
about a nostalgic event (compared with an ordinary event),
the narratives included themes of both happiness and sadness
(Wildschut et al., 2008), although in past experimental studies, evoked nostalgic memories tended to be more positivelyvalanced (Wildschut et al., 2006). Recent work has found
that nostalgic memories that occur naturally in daily life are
associated with mixed emotions but may be more imbued
with negative as opposed to positive feelings (Newman et al.,
2019). People who were more chronically nostalgic reported
lower well-being (Newman et al., 2019). These findings converge with the current findings on sexual nostalgia. In Study
3, people who reported more sexual nostalgia over the course
of the 28-day diary study felt less satisfied with their sex
lives and relationships 3 months later. It is possible that brief
reflection on positive past sexual experiences may help people manage a current lack of fulfillment, but chronically
reflecting on past sexual experiences may detract from their
current relationship. More research is needed to consider the
costs and benefits of sexual nostalgia for feelings of satisfaction and overall well-being Attachment Avoidance and Sexual Nostalgia
The current findings that people low in attachment avoidance calibrate their sexual nostalgia based on their current
feelings of fulfillment or satisfaction, but people high in
avoidance do not, are consistent with past research.
Avoidant people do not tend to seek support from others
when distressed or rejected (e.g., Mikulincer & Shaver,
2008) and often view their partners as unresponsive.
Therefore, avoidant people may not see past partners as
sources of connection and comfort. It was not the case,
however, that avoidant people did not draw on sexual nostalgia. In Studies 1 and 3, people higher (compared with
lower) in avoidance reported higher overall levels of sexual
nostalgia. Avoidant people seem to draw on sexual nostalgia even when they are satisfied in a current relationship,
possibly suggesting a more chronic need to distance themselves from closeness and intimacy in relationship. In fact,
people low in avoidance who were satisfied in their relationship are the people who did not draw on sexually nostalgia, possibly as a cognitive strategy to avoid reflecting
on alternatives to their current relationship.
The attachment system and the sexual system are inextricably linked as romantic partners serve as both attachment figures and sexual partners (Birnbaum, 2010).
Therefore, memories of past sexual partners might provide
both feelings of connection and sexual desirability, especially for people who are low in attachment avoidance.
Securely attached individuals view sex as a way to express
intimacy, feel confident, and fulfill needs for connection
(e.g., Birnbaum, 2016), and as such, memories of past sexual experiences might provide a powerful source to boost
feelings of connection and restore sexual confidence when
feeling unfulfilled. People high in attachment avoidance,
however, do not use sex to achieve emotional intimacy in
relationships and tend to distance themselves from romantic or emotional motives for sex (Birnbaum, 2016). Given
that sexual fantasies can represent attachment-related
wishes, such as avoidant people seeing themselves as less
helpless and intimate in their fantasies (Birnbaum et al.,
2011), people may use fantasies or memories of past partners to meet their attachment-related needs. The current
findings suggest just that when people low in attachment
avoidance feel that their sexual or relational needs are
unmet, they are more likely to reflect on past sexual relationships, possibly to temporarily meet those needs.


Limitations and Future Directions

The current research provides novel insight into one strategy
people use when their sexual and relational needs are unfulfilled, but many questions remain. Although we have evidence across three studies that people low in attachment
avoidance draw on sexual nostalgia when single or dissatisfied, we do not yet know what feelings of sexual nostalgia
provide in the moment. Given that the daily effects in Study 3
were driven by men, it is possible that men might draw on
past experiences in response to daily changes in satisfaction,
whereas women might draw on sexual nostalgia only when
feeling chronically unfulfilled. Related to this, we do not
know the function of sexual nostalgia for people high in
attachment avoidance, who, overall reported higher levels of
sexual nostalgia, and draw on sexual nostalgia even when satisfied. It is also likely that it is healthy for people to be able to
fulfill some emotional and social needs outside of their
romantic relationship (i.e., there might be some limitations to
how we assessed emotional need fulfillment in Study 2), and
if needs are being met in other close relationships, unmet
needs in a current romantic relationship might not trigger nostalgia or might not detract from satisfaction. Future work
might consider when and for whom sexual nostalgia is functional for helping people manage unfulfilled needs and when
sexual nostalgia is harmful for relationships.
Our theoretical predictions suggest that sexual nostalgia
occurs in response to unmet sexual or relational needs, but it
is also possible that sexual nostalgia might lead to feeling
dissatisfied or unfulfilled. When people described sexual
fantasies about past partners in Study 1, one theme that
emerged was that those fantasies could be triggered by visiting a certain place, smelling a type of perfume or cologne, or
hearing a certain song (much like general nostalgic memories). If sexual nostalgia is triggered externally, reflecting on
a past sexual experience might lead to feeling less satisfied in
a current relationship. In Study 3, we have evidence that
chronic sexual nostalgia in a relationship can detract from
satisfaction over time. Past research on general thoughts
about an ex-partner found that declines in satisfaction over
time were linked to longing for an ex-partner but also that
longing for an ex-partner detracted from satisfaction in a current relationship (Spielmann et al., 2012). Therefore, it is
possible that feelings of dissatisfaction might lead to greater
sexual nostalgia, but that more chronic nostalgia also detracts
from satisfaction. Future work might consider the trajectory
of sexual nostalgia and relationship and sexual satisfaction
over time to tease this apart.