Safe Space Where to Imagine Futures

Safe Space Where to Imagine Futures

0  Why this group

Members of this group are sick of polarization and efforts to convert us to others' worldview. With the aim of making life better for others and for ourselves, we are trying to build a place where to discuss anything and everything with respect for all political leanings, cultural trends, etc., without pressures of any kind. We tolerate ideas, expressions, relationship modes, customs that are not of our liking.

Examples:

.1  I may think that feminism is an opportunistic trend, or I may think that feminism should be mandatory... Even so, I do not attack feminism or feminists at our meetings, nor do I attack patriarchy or traditionalists.

.2  I may think that the Earth is in grave danger, or I may think that ecoconscious people are a bore. But I do not push scares at the meetings, nor do I make criticism of ecological worries.

.3  I may think that capitalism is the best invention since sliced bread, or I may think that it is the worst scourge. But I do not invite others to repent and convert to capitalism, nor do I tell others to have a soul, be humane, and things like that, and abandon the defense of capitalism.

.4  I may think that the powers that be our poisoning the population with 5G cell phones or plotting to control our minds with chips, or I may think that those who say so defend junk science or are crazy. But I do not mention these ideas at the meetings unless it is possible to do so in a calm and moderate way, without attacking the other side. Which is to say that maybe it is better not to mention any of this. Ditto for face masks and epidemics.

To Mend a Broken Internet, Create Online Parks https://www.wired.com/story/to-mend-a-broken-internet-create-online-parks/?mc_cid=196f1a49d5&mc_eid=1f593312fd

We need public spaces, built in the spirit of Walt Whitman, that allow us to gather, communicate, and share in something bigger than ourselves.

1  Further thoughts

Initially, we thought of having a non-denominational, non-partisan, group. On a second thought, we now prefer a multipartisan, multidenominational, non-nationalistic, multinational (English and other languages are equally valid) group.

When restrictions like the non-denominational label were used, in the end what we got was an exclusion of religious people.

We should also have a rationalistic focus WITH humanistic checks to prevent the excesses of the "only Reason" extremists. Excesses of the past: New calendar with new names for the months, new anti-religious State religions (a "civil religion" with a Goddess Reason is a good example), elimination of the mentally ill, etc.

We put a great emphasis in technological tools for our group's ends. Examples are AI, blockchain, robotics, traditional computing.

2  Some rules

We follow the laws.

Common sense. Civil dicussions. Respecting time limits. We keep a good personal hygiene. We park well when going to meetings. We don't litter (food wrapping, cigarettes, etc.). We don't harass others (politicians, others). We don't trespass. We don't block the streets or prevent others' rights of movement.

We have got ethical limits: Even when doing something is legal, we should try to make things easier for others, in the group of out of it, and to follow moral/ethical limits.

Writing must be clear, sentences not too long, spelling almost perfect. Examples of how not to write:

Cosmic hierarchy of Omniinterrationally-phased, Nuclear-centered, Convergently-divergently Intertransformable Systems [...] This is the synergenetics isometric view of the isotropic vector matrix and its omnirational, low-order whole number, equilibrious state of the micro-macro cosmic limits of the nuclearly unique, symmetrical morphological relativity and its interquantative, intertransformative, intertransactive, expansive-conteractive, axially rotative, operational field. (R. Buckminster Fuller)

3  Technologies

3.1  Blockchain

Users of blockchain ledgers:

-  notary public systems (Dept. of Justice)

-  small investment companies

-  NGOs

3.2  AI

Building an AI-based interface that searches in several languages court opinions, laws, regulations, academic journals, extracting from them condensed argumentation lines for our moderate, progressive (not leftist, but old plain progressive) positions.

Current searches do not follow reasoning or motivation, just a relevance score system.

[...]

GPT-3

3.3  [...]

4  Politicized areas in which to work

4.1  Microeconomy

Many people don't trust big companies, and, inter alia, try to create pools of consumers that manage resources like power, water, payment services.

The Microeconomy Study Group would learn to build intelligent systems to help with practical issues that arise from non-coordinated, independent, disconnected users.

4.2  Housing/cities/urban studies

Help is needed to extend the use of systems that save energy and make cities visually more agreeable, like vertical or roof gardens.

4.3  Violence in the home, the family

To make things more general, the Violence Study Group should work to add protections to some categories that are forgotten in the current political fight, like children or the elderly.

4.4  Law

4.4.1  Let's say that a political party in power wishes to make abortion more accessible or to restrict access. The Law Study Group should strive to help with common sense issues, to incorporate objections of the other side that make the legal changes more palatable for everybody, and the law less capricious or imperfect.

4.4.2  Let's say that the death penalty returns. The Law Study Group would try to find technical measures to make it more limited, humane, etc.; or to contemplate the addition of life imprisonment to the legal framework to prevent the return of the penalty.

4.4.3  Let's say that a political party's platform has a proposal to open the borders without limits, or to deport illegal immigrants en masse. The Group would help with economic and legal analysis that would show to the party leadership that their proposals are not feasible in the way they are currently written.

5  Third rails, limitations of our approach, etc.

Drugs, prostitution, ........more here......, are out of scope. If we wish to work pro bono publico there are some areas in which progress (as understood by each other) is really difficult and to pay time to them would make progress in the other areas much more difficult to reach.

A clear problem with our line of work is certain blandness, like an orientation to the minimum common denominator. But, remember, we are sick of polarization and conversion efforts, we are not here to start very polite and end uncivil. We are here to discuss about everything and try to make changes in life around us to make things easier for all.

6  Meeting Venues

6.1  Physical

[MAT]: Enquire cost of meeting rooms, Wi-Fi and other computing resources.

[...]

6.2  Virtual

Google Docs

7  Dissemination of efforts

7.1  Physical presence

PR efforst at colleges, residencies, hospitals.

7.2  Virtual world

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Initial version, Oct 13 2020

Idea: Dino75

Implementation to text: Bipartisan Alliance

Psychological targeting as an effective approach to mass persuasion—the adaptation of persuasive appeals to the psychological characteristics of large groups of individuals with the goal of influencing their behavior

Psychological targeting as an effective approach to digital mass persuasion. S. C. Matz,  View ORCID ProfileM. Kosinski, G. Nave, and D. J. Stillwell. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, November 28, 2017 114 (48) 12714-12719. https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.1710966114

Significance: Building on recent advancements in the assessment of psychological traits from digital footprints, this paper demonstrates the effectiveness of psychological mass persuasion—that is, the adaptation of persuasive appeals to the psychological characteristics of large groups of individuals with the goal of influencing their behavior. On the one hand, this form of psychological mass persuasion could be used to help people make better decisions and lead healthier and happier lives. On the other hand, it could be used to covertly exploit weaknesses in their character and persuade them to take action against their own best interest, highlighting the potential need for policy interventions.

Abstract: People are exposed to persuasive communication across many different contexts: Governments, companies, and political parties use persuasive appeals to encourage people to eat healthier, purchase a particular product, or vote for a specific candidate. Laboratory studies show that such persuasive appeals are more effective in influencing behavior when they are tailored to individuals’ unique psychological characteristics. However, the investigation of large-scale psychological persuasion in the real world has been hindered by the questionnaire-based nature of psychological assessment. Recent research, however, shows that people’s psychological characteristics can be accurately predicted from their digital footprints, such as their Facebook Likes or Tweets. Capitalizing on this form of psychological assessment from digital footprints, we test the effects of psychological persuasion on people’s actual behavior in an ecologically valid setting. In three field experiments that reached over 3.5 million individuals with psychologically tailored advertising, we find that matching the content of persuasive appeals to individuals’ psychological characteristics significantly altered their behavior as measured by clicks and purchases. Persuasive appeals that were matched to people’s extraversion or openness-to-experience level resulted in up to 40% more clicks and up to 50% more purchases than their mismatching or unpersonalized counterparts. Our findings suggest that the application of psychological targeting makes it possible to influence the behavior of large groups of people by tailoring persuasive appeals to the psychological needs of the target audiences. We discuss both the potential benefits of this method for helping individuals make better decisions and the potential pitfalls related to manipulation and privacy.

Keywords: persuasiondigital mass communicationpsychological targetingpersonalitytargeted marketing

Discussion

The results of the three studies provide converging evidence for the effectiveness of psychological targeting in the context of real-life digital mass persuasion; tailoring persuasive appeals to the psychological profiles of large groups of people allowed us to influence their actual behaviors and choices. Given that we approximated people’s psychological profiles using a single Like per person—instead of predicting individual profiles using people’s full history of digital footprints (e.g., refs. 10 and 14)—our findings represent a conservative estimate of the potential effectiveness of psychological mass persuasion in the field.

The effectiveness of large-scale psychological persuasion in the digital environment heavily depends on the accuracy of predicting psychological profiles from people’s digital footprints (whether in the form of machine learning predictions from a user’s behavioral history or single target Likes), and therefore, this approach is not without limitations. First, the psychological meaning of certain digital footprints might change over time, making it necessary to continuously calibrate and update the algorithm to sustain high accuracy. For example, liking the fantasy TV show “Game of Thrones” might have been highly predictive of introversion when the series was first launched in 2011, but its growing popularity might have made it less predictive over time as its audience became more mainstream. As a rule of thumb, one can say that the higher the face validity of the relationships between individual digital footprints and specific psychological traits, the less likely it is that they will change (e.g., it is unlikely that “socializing” will become any less predictive of extraversion over time). Second, while the psychological assessment from digital footprints makes it possible to profile large groups of people without requiring them to complete a questionnaire, most algorithms are developed with questionnaires as the gold standard and therefore retain some of the problems associated with self-report measures (e.g., social desirability bias; ref. 22).

Additionally, our study has limitations that provide promising avenues for future research. First, we focused on the two personality traits of extraversion and openness-to-experience. Building on existing laboratory studies, future research should empirically investigate whether and in which contexts other psychological traits might prove to be more effective [e.g., need for cognition (2) or regulatory focus (23)]. Second, we conducted extreme group comparisons where we targeted people scoring high or low on a given personality trait using a relatively narrow and extreme set of Likes. While the additional analyses reported in SI Appendix suggest that less extreme Likes still enable accurate personality targeting, future research should establish whether matching effects are linear throughout the scale and, if not, where the boundaries of effective targeting lie.

The capacity to implement psychological mass persuasion in the real world carries both opportunities and ethical challenges. On the one hand, psychological persuasion could be used to help individuals make better decisions and alleviate many of today’s societal ills. For example, psychologically tailored health communication is effective in changing behaviors among patients and groups that are at risk (24, 25). Hence, targeting highly neurotic individuals who display early signs of depression with materials that offer them professional advice or guide them to self-help literature might have a positive preventive impact on the well-being of vulnerable members of society. On the other hand, psychological persuasion might be used to exploit “weaknesses” in a person’s character. It could, for instance, be applied to target online casino advertisements at individuals who have psychological traits associated with pathological gambling (26). In fact, recent media reports suggest that one of the 2016 US presidential campaigns used psychological profiles of millions of US citizens to suppress their votes and keep them away from the ballots on election day (27). The veracity of this news story is uncertain (28). However, it illustrates clearly how psychological mass persuasion could be abused to manipulate people to behave in ways that are neither in their best interest nor in the best interest of society.

Similarly, the psychological targeting procedure described in this manuscript challenges the extent to which existing and proposed legislation can protect individual privacy in the digital age. While previous research shows that having direct access to an individual’s digital footprint makes it possible to accurately predict intimate traits (10), the current study demonstrates that such inferences can be made even without having direct access to individuals’ data. Although we used indirect group-level targeting in a way that was anonymous at the individual level and thus preserved—rather than invaded—participants’ privacy, the same approach could also be used to reveal individuals’ intimate traits without their awareness. For example, a company could advertise a link to a product or a questionnaire on Facebook, targeting people who follow a Facebook Like that is highly predictive of introversion. Simply following such a link reveals the trait to the advertiser, without the individuals being aware that they have exposed this information. To date, legislative approaches in the US and Europe have focused on increasing the transparency of how information is gathered and ensuring that consumers have a mechanism to “opt out” of tracking (29). Crucially, none of the measures currently in place or in discussion address the techniques described in this paper: Our empirical experiments were performed without collecting any individual-level information whatsoever on our subjects yet revealed personal information that many would consider deeply private. Consequently, current approaches are ill equipped to address the potential abuse of online information in the context of psychological targeting.

As more behavioral data are collected in real time, it will become possible to put people’s stable psychological traits in a situational context. For example, people’s mood and emotions have been successfully assessed from spoken and written language (30), video (31), or wearable devices and smartphone sensor data (32). Given that people who are in a positive mood use more heuristic—rather than systematic—information processing and report more positive evaluations of people and products (33), mood could indicate a critical time period for psychological persuasion. Hence, extrapolating from what one does to who one is is likely just the first step in a continuous development of psychological mass persuasion.

We present an integrative framework for mental disorders built on concepts from life history theory, and describe a taxonomy of mental disorders based on its principles, the Fast-Slow-Defense model

Del Giudice, Marco, and John D. Haltigan. 2020. “An Integrative Evolutionary Framework for Psychopathology.” PsyArXiv. October 2. doi:10.31234/osf.io/qv5nx

Abstract: The field of psychopathology is in a transformative phase, and is witnessing a renewed surge of interest in theoretical models of mental disorders. While many interesting proposals are competing for attention in the literature, they tend to focus narrowly on the proximate level of analysis and lack a broader understanding of biological function. In this paper, we present an integrative framework for mental disorders built on concepts from life history theory, and describe a taxonomy of mental disorders based on its principles, the Fast-Slow-Defense model (FSD). The FSD integrates psychopathology with normative individual differences in personality and behavior, and allows researchers to draw principled distinctions between broad clusters of disorders, as well as identify functional subtypes within current diagnostic categories. Simulation work demonstrates that the model can explain the large-scale structure of comorbidity, including the apparent emergence of a general “p factor” of psychopathology. A life history approach also provides novel integrative insights into the role of environmental risk/protective factors and the developmental trajectories of various disorders. After describing the main features of the FSD model and illustrating its application to the classification of autism and schizophrenia, we juxtapose it with the recent Hierarchical Taxonomy of Psychopathology (HiTOP). We highlight points of difference and similarity, and show how a functional approach helps resolve inconsistencies within a parsimonious account. The FSD model has great potential to further understanding of the development and expression of psychopathology across the lifespan.

Below a certain point, feeling younger than one’s chronological age may be psychologically beneficial; beyond such point, it may be harmful

An optimal margin of subjective age bias: Feeling younger to a certain degree, but no more, is beneficial for life satisfaction. Maria Blöchl, Steffen Nestler, David Weiss. Psychology & Aging, forthcoming, DOI: 10.1037/pag0000578. Ungated: PsyArXiv, August 2020. https://psyarxiv.com/pfxqh/

Abstract: The majority of adults feels considerably younger than their chronological age. Numerous studies suggest that maintaining a younger subjective age is linked to greater life satisfaction. However, whether there is a limit beyond which feeling younger becomes detrimental is not well understood. Here, we use response surface analysis to examine the relationships between subjective age, chronological age, and life satisfaction in in a large sample spanning adulthood (N= 7,356; 36 –89 years). We find that there is a limit to feeling younger: People who feel younger by a certain amount, but not more, have the highest levels of life satisfaction. In addition, our findings suggest that the discrepancy between subjective and chronological age at which life satisfaction is highest increases across the adult age span. Taken together, these findings reveal that beyond a certain point, feeling younger than one’s chronological age may be psychologically harmful.

Discrimination at large, public colleges: Findings are inconsistent with the dispersed discrimination account but support the Pareto principle (roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the guys)

Campbell, M. R., & Brauer, M. (2020). Is discrimination widespread? Testing assumptions about bias on a university campus. Journal of Experimental Psychology: General, Oct 2020. https://doi.org/10.1037/xge0000983

Rolf Degen's take: https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/1317132598343356417

Abstract: Discrimination has persisted in our society despite steady improvements in explicit attitudes toward marginalized social groups. The most common explanation for this apparent paradox is that due to implicit biases, most individuals behave in slightly discriminatory ways outside of their own awareness (the dispersed discrimination account). Another explanation holds that a numerical minority of individuals who are moderately or highly biased are responsible for most observed discriminatory behaviors (the concentrated discrimination account). We tested these 2 accounts against each other in a series of studies at a large, public university (total N = 16,600). In 4 large-scale surveys, students from marginalized groups reported that they generally felt welcome and respected on campus (albeit less so than nonmarginalized students) and that a numerical minority of their peers (around 20%) engage in subtle or explicit forms of discrimination. In 5 field experiments with 8 different samples, we manipulated the social group membership of trained confederates and measured the behaviors of naïve bystanders. The results showed that between 5% and 20% of the participants treated the confederates belonging to marginalized groups more negatively than nonmarginalized confederates. Our findings are inconsistent with the dispersed discrimination account but support the concentrated discrimination account. The Pareto principle states that, for many events, roughly 80% of the effects come from 20% of the causes. Our results suggest that the Pareto principle also applies to discrimination, at least at the large, public university where the studies were conducted. We discuss implications for prodiversity initiatives.

How intelligence and related cognitive abilities are assessed in humans and animals and suggests a different way of devising test batteries for maximizing between-species comparisons

Flaim, M., & Blaisdell, A. P. (2020). The comparative analysis of intelligence. Psychological Bulletin, Oct 2020. https://doi.org/10.1037/bul0000306

Abstract: The study of intelligence in humans has been ongoing for over 100 years, including the underlying structure, predictive validity, related cognitive measures, and source of differences. One of the key findings in intelligence research is the uniform positive correlations among cognitive tasks. This has been replicated with every cognitive test battery in humans. Nevertheless, many other aspects of intelligence research have revealed contradictory lines of evidence. Recently, cognitive test batteries have been developed for animals to examine similarities to humans in cognitive structure. The results are inconsistent, but there is evidence for some similarities. This article reviews the way intelligence and related cognitive abilities are assessed in humans and animals and suggests a different way of devising test batteries for maximizing between-species comparisons.

The Link Between Adaptive Memory and Cultural Attraction: New Insights for Evolutionary Ethnobiology

The Link Between Adaptive Memory and Cultural Attraction: New Insights for Evolutionary Ethnobiology. Risoneide Henriques da Silva, Washington Soares Ferreira Júnior, Joelson Moreno Brito Moura & Ulysses Paulino Albuquerque. Evolutionary Biology, Oct 11 2020. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11692-020-09516-8

Abstract: In this paper, we present the points of convergence between of adaptive memory and cultural attraction, and how these two approaches can help evolutionary ethnobiologists understand human cognition and behavior in relation to nature. In addition, we present empirical evidence of how the union of genetic, cultural and ecological factors can shape the human mind and behavior, aspects that are often dissociated by ethnobiologists. Thus, the present manuscript brings a holistic perspective on the subject, allowing theoretical contributions and opportunities for dialogue between the fields of adaptive memory, cultural attraction and evolutionary ethnobiology.

Voice Pitch Seems A Valid Indicator of One’s Unfaithfulness in Committed Relationships

Voice Pitch – A Valid Indicator of One’s Unfaithfulness in Committed Relationships? Christoph Schild, Julia Stern, Lars Penke & Ingo Zettler. Adaptive Human Behavior and Physiology, Oct 16 2020. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40750-020-00154-0

Abstract

Objectives: When judging a male speakers’ likelihood to act sexually unfaithful in a committed relationship, listeners rely on the speakers’ voice pitch such that lower voice pitch is perceived as indicating being more unfaithful. In line with this finding, a recent study (Schild et al. Behavioral Ecology, 2020) provided first evidence that voice pitch might indeed be a valid cue to sexual infidelity in men. In this study, male speakers with lower voice pitch, as indicated by lower mean fundamental frequency (mean F0), were actually more likely to report having been sexually unfaithful in the past. Although these results fit the literature on vocal perceptions in contexts of sexual selection, the study was, as stated by the authors, underpowered. Further, the study solely focused on male speakers, which leaves it open whether these findings are also transferable to female speakers.

Methods: We reanalyzed three datasets (Asendorpf et al. European Journal of Personality, 25, 16–30, 2011; Penke and Asendorpf Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 95, 1113–1135, 2008; Stern et al. 2020) that include voice recordings and infidelity data of overall 865 individuals (63,36% female) in order to test the replicability of and further extend past research.

Results: A significant negative link between mean F0 and self-reported infidelity was found in only one out of two datasets for men and only one out of three datasets for women. Two meta-analyses (accounting for the sample sizes and including data of Schild et al. 2020), however, suggest that lower mean F0 might be a valid indicator of higher probability of self-reported infidelity in both men and women.

Conclusions: In line with prior research, higher masculinity, as indicated by lower mean F0, seems to be linked to self-reported infidelity in both men and women. However, given methodological shortcomings, future studies should set out to further delve into these findings.

Discussion

In this Registered Report, we reanalyzed three datasets to test a potential relation between F0 and self-reported infidelity in n = 319 male and n = 551 female speakers. While a significant negative link between mean F0 and self-reported infidelity was found in only one out of two datasets for men and only one out of three datasets for women, two meta-analyses (accounting for the sample sizes and including the original Schild et al. 2020, data for men) suggest that lower mean F0 might be a valid indicator of higher probability of self-reported infidelity in both men and women. The one dataset that yielded significant associations for both men and women and had vocal attractiveness ratings suggests that this effect was not mediated by vocal attractiveness in men, but partially mediated by vocal attractiveness in women, such that lower mean F0 predicted lower vocal attractiveness, which in turn predicted a higher likelihood of self-reported infidelity. Further, where it was possible to test, relationship length was associated with higher self-reported infidelity such that participants were more likely to report extra-pair copulations in longer relationships. This is in line with the finding that sociosexual desire tends to become more unrestricted and sexual interests broaden to people outside of committed relationships after about 4 years of relationship duration, sometimes called the “4 year itch” (Fisher 1987; Penke and Asendorpf 2008). However, the effect of mean F0 on infidelity is independent of relationship length. Participants’ age seemed to be unrelated to their self-reported infidelity.

Why is F0 Associated With Unfaithfulness in Committed Relationships?

Whereas previous studies report that male speakers with lower pitched voices are perceived as more likely to act sexually unfaithful in a committed relationship than speakers with higher pitched voices (O’Connor et al. 2011; O’Connor and Barclay 2017), only one previous study investigated whether mean F0 is actually linked to a higher likelihood of self-reported infidelity (Schild et al. 2020). In an exploratory finding, Schild and colleagues (Schild et al. 2020) report that men with lower F0 were, indeed, more likely to cheat in committed relationships. Further, the relation between F0 and sexual infidelity in women has not been tested so far. The current study presents evidence that F0 is actually linked to sexual unfaithfulness in men and women. Although the evidence is rather mixed in all of the separately analyzed datasets, the conducted meta-analyses suggest that men and women with lower F0 more often report to cheat in committed relationships. However, in line with the mixed findings, we recommend future research to investigate the robustness of our findings.

That mean F0 might be a valid cue to one’s sexual infidelity could also explain why listeners were found to make accurate judgements about the sexual infidelity of speakers in two prior studies (Hughes and Harrison 2017; Schild et al. 2020). Picking up on a valid cue to potential infidelity might be especially relevant to avoid high fitness costs such as the loss of protection and provisioning (Geary et al. 2004) as well as parental and relationship investment (O’Connor et al. 2011). However, while no other vocal parameters in this study were found to be valid indicators of self-reported infidelity, future research should set out to investigate whether other aspects of vocal communication, such as clarity of speech (Kempe et al. 2013), are valid cues to one’s infidelity.

Our findings are in line with previous findings indicating that men with lower mean F0 also report higher mating success (e.g., Puts 2005) and a higher number of sexual partners (e.g., Hughes et al. 2004), which is indicative of a less restricted sociosexual orientation. In turn, an unrestricted sociosexual orientation is linked to less commitment to romantic relationships and higher likelihoods of infidelity (Mattingly et al. 2011; Penke and Asendorpf 2008). But why is F0 associated with a higher likelihood of infidelity? Romantic infidelity can be the result of situational (e.g. opportunities) and dispositional factors (Blow and Hartnett 2005; Hilbig et al. 2015). With regard to opportunities for infidelity, lower mean F0 in men is associated with both perceptions of attractiveness and dominance (e.g., Puts et al. 2016), so it increases success in both being chosen by the opposite sex and intrasexual competition. The association can thus not distinguish between these two routes to infidelity opportunities, though two studies suggest that success in male-male competition, rather than female mate choice, is a more important predictor of male number of sexual partners and that male F0 is under stronger intrasexual than intersexual selection (Hill et al. 2013; Kordsmeyer et al. 2018). In contrast, lower female mean F0 is perceived as more dominant but less attractive (e.g., Borkowska and Pawlowski 2011; Jones et al. 2010). Interestingly lower, not higher, mean F0 predicted infidelity in women. This could either mean that being perceived as dominant is important for female infidelity opportunities, just as it is for men. Alternatively, it could be interpreted as less vocally attractive women being more likely to be romantically unfaithful, which is corroborated by the partial mediation of the F0-infidelity association by lower rated vocal attractiveness in Dataset 2. Vocal attractiveness contributes to women’s likelihood of being chosen by potential mates over and beyond physical attractiveness (Asendorpf et al. 2011). Thus, it might be that less vocally attractive women end up with less opportunity to engage in a committed relationship with a preferred partner on a competitive mating market with mutual mate choice, as is typical for modern humans (Penke et al. 2008). If this is the case, these women might use infidelity as a mate switching strategy (Buss et al. 2017). As another alternative, a lower F0 and the disposition for infidelity might share a common cause in both men and women. A candidate would be androgenic masculinization throughout development. Both, mean F0 (Puts et al. 2012a, b) and unrestricted sociosexual desire (Penke and Asendorpf 2008; Schmitt 2005), as well as the closely related desire for sexual variety (Schmitt and International Sexuality Description Project 2003), are strongly sexually dimorphic in humans. Importantly, higher masculinity is also linked to less restricted sociosexual orientation (Ostovich and Sabini 2004) and more sexual partners across the lifespan (Burri et al. 2015) in women, potentially explaining our findings. Lastly, given that women lower their mean F0 when talking to more attractive men (Hughes et al. 2010), when speaking to men they prefer (Pisanski et al. 2018) and when trying to sound sexy or attractive (Hughes et al. 2014), it might be that lower mean F0 indicates general interest and attracts more opportunities for infidelity. Importantly, all these potential explanations are not mutually exclusive, and might thus be addressed explicitly by future research.

Limitations

Our investigation has four potential limitations in particular. First, due to the item wording, our infidelity measure was only a proxy of self-reported infidelity in Datasets 1 and 2: While one can assume that a majority of extra-pair copulations are, indeed, best described by acts of infidelity, other extra-pair copulations might actually be accepted by the partner (e.g., in polyamorous couples or open relationships, which were not assessed). Thus, our outcome measure might contain noise. However, note that only around 5% of relationships in western countries (such as those in which our data were collected) are consensually non-monogamous (Rubin et al. 2014). Second, as in Schild et al. (2020), we were only able to analyze whether individuals have ever cheated on any of their partners. We are not able to investigate or draw any conclusions about (a) how many of their partners they have cheated on (just one, all of them, or anything in between), (b) what were the reasons for cheating, and (c) whether cheating that does not involve sexual intercourse (e.g., kissing) is also related to F0. Third, for assessing infidelity, we relied on self-report measures. However, as infidelity in committed relationships is rather socially undesirable (Mogilski et al. 2014), there is a chance that not all participants gave honest responses to these questions, although all surveys were administered completely anonymous. Fourth, although the overall sample size of this investigation was relatively large, the asymmetric distribution of cheaters and non-cheaters decreased the statistical power of this investigation. In detail, 39%, 37%, and 17% of the study participants reported infidelity in Dataset 1, Dataset 2, and Dataset 3, respectively. We strongly encourage future studies to replicate our study and resolve potential problems that limit the interpretability of the current study’s findings.

Talking to Cows: Reactions to Different Auditory Stimuli During Gentle Human-Animal Interactions

Talking to Cows: Reactions to Different Auditory Stimuli During Gentle Human-Animal Interactions. Annika Lange et al. Front. Psychol., October 15 2020. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2020.579346

Abstract: The quality of the animal-human relationship and, consequently, the welfare of animals can be improved by gentle interactions such as stroking and talking. The perception of different stimuli during these interactions likely plays a key role in their emotional experience, but studies are scarce. During experiments, the standardization of verbal stimuli could be increased by using a recording. However, the use of a playback might influence the perception differently than “live” talking, which is closer to on-farm practice. Thus, we compared heifers' (n = 28) reactions to stroking while an experimenter was talking soothingly (“live”) or while a recording of the experimenter talking soothingly was played (“playback”). Each animal was tested three times per condition and each trial comprised three phases: pre-stimulus, stimulus (stroking and talking) and post-stimulus. In both conditions, similar phrases with positive content were spoken calmly, using long low-pitched vowels. All tests were video recorded and analyzed for behaviors associated with different affective states. Effects on the heifers' cardiac parameters were assessed using analysis of heart rate variability. Independently of the auditory stimuli, longer durations of neck stretching occurred during stroking, supporting our hypothesis of a positive perception of stroking. Observation of ear positions revealed longer durations of the “back up” position and less ear flicking and changes of ear positions during stroking. The predicted decrease in HR during stroking was not confirmed; instead we found a slightly increased mean HR during stroking with a subsequent decrease in HR, which was stronger after stroking with live talking. In combination with differences in HRV parameters, our findings suggest that live talking might have been more pleasurable to the animals and had a stronger relaxing effect than “playback.” The results regarding the effects of the degree of standardization of the stimulus on the variability of the data were inconclusive. We thus conclude that the use of recorded auditory stimuli to promote positive affective states during human-animal interactions in experimental settings is possible, but not necessarily preferable.

Discussion

We compared the reactions of heifers to stroking while applying two different auditory stimuli: the stroker talking directly to the animals in a gentle voice or a recording of the stroker's talking. We found behavioral and physiological indications of a positive perception of the interactions for both auditory stimuli. While the behavioral reactions to gentle interactions did not differ statistically, some of the cardiac parameters indicated differences between the auditory stimuli, also shortly after the presentation of the stimulus had ended.

Perception of Each Treatment

Both treatments led to changes in behavior during the STIM phase that indicate a positive perception: During stroking, the heifers showed significantly longer durations of neck stretching, a behavior shown during intraspecific social grooming (Sambraus, 1969; Reinhardt et al., 1986; Schmied et al., 2005), which is often actively solicited, and stroking by humans (Waiblinger et al., 2004; Schmied et al., 2008; Lürzel et al., 2015a). It is interpreted a sign of enjoyment, and it can thus be assumed that the situation is perceived as positive.

In a previous, similar experiment (Lange et al., 2020), we observed decreases of ear flicking and changes of ear position during stroking with no auditory stimuli. The present study confirms this pattern. The animals showed less ear flicking during STIM than PRE, a behavior mostly associated with negative affective states, such as pain after dehorning (Heinrich et al., 2010; Neave et al., 2013) or reactions to insect attacks (Mooring et al., 2007).

During STIM, the animals also changed the positions of their ears less often than in PRE. Frequencies of changes of ear positions were lower in sheep feeding (Reefmann et al., 2009a) or voluntarily being groomed by a human (Reefmann et al., 2009b) than during separation from the herd. In contrast, dairy cows showed an increased frequency of changes of ear positions during stroking compared to before or after (Proctor and Carder, 2014), which might however have been caused by small differences in experimental design, such as the stroker approaching at the beginning of the stroking phase. In contrast, the decrease in changes of ear positions and ear flicking during stroking in the current as well as in our previous study (Lange et al., 2020) indicates an association of a reduction of these behaviors with a positive, low-arousal state also in cattle.

However, for some of the behaviors we expected to indicate affective states, the treatment did not lead to significant differences: previously observed effects of stroking (Lange et al., 2020) on the duration of the animal resting its head and the time spent in contact with the experimenter were not confirmed in this study. These findings might be connected with the auditory stimulus, which might keep the animal comparatively more attentive to a certain degree and thus limit the intensity of the relaxation.

In an attempt to reflect the continuous nature of ear positions, we recorded nine different positions along the vertical and the horizontal axis: back up, back center, back down, center up, center, center down, forward up, forward center and forward down, plus ear hanging. During stroking, durations of the back up position increased significantly, while durations of forward up and ear low decreased, mostly in line with our previous experiment (Lange et al., 2020). The tendency toward decreased durations of forward up might indicate lowered vigilance (Boissy and Dumont, 2002), which is associated with less fear (Welp et al., 2004), and could corroborate the hypothesis that stroking induces positive low-arousal states.

We predicted to find longer durations of ear low during stroking, because low ear positions, including ear hanging, were associated with low-arousal, positive affective states in dairy cows in previous studies (Schmied et al., 2008; Proctor and Carder, 2014). However, we observed predominantly back up positions and surprisingly rare occurrences of ear low. One possible reason might have been the strokers' position kneeling next to the lying animal and resulting in the auditory signal being located above and behind the heifers' ears in both conditions. Since the ear position pattern was very similar to the one found in our previous study without vocal stimulation (Lange et al., 2020), however, the effect of the auditory stimulus seems not to have had a strong influence on ear positions, possibly because cattle have a relatively low sound-localization acuity compared with other mammals (Heffner and Heffner, 1992); the stroker's position relative to the animal's head may nevertheless be relevant.

Furthermore, the effects that we saw in STIM were not observed in POST, contrary to our hypothesis of longer-lasting effects of the treatment on behavior. However, some of the observed behaviors (such as neck stretching and the different ear positions) are more immediate reactions to positive stimuli and do not allow to observe longer-lasting changes in affective states.

Comparison of the Treatments

As there were no significant differences in the behavioral reactions to the two different auditory stimuli, stroking and talking in a gentle voice per se seem to have a stronger effect on the behavior than the source of the auditory stimulus. As this experiment did not include a treatment where the animals were stroked without any auditory stimulation, we cannot infer any information on whether gentle talking in general enhances or diminishes the positive effects of stroking, but the results are very similar to our previous study, where the animals were stroked without acoustic stimulation. Stroking can elicit quite strong effects on physiology and behavior in different species (rats: Holst et al., 2005; cows: Schmied et al., 2010; cats: Gourkow et al., 2014; lambs: Coulon et al., 2015; horses: Lansade et al., 2018), which might exceed possible consequences of small differences in auditory stimuli. Regarding the absence of significant differences in behavior, it seems plausible that the heifers did not discern the two auditory stimuli, at least not to an extent where it would have affected their behavior. Furthermore, the mismatch of experimenter and playback voice did not have a significant effect on any of the behaviors. Indeed, there is a substantial amount of literature in different species indicating that they do not necessarily distinguish playback from live auditory stimuli: playback is used successfully in studies investigating bird behavior (Douglas and Mennill, 2010), dogs react to dog-directed human speech played back from a loudspeaker (Ben-Aderet et al., 2017; Benjamin and Slocombe, 2018), and dairy cows increase their production when exposed to a playback of calf vocalizations (Pollock and Hurnik, 1978; McCowan et al., 2002; no effect if calves are reared with their mothers: Zipp et al., 2013). Other characteristics of speech might thus have a stronger impact on the animals' behavior than the characteristics induced by the type of source.

On the other hand, the analysis of cardiac parameters points toward a different perception of the two auditory stimuli. In both conditions, HR increased from PRE to STIM and decreased from STIM to POST, but this decrease was significantly more pronounced in the “live” condition, indicating a stronger relaxation effect of live talking after the presentation of the stimulus. The slight increase of HR during STIM in both conditions seems to contradict our expectation that our treatment would induce a low-arousal state. However, it is in line with previous findings reporting an increased HR of lying animals that were licked by conspecifics (Laister et al., 2011) or receiving a stroking treatment (Lange et al., 2020) and might be caused by physical reactions to stroking (e.g., neck stretching) more than by a meaningful change in arousal or affective state (Lange et al., 2020).

Independently of the changes in HR, there were some significant effects of the conditions on HRV parameters: HF increased in POST in the “live” condition, but decreased in POST in the “playback” condition. It is widely accepted that HF increases with increasing activity of the parasympathetic branch of the autonomic nervous system (Task Force of ESP and NASPE, 1996; von Borell et al., 2007). The increased values suggest a higher parasympathetic activity after stroking in the “live,” but not the “playback” condition. An increased HF may be associated with positive emotions (McCraty et al., 1995; von Borell et al., 2007) and was found in horses regularly receiving a relaxing massage (Kowalik et al., 2017). This increase in HF was not accompanied by an increase in RMSSD, although both represent vagal activity and are often correlated (Task Force of ESP and NASPE, 1996; Hagen et al., 2005; von Borell et al., 2007; Shaffer et al., 2014). However, changes in RMSSD were not consistently observed in other studies investigating different affective states in animals (Reefmann et al., 2012; Travain et al., 2016). RMSSD might therefore be a suboptimal indicator of animal affective states (Gygax et al., 2013; Tamioso et al., 2018). A different pattern emerged for SDNN: values increased from PRE to STIM in the “live” condition, and decreased again in POST, whereas in the “playback” condition, SDNN reached its highest values in POST. SDNN reflects influences of both parasympathetic and sympathetic activity (von Borell et al., 2007; Shaffer et al., 2014). Together with the decrease of RMSSD/SDNN during live talking, these findings might indicate that the “live” condition led to higher sympathetic activity during stroking and talking, possibly indicating positive arousal in response to being stroked (Tamioso et al., 2018). The increase of RMSSD/SDNN in “live” in POST is in line with increased values observed in sheep being brushed by a familiar human (Tamioso et al., 2018), and, in combination with the observed increase of HF in POST in “live,” indicates a shift toward vagal dominance after live talking. These patterns were not observed in the “playback” condition; contrarily, SDNN increased in POST, while RMSSD/SDNN and HF decreased slightly, possibly indicating a relative shift towards sympathetic regulation after stroking with “playback” stimulation.

In combination, the HRV results suggest that live talking may have been more pleasurable to the animals than “playback” and led to increased parasympathetic activity in the POST phase. They thus support the interpretation of a more pronounced relaxation effect indicated by the stronger decrease of HR in POST in “live” than in “playback.” The difference between the two auditory stimuli might be caused by losses of lower and higher frequencies of recorded sound, which have been found to cause a decline in dog's responses to commands, especially in the absence of certain non-verbal cues (Fukuzawa et al., 2005). As we could not measure the actual sound pressure reaching the animals' ears directly, we can neither exclude the possibility that there might have been other systematic differences between the acoustic signals produced by two sources, such as consistent differences in volume, which might have contributed to eliciting higher or lower arousal. Another difference between the situations might have been produced by a subconscious change of the stroker's body language or attention toward the animal during live talking. However, stroker behavior was standardized as far as possible – in both conditions, the stroker was calmly sitting next to the heifer's shoulder, focused on stroking the animal. Great care was taken to match the “playback” condition not only in body posture and calm breathing, but also in mental focus and intention of interacting gently with the animal, trying to minimize possible differences in non-verbal communication.

We hypothesized that the higher degree of standardization in the “playback” stimulus would lead to decreased variability in the data. However, the variability of the responses as indicated by the precision parameters revealed a conflicting pattern, indicating that the relationship between the degree of standardization of the treatment and the variability in the observed behavior is more complex than expected or has different effects on different parameters. The higher degree of standardization in “playback” stimuli did not lead to a generally reduced variability and therefore should not be the main criterion for preference of playback stimuli for gentle human-animal interactions in experimental settings.