An evolutionary account for why men have to wait between orgasms

Why Women Can Have Multiple Orgasms and Men Cannot. Glenn Geher. Psychology Today, Oct 18, 2020. https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/darwins-subterranean-world/202010/why-women-can-have-multiple-orgasms-and-men-cannot

Excerpts:

I will never forget Gordon Gallup's invited presentation at the 2007 meeting of the NorthEastern Evolutionary Psychology Society. 

This research essentially answers the question as to why the human erection is shaped with the unique characteristics that it has. From an evolutionary perspective, any adaptation that increases the likelihood of an individual being able to achieve reproductive success at a cost of the reproductive success of competitors will be naturally selected. And this explanation accounts for the unique nature of the human erection in a way that matches the data, along with the accompanying evolutionary framework, quite well.  

During the question and answer session, a young male student asked an interesting question. He essentially asked about the possibility of a male pulling out his own seminal fluid. And, in addition, he asked if this clear possibility posed something of a problem for Dr. Gallup's framework.

Dr. Gallup, a seasoned academic, did not hesitate in his response. He first acknowledged that it was a good question. He then paused, looking for the right words, and said essentially this: You may have noticed that after an ejaculation, an erection dissipates quickly. And it becomes uncomfortable for the penis to be touched at that state. I hypothesize that this is an adaptation to reduce the likelihood of the male pulling out any seminal fluid that he, himself, has just released into a female's reproductive tract. 

Highly convincing evidence that mental health factors are associated with obesity; suggestive evidence that a range of cognitive and psychosocial factors are also; associations tend to be small in statistical size

The psychology of obesity: An umbrella review and evidence-based map of the psychological correlates of heavier body weight. Eric Robinson et al. Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, October 18 2020. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2020.10.009

Rolf Degen's take: 

Highlights

• We reviewed meta-analyses of psychological individual differences and body weight.

• Highly convincing evidence that mental health factors are associated with obesity.

• Suggestive evidence that a range of cognitive and psychosocial factors are also.

• However, associations with obesity tend to be small in statistical size.

• People with obesity vs normal weight are psychologically more similar vs different.

Abstract: Psychological factors may explain why some people develop obesity and others remain a normal weight during their life course. We use an umbrella review approach to build an evidence-based map of the psychological correlates of heavier body weight. Synthesising findings from 42 meta-analyses that have examined associations between psychological factors and heavier body weight, we assessed level of evidence for a range of cognitive, psychosocial and mental health individual difference factors. There is convincing evidence that impaired mental health is associated with heavier body weight and highly suggestive evidence that numerous cognitive factors are associated with heavier body weight. However, the relatively low methodological quality of meta-analyses resulted in lower evidential certainty for most psychosocial factors. Psychological correlates of heavier body weight tended to be small in statistical size and on average, people with obesity were likely to be more psychologically similar than different to people with normal weight. We consider implications for understanding the development of heavier body weight and identifying effective public health interventions to reduce obesity.

Keywords: ObesityBMIindividual differencescognitivemental healthpsychosocialpersonalitydepressionanxietyexecutive functionimpulsivity

Monopoly Myths: Is Concentration Eroding Labor’s Share of National Income?

Monopoly Myths: Is Concentration Eroding Labor’s Share of National Income? Joe Kennedy. ITIF, October 13, 2020. https://itif.org/publications/2020/10/13/monopoly-myths-concentration-eroding-labors-share-national-income

Pundits and activists have looked at the reduced share of U.S. national income going to workers and have simply asserted that the cause is increased market concentration. This assessment is misplaced.

KEY TAKEAWAYS

*  Despite the persistent claims that increased market power has hurt workers, the scholarly evidence is weak, while the macroeconomic data is strong and clear in showing that this is not the principal cause.

*  Labor’s share of income has declined slightly over the past two decades, but not principally because capital’s share of income has increased.

*  Most of the decline is offset by an increase in rental income—what renters pay and what the imputed rent homeowners pay for their house. This increase is due to restricted housing markets, not growing employer power in product or labor markets.

*  Antitrust policy is not causing the drop in labor share, so changing it is not the solution. For issues such as employer collusion over wages or excessive use of noncompete agreements, antitrust authorities already have power to act.

*  Stringent antitrust policy would do little to raise the labor share of income, but it could very well reduce investment and productivity growth. The better way to help workers is with pro-growth, pro-innovation policies that boost productivity.

On Bari Weiss comments about the current situation (Stop Being Shocked, Oct 15 2020)

On Bari Weiss comments about the current situation (Stop Being Shocked, Oct 15 2020, https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/news/articles/stop-being-shocked)

A friend requests some comments about B W's piece.

---

I understand this is a call to inaction... And you must think what to vote, and send your vote. Sorry for not being helpful here, I am paralyzed.

Some thoughts, as requested:

1  I'm afraid that Alexandria Ocasio is, I am sorry to be so Manichean and categorical, a bad person... Hates too much, too much of an activist. It is my belief that, if in power, she would have fewer limits than mainstream politicians. That's why this all happens (her pulling out of a Y Rabin event, other things she says, the way she shows support for bad guys).

2 Lots of people lie, not only Alexandria, and this harms Bari Weiss piece.... We are not sure that the Iranian mullahs, murderous and crazy as they are, are genocidal. When we re-ask, they consistently say that what they want is to erase the Zionist entity, the Republic, not the persons. So why Bari Weiss repeatedly claims (& many others do the same too) that the Tehran's mad mullahs wish to kill unarmed civilians en masse?

That said, if the day comes when Israel is successfully invaded and defeated, I have no doubts that there would be mass displacements of population, very similar to what we saw with Germans after WWII (the Czechs, the Poles, etc., sent Germans packing to Germany after the National Socialists lost the war). But we cannot say so easily that the victors would kill the population à la Rwandan. I may be afraid of that, but cannot write so with such carelessness.

All the other is ok to me. Ignorant, hater-in-chief de Blasio; the KIPP charter schools's stupid, cowardly change in their motto, the allusion to "the illusion of meritocracy" (pardon the alliteration). And the first main thesis, stop being shocked, and accept that what it seems strange is clearly wrong (like Alexandria's views), is ok to me.

3  The second main thesis, that we should have friendships with political opponents, is something I ardently support too. But at times this is not generally possible, it is not so widespread. And we are in such a time.

Let me add and example here I lived a few years ago: A girl in the dating forums asked for an Anarchist boyfriend. And she also said that Communists are acceptable too. Well... When the Communists were in power, they exiled, imprisoned and killed mercilessly the Anarchists. But that was decades ago, I didn't live it, and my enemies' enemies are my friends. Then, I can date a Communist.

4  B Weiss piece will change nothing. My sad note is not about that, it is that the author publishes this because she needs money to pay the rent. She knows this has a negligible effect in the opposing side. That's the (falsely) cynical view.

Being positive about the author, her comments of being horrorized by Trump and simultaneously by the "others" remind me of those I love and who opposed at the same time the Nazis and the Communists (my dear gurus Popper, Hayek, many others). They had to emigrate to England, etc., and of course had no influence at all in the big confrontation that ended in conflagration.

Which is my view... I cannot support Alexandria O (or J Biden) and cannot support Trump. I am living in a permanent toothache, and are paralyzed, as I said at the beginning.

5  My summary is: let's love the others, even if we cannot understand why they vote as they do; and be realistic, which now, at this time in history, means  let's be pessimistic.

A smaller proportion of males reported having a best friend (85% vs 98% of females); the quality of these relationships seemed to be a great deal less intimate than was the case for females

Sex Differences in Intimacy Levels in Best Friendships and Romantic Partnerships. Eiluned Pearce, Anna Machin & Robin I. M. Dunbar. Adaptive Human Behavior and Physiology, Oct 18 2020. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s40750-020-00155-z

Rolf Degen's take: https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/1317701988830924801

Abstract

Objectives Close romantic and friendship relationships are crucial for successful survival and reproduction. Both provide emotional support that can have significant effects on an individual’s health and wellbeing, and through this their longer term survival and fitness. Nonetheless, the factors that create and maintain intimacy in close relationships remain unclear. Nor is it entirely clear what differentiates romantic relationships from friendships in these terms. In this paper, we explore which factors most strongly predict intimacy in these two kinds of relationship, and how these differ between the two sexes.

Results Aside from best friendships being highly gendered in both sexes, the dynamics of these two types of relationships differ between the sexes. The intimacy of female relationships was influenced by similarity (homophily) in many more factors (notably dependability, kindness, mutual support, sense of humour) than was the case for men. Some factors had opposite effects in the two sexes: gift-giving had a negative effect on women’s friendships and a positive effect on men’s, whereas shared histories had the opposite effect.

Conclusion These results confirm and extend previous findings that the dynamics of male and female relationships are very different in ways that may reflect differences in their functions.

Discussion

Taken together, these results confirm previous findings that homophily is an important criterion for close relationships (Curry and Dunbar 2013; Launay and Dunbar 2015). In particular, similarity in dependability was consistently found to be strongly predictive of higher levels of intimacy. For women, this was the case in both best friendships and romantic partnerships, but for men dependability was included in the best-fit model only for intimacy in best friendships. For romantic partnerships, none of the variables measured showed significant partial relationships in men. Aside from these similarities, however, the results suggest that intimacy in males' friendships is underpinned by very different dynamics than intimacy in females' friendships.

Mirroring previous findings with respect to romantic partners (Buss 1989; Pawlowski and Dunbar 1999, 2001), we found that women seemed to be much more demanding in their selection of romantic partners than men were. The intimacy of women’s relationships were homophilous for at least four traits (financial prospects, outgoingness, dependability and kindness), whereas no traits predicted intimacy for males. Similarly, longterm maintenance of women’s romantic relationships were predicted by relationship duration, gift-giving and supportiveness, but for males there was only one significant predictor (the frequency of face-to-face contact). In contrast, best friend relationships exhibited a very different pattern: their intimacy is predicted by similarity on four traits for both women and men, but the traits are very different (education, humour, dependability and happiness for women versus relationship duration, financial prospects, outgoingness and dependability in men).

Longevity in both women’s and men’s friendships was best predicted by provision of mutual support, but differed in the influence of shared histories (negative in the case of women, positive in the case of men). The traits characterizing women’s friendships seem to have more to do with the closeness of the relationship itself, whereas those characterizing men’s friendships seem to have more to do with engaging in social activities. Interestingly, none of the best-fit models included physical attractiveness or athleticism, indicating that personality and resource factors (such as education and financial potential) may be more important for intimacy levels in these close non-kin relationships than traits that might be assumed to correlate more directly with genetic fitness. This likely reflects the fact that relationships are indirect, rather than direct, means of enhancing fitness. In other words, this is a two-step process: we form close relationships not simply to access a direct fitness reward but in order to create coalitions or alliances that in turn allow us to maximise fitness. One possibility, for example, might be to mitigate the fertility costs of group-living (Mesnick 1997; Wilson and Mesnick 1997; Dunbar 2018a, 2019; Dunbar and MacCarron 2019).

The fact that outgoingness was a predictor for the intimacy of men’s friendships might be linked to the fact that males tend to prefer social interaction in groups whereas females have a strong preference for one-to-one interactions (Baumeister and Sommer 1997; Benenson & Heath, 2006; Dávid-Barrett et al. 2015; Gabriel and Gardner 1999; Rustin and Foels 2014). In addition to these homophily effects, we also found that mutual support and shared history are important for intimacy, and are therefore key factors underpinning the successful maintenance of close personal relationships. Mutual support had a much stronger influence on intimacy in female participants for both romantic partners and best friends, but only in respect of best friends for men (Fig. 2). In relation to their romantic partners, the degree to which men considered in-person contact an important mechanism for relationship maintenance was the strongest predictor of intimacy, at least when the sample was considered as a whole, irrespective of the sex of the best friend.

Interestingly, the extent to which shared history were considered an important mechanism of relationship maintenance in best friendships had opposite effects on intimacy in men and women. Whereas this relationship was positive in men, in women it was negative (the greater the emphasis on shared history, the lower the level of intimacy). This might, again, reflect the difference between men’s preference for group-based activities (for which shared history is usually an important component) and women’s preference for more intimate dyadic ones (for which shared history might be less important than, for example, conversation and levels of mutual disclosure).

In women, both the importance placed on gift-giving and mutual support as ways of sustaining romantic partnerships were included in the best-fit model, but these variables had opposite effects on intimacy. The greater the importance placed on gift-giving, the lower the intimacy; in contrast, the greater the importance given to mutual support as a mechanism of relationship maintenance, the greater the reported intimacy. Whereas gift-giving is observed cross-culturally as a means of creating and maintaining social network ties (e.g. Wiessner 1983), it may be that this strategy is only appropriate in the more distal layers of the social network where tokens of affiliation are required; in the inner layers, intimacy and emotional closeness may be more important (see Sutcliffe et al. 2012). It is possible that gift-giving is associated with forms of strict reciprocity in relationships that block the development of deeper emotional ties.

The importance of intimacy in same-sex female friendships may explain why similar humour profiles were found to be important for female but not male best friendships: laughter is thought to be important in the creation of social bonds (Dunbar 2017; Dunbar et al. 2012; Manninen et al. 2017). In contrast, similarity in social characteristics (outgoingness and social connections) were deemed more important for intimacy in male best friendships, perhaps reflecting the fact that men tend to prefer interacting in groups rather than one-to-one (Dávid-Barrett et al. 2015). Why this might be so evolutionarily remains to be answered, but one obvious suggestion relates to men’s near-universal role in communal defence in small scale societies and the demand this imposes for being able to cooperate in groups.

These behavioural differences suggest that best friend relationships are viewed very differently by the two sexes, corroborating and extending previous studies which suggest that the two sexes have very different expectations as regards friendships (Hall 2011, 2012; Machin and Dunbar 2013) and very different social styles (Roberts and Dunbar 2015). This strongly suggests that friendships serve rather different functional roles in the two sexes arising from different evolutionary selection pressures. While romantic relationships are, inevitably, equally common in the two sexes (in both cases, 86% of respondents reported having a romantic partner), a smaller proportion of males reported having a best friend (85%, compared to 98% of females). Moreover, whereas only 2% of females had a romantic partner but no best friend, 15% of males were in this situation suggesting that males, but not females, are more likely to have one or the other but not both. Although a significant proportion of males reported having a best friend, the quality of these relationships seemed to be a great deal less intimate than was the case for females (Fig. 2). This reflects earlier findings suggesting that the male social world is built around half a dozen relatively casual relationships, whereas the female social world is built around one or two much more intimate, and hence more fragile, dyadic relationships (Benenson and Christakos 2003; Roberts and Dunbar 2015; Dávid-Barrett et al. 2015).

In both sexes, only a minority of best friends were opposite-sex (15% for females; 22% in males). The gender homophily is itself striking, and probably reflects the fact that social networks are highly assortative for sex (Block and Grund 2014; Mehta and Strough 2009; Roberts et al. 2008; Rose 1985; Dunbar 2021). Even conversations readily segregate by sex once they contain more than four individuals (Dunbar 2016b; Dahmardeh and Dunbar 2017). Although having male best friends may be advantageous to females in terms of protection against the unwanted attentions of other males (Mesnick’s bodyguard hypothesis: Mesnick 1997; Wilson and Mesnick 1997; Dunbar 2010; see also Snyder et al. 2011; Ryder et al. 2016), it may be that male partners are likely to become jealous if their romantic partners show too much interest in male best friends, fearing either mate theft or cuckoldry. This might make cross-sex best friends less functional for paired females. Alternatively, intimate friendships between women may be more beneficial or easier to maintain (if only because of similar conversational styles: Coates 1996; Grainger and Dunbar 2009), while common interests make cooperation more straightforward (de Waal and Luttrell 1986).

These data are, of course, self-report data and represent the views of only one party in a relationship, and so are inevitably subject to the usual distortions this can involve. Nonetheless, in that respect, they do represent the aspirations and expectations of the person concerned, and it is these as much as anything that we are here interested in. While relationships are necessarily two-way processes, it is nonetheless failure of one individual’s expectations to be met in a relationship that is the usual cause of relationship breakdown (Dunbar and Machin 2014). Relationships break down because one party is dissatisfied with the deal they are getting, not because both parties “agree to disagree”. In this sense, these results provide us with direct insights into how individuals view their relationships, irrespective of whether they are right in their views.

Why do animals sometimes kill each other's offspring? Among hyenas, infanticide is a leading source of juvenile mortality; in all observed cases, killers were adult females, frequently higher-ranking than the mothers

Infanticide by females is a leading source of juvenile mortality in a large social carnivore. Ally Kelsey Brown et al. , Oct 17 2020. https://doi.org/10.1101/2020.05.02.074237

Rolf Degen's take: https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/1317687883348795392

Abstract: Social animals benefit from their group-mates, so why do they sometimes kill each other's offspring? A major barrier to understanding the evolution of infanticide is a lack of data from natural populations. Especially when perpetrated by females, infanticide remains poorly understood, because the increased mating opportunities that explain infanticide by males do not apply in females. Using 30 years of data from several spotted hyena groups, we show that infanticide is a leading source of juvenile mortality, and we describe the circumstances under which it occurs. In all observed cases, killers were adult females, but victims could be of both sexes. Killers only sometimes consumed the victims. Mothers sometimes cared for their deceased offspring, and sometimes consumed the body. Killers tended to be higher-ranking than the mothers of victims, and killers were sometimes aided by kin. Our results are consistent with theory that infanticide by females reflects competition among matrilines.

Key words: infanticide by females, matrilineal society, thanatology, female-female competition, nepotism 

We attribute our own phone use to positive social motives & overestimate our ability to multitask compared to others; we may fail to recognize the negative consequences of phone use

Barrick, Elyssa M., Diana Tamir, and Alixandra Barasch. 2020. “The Unexpected Social Consequences of Diverting Attention to Our Phones.” PsyArXiv. October 18. doi:10.31234/osf.io/7mjax

Rolf Degen's take: https://twitter.com/DegenRolf/status/1317687883348795392

Abstract: Phone use is everywhere. Previous work has shown that phone use during social experiences has detrimental effects on cognitive processing, well-being, and relationships. In this work, we first replicate this by showing the negative effects of phone use on relationships during both controlled and naturalistic social experiences. In Study 1, participants that were randomly assigned to complete a task with a confederate who used their phone part of the time reported lower feelings of social connection than participants paired with a partner who did not use their phone at all. In Study 2, dyads in a park completed a survey about their experience of the day. Participants reported that increased phone use resulted in lower feelings of social connection, enjoyment, and engagement in the experience. People were keenly aware that phone use in social situations can be harmful. If the negative effects of phone use are so obvious, why do people continue to phub their friends? Studies 3 and 4 demonstrate that people accurately intuit the effects of others’ phone use on experiences, but fail to recognize the effects of their own phone use. Study 4 explains this phubbing blindspot by demonstrating asymmetric positive attributions – people attribute their own phone use to positive social motives, and overestimate their ability to multitask compared to others. These findings suggest that people may fail to recognize the negative consequences of their own phone use by attributing positive motives for phone use to themselves.

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

---

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.