COVID-19 lockdowns & demographically-relevant Google Trends: Changes in searches for terms such as wedding and those related to condom use, emergency contraception, pregnancy tests, and abortion

Berger LM, Ferrari G, Leturcq M, Panico L, Solaz A (2021) COVID-19 lockdowns and demographically-relevant Google Trends: A cross-national analysis. PLoS ONE 16(3): e0248072. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0248072

Abstract: The spread of COVID-19 and resulting local and national lockdowns have a host of potential consequences for demographic trends. While impacts on mortality and, to some extent, short-term migration flows are beginning to be documented, it is too early to measure actual consequences for family demography. To gain insight into potential future consequences of the lockdown for family demography, we use cross-national Google Trends search data to explore whether trends in searches for words related to fertility, relationship formation, and relationship dissolution changed following lockdowns compared to average, pre-lockdown levels in Europe and the United States. Because lockdowns were not widely anticipated or simultaneous in timing or intensity, we exploit variability over time and between countries (and U.S. states). We use a panel event-study design and difference-in-differences methods, and account for seasonal trends and average country-level (or state-level) differences in searches. We find statistically significant impacts of lockdown timing on changes in searches for terms such as wedding and those related to condom use, emergency contraception, pregnancy tests, and abortion, but little evidence of changes in searches related to fertility. Impacts for union formation and dissolution tended to only be statistically significant at the start of a lockdown with a return to average-levels about 2 to 3 months after lockdown initiation, particularly in Europe. Compared to Europe, returns to average search levels were less evident for the U.S., even 2 to 3 months after lockdowns were introduced. This may be due to the fact, in the U.S., health and social policy responses were less demarcated than in Europe, such that economic uncertainty was likely of larger magnitude. Such pandemic-related economic uncertainty may therefore have the potential to slightly increase already existing polarization in family formation behaviours in the U.S. Alongside contributing to the wider literature on economic uncertainty and family behaviors, this paper also proposes strategies for efficient use of Google Trends data, such as making relative comparisons and testing sensitivity to outliers, and provides a template and cautions for their use in demographic research when actual demographic trends data are not yet available.

5. Conclusion

The COVID-19 pandemic is likely to have a variety of short-, medium-, and long-term consequences for society that may vary across nations, at least in part, in accordance with governmental responses vis-à-vis lockdowns and other health and social policies. Notably, we hypothesized that consequences for demographic behaviors might be more marked in countries with less well managed outbreaks and with fewer safety nets, exacerbating feelings of uncertainty and economic insecurity. Pandemic-related research to date has primarily focused on mortality [2], migratory patterns [3, 4], economic wellbeing and government responses thereto [1, 15, 38, 45–48, 66], and physical and mental health and wellbeing [11–13, 36–38, 46, 48, 63]. [1] provide a comprehensive review of the pandemic-related research to date. Understanding more fully how population dynamics and, in particular, those related to family demography, may be affected is crucial to predicting subsequent demographic trends. To this end, we use Google Trends data and event study and difference-in-differences techniques to examine the influence of national and, in the case of the U.S., state-level lockdowns during the pandemic on demographically-relevant Google search trends. We focus specifically on sexual behavior-, contraceptive use-, pregnancy termination- and fertility-related searches; coupling, romantic relationship, and union formation-related searches; and union dissolution-related searches. On the whole, we find modest evidence of changes in search patterns related to family planning, but little evidence of changes in search patterns related to fertility, with the exception that current parents may have increased searches for information about having subsequent children. Using Google Trends data, Wilde et al. [61] predict a 15% decrease in fertility; these results are based on keywords linked to unemployment rather than fertility, with the assumption of a causal link between unemployment and fertility, as reported in previous years. When based solely on fertility key-related words, their results suggest no large negative effect on fertility and are in line with our results, in spite of using different fertility key-related. We do find some changes in search patterns related to relationship and union formation, as well as union dissolution. However, these tended to attain statistical significance only in the period immediately surrounding lockdown initiation and to return to average pre-pandemic levels within 2 to 3 months, particularly in the European context; divergence in U.S. trends tended to last longer. This fits with our initial hypothesis that lockdowns will lead to more marked demographic consequences in countries that managed the economic fallout from the pandemic less well and provided weaker financial safety nets.

Starting with our results for sexual behavior-, contraceptive use-, pregnancy termination- and fertility-related searches, we conclude that the introduction of lockdown measures resulted in a short-lived decline in relative searches for condoms in the U.S., but no change in Europe, and that searches for the morning after/emergency pill declined substantially in both Europe and the U.S. at the initiation of lockdowns, returning to average levels in Europe within a few months, but remaining below average after 3 months in the U.S. In both Europe and the U.S., relative searches related to “pregnancy test” declined slightly a few weeks prior to lockdowns but returned to average within 6 to 8 weeks of lockdown initiations. Searches for abortion declined in the U.S. and, to a much lesser extent in Europe, with substantial rebound within 3 months of lockdown initiations. These findings may indicate some changes in sexual behaviors during lockdowns, such that unprotected sex and/or contraceptive failure may have temporarily declined, likely predominantly among non-coresident couples, during the early months of the pandemic and associated lockdowns, but tended to rebound relatively quickly.

We find no change in relative searches regarding overall planning for childbirth associated with lockdowns and their timing, but some suggestive evidence that couples who are already parents may take the opportunity of lockdown to consider having an additional child. We can place our results within the wider literature on drivers of fertility trends. First, these results speak to the literature on the impact unemployment or job insecurity [19, 22, 23]. Second, they fit with the literature of the response of fertility levels to “shocks”, such as the Great Depression (which resulted in a “baby bust”), or World War II (and its resulting “baby boom”). Seminal work by Rindfuss, Morgan, and Swicegood [25] found, for instance, that economic recessions often lead to a postponement of childbearing, especially for first births. The literature emphasizes the importance of actual versus anticipated financial and employment situations. While actual financial losses and unemployment do correlate with fertility trends, an important pathway to understand the impact of macro-level business cycles on fertility is consumer confidence [20, 27]. Financial incertitude might be crucial to understanding fertility responses to the lockdowns: while unemployment levels have increased as a result of lockdowns, our results are often stronger in the very first weeks before or after lockdowns, that is, before any substantial impacts on jobs and income losses. Yet, we find no evidence that initial lockdowns lead to significant changes in overall fertility intentions, and only a slight suggestion that higher order births may be being considered by current parents. Our conclusions, however, only relate to fertility intentions (rather than realization) and initial lockdown implementation (rather than potential subsequent economic recessions or the length of the lockdown). Interestingly, the (small) potential impact of lockdowns on higher-order fertility suggested by our results show a relative decline in searches related to higher-order childbearing in the month preceding and the month following lockdowns, with the suggestive evidence of an increase in searches only appearing thereafter. It is possible that this pattern is, at least partially, driven by expectations of future financial and employment instability, particularly if such uncertainty was highest in the earliest months of the pandemic.

Turning to our results on relationships, union formation, and union dissolution, relative searches related to dating (and for dating/relationship applications) and coupling/relationship formation appear to be negatively affected by lockdowns. However, these impacts were often short-lived and, again, concentrated in the weeks immediately surrounding the introduction of shelter-in-place measures. However, fitting in with our initial hypothesis, we find some differences between the U.S. and Europe in these impacts and, in particular, their timing. In Europe, relative searches returned to pre-lockdown levels after only a modest change, whereas changes in searches in the U.S. appeared to be more long lasting. As we had hypothesized, this may reflect that, around the time of national lockdowns, the pandemic was considered to be better controlled in many European settings that in the U.S., and also that economic consequences may have been expected be better attenuated by stronger welfare state policies and faster and more comprehensive economic responses in Europe.

European and U.S. trends were similar for searches related to union formation, with relative declines in searches related to marriage and weddings that persisted in both contexts even three months after lockdowns were initiated, though the magnitude of decline was larger in Europe. To the extent that trends in union formation parlay into subsequent trends in fertility, this may suggest slight declines in near-term first-birth fertility. However, the direction of causality between marriage and fertility is ambiguous. That is, lower marriage rates may reflect individuals or couples not (yet) wanting a child and therefore choosing to not (yet) marry or enter into cohabitation, rather than fertility being driven by changes in marriage or cohabitation formation behaviors [28, 29]. Moreover, delaying or opting out of marriage will only have an effect on fertility in countries where the tie between marriage and childbearing is strongest [28]. Furthermore, longer-term fertility and family formation plans will also be affected by post-lockdown economic and policy landscapes, which we do not observe.

It is less clear how lockdowns and resulting economic downturns might affect separation and divorce. Two contrasting hypotheses can be made [31]: economic instability increases financial and psychological stress for couples, which increase risk of separation and divorce, and, given considerable financial costs of separation and divorce (including legal costs and the loss of economies of scale), couples might be “priced out” of being able to separate during financially unstable or uncertain times. While evidence suggests that well-being might have decreased and stress increased during the pandemic [36], our results point—if anything—toward near-term declines in divorce, which is consistent with recent evidence from the 2008 recession, which resulted in couples putting off divorcing [30, 32]. Indeed, we find a modest short-lived decline in divorce-related relative search interest in Europe and a small short-lived decline in the U.S., particularly in the first weeks of lockdowns. Notably, however, we find little evidence of a change in searches for break-up in Europe and a slight, short-lived increase in break-up-related search interest in the U.S. in the wake of the lockdowns.

Overall, differences in demographically-relevant searches in the U.S. and Europe may reflect both the differential handling of the pandemic in the spring of 2020 and differences in underlying social welfare safety nets. Indeed, international heterogeneity in individual perceptions of the effects of the pandemic is remarkable—and tends to vary with both of these factors. For example, while threat perception of Covid-19 to oneself, one’s family, one’s local community, one’s country, and the world were high across most countries at the start of the pandemic, they decreased over time in countries such as Germany and Italy, while increasing in the U.K. and U.S. [39]. Similarly, confidence in institutions such as the health system was lowest in the U.K. and U.S., and highest in European countries, particularly Spain [39]. Also, the economic consequences of the pandemic and the resulting lockdowns have not been shared equally within societies [66]. Of particular concern, inequality in job losses during the pandemic have been found to be particularly stark in the U.S. and U.K. [66]. If a main pathway to understanding possible impacts of lockdowns on future family demographic trends is economic hardship and uncertainty, then we might expect increasingly polarized behaviors, particularly in the U.S. where our results, though still small-to-modest in magnitude, tend to be stronger and longer-lasting than in Europe. Trends in increasing polarization of family formation behaviors have been well underway in the U.S. for several decades [67]. Of course, only time will tell what, if any, influence the pandemic and resulting economic downturn with have on family demographic trends, and where.

Our results must be interpreted in the light of a number of limitations. First, although Google search trends cannot be assumed to fully represent the interests, concerns, or preoccupations of a nation’s population as a whole [65, 68], the popularity of Google as a search engine in Europe and the U.S., combined with quick and free data access, makes it a useful tool for observing immediate changes in search behaviors in response to the pandemic. Zagheni and Weber [69] recommend using difference-in-differences techniques, such as those used in this study, to assess relative trends in internet search data over time as an efficient means of reducing bias when the population-representativeness of internet searches by a subset of the population is unknown.

Second, as discussed in detail above, Google Trends only reports the relative (not absolute) search trends, specifically the number of searches for a particular term at a given time in a particular geographic unit relative to the total search volume in the geographic unit at a given time. This search index is then normalized to the maximum search volume observed over the period in the geographic unit. In a usual period, as the number of total Google searches is very large in comparison to the number of searches for a given term, a small change in the denominator (all searches) is negligible for the interpretation of the index. However, some periods, particularly those characterized by large shocks—like the introduction of national lockdowns—may generate a large increase in overall Google searches. In this case, the variation in the total number of Google searches might influence the relation of particular searches to the relative search index. This may be particularly true during lockdowns when individuals are required to stay at home and may therefore be more likely to use the internet. This implies that, while the raw number of searches for a particular term may be constant over a period, the number of searches relative to the overall number searches will change if the total number of Google searches increases (decreases) over the period. While we suspect that the total volume of Google searches increased during lockdown, at the time of writing Google could not confirm this hypothesis. Google Trends data must, therefore, be interpreted as reflecting searches for a specific term relative to all Google searches, and not as reflecting absolute search intensity, per se. Nonetheless, a change in relative search intensity during lockdowns can be identified and evaluated.

Third, Google searches do not directly measure behaviors. Future research based on actual levels of demographic behaviors is needed to corroborate whether and how such searches may predict trends in family demography.

Fourth, our results represent average national/state level searches and may mask considerable heterogeneity in the way countries (and states) imposed lockdown restrictions, which in turn may influence perceptions and reactions to these measures. For country comparison purposes, we use a binary treatment: whether the lockdown was implemented or not. This choice does not allow differentiating the extent of different lockdowns in terms of length or stringency, nor considering other forms of restrictions than stay-at-home orders or their changing nature over time. Our analytical framework also does not allow considering intra-country variation within the European countries considered. Further decompositions by smaller geographical areas are warranted.

In sum, using Google Trends data, we find evidence that pandemic-induced lockdowns appear to have small and likely short-lived impacts on family demography-related searches, particularly in the U.S. We interpret these findings within the context of important economic and social policy variation across countries, such that social and economic uncertainty was likely of larger magnitude in the U.S. than Europe. Whereas it is possible that such uncertainty may result in potentially (small-to-modest in magnitude) impacts of the pandemic on future family demography in the U.S., whether any such impacts occur is a question for future research.

Websites promoting extramarital affairs are not merely used for quick sexual encounters, also provide a means of access to long-term sexual & committed partners; results underscore importance of mate poaching for understanding relationship initiation

Exploring Links Between Online Infidelity, Mate Poaching Intentions, and the Likelihood of Meeting Offline. Liesel L. Sharabi, Maximiliane Uhlich, Cassandra Alexopoulos, and Elisabeth Timmermans. Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking Vol. 24, No. 7, Jul 15 2021. https://doi.org/10.1089/cyber.2020.0563

Abstract: This study examines digitally enabled mate poaching on Ashley Madison, an online dating platform for extradyadic affairs. To explore mate poaching as a potential explanation for what drives users of Ashley Madison to transition their online relationships to offline encounters, we conducted a multinational survey of 1,676 users (88.5 percent male, Mage = 50.98). Participants provided open-ended data about their mate poaching objectives, which ranged from short-term sexual encounters to long-term sexual and emotional affairs and new exclusive relationships. Structural equation modeling showed that participants' attitudes toward online infidelity predicted whether they would consider meeting someone from the website in person. Mate poaching intentions also mediated the effect of attitudes toward online infidelity on the likelihood of meeting another user face to face in the future. The results extend evolutionary theories of mate poaching to the digital dating environment and demonstrate the value of these perspectives for explaining relationship initiation practices on infidelity websites.

Discussion

Despite estimates that as many as 10 to 15 percent of relationships begin through mate poaching,4,6 little attention has been devoted to poaching another's partner as a relationship initiation strategy in the context of infidelity websites that enable the pursuit of extradyadic affairs. The goal of the present investigation was to extend research and theorizing on mate poaching to the digital environment by soliciting responses from current Ashley Madison users about their (a) mate poaching objectives, (b) attitudes and intentions for engaging in mate poaching online, and (c) likelihood of moving a relationship FtF.

Ashley Madison is not the only online dating website that can be used for infidelity, but it is one of the few places where it is common. This makes Ashley Madison a unique context for studying relationship initiation practices that are elsewhere less actively used or more highly stigmatized. The results of our descriptive analyses point to several distinct qualities of Ashley Madison's users and the types of relationships they were seeking online. For one, our sample skewed male, which coheres with previous findings showing that men are more likely to mate poach than women.6 In addition, around half of our participants were unmarried, thus demonstrating that certain individuals may use infidelity websites for mate poaching even when they themselves are not currently in a relationship. For individuals who are married, these platforms may be used to pursue mating opportunities with others who possess seemingly better qualities than their current partner, whereas for those who are unmarried, they might provide access to desirable partners who would otherwise be off limits.4,37 We also found that although most participants' goals for mate poaching were directed at short-term relationships, around a third indicated openness to long-term or exclusive involvement. This suggests that infidelity websites are used for more than temporary sexual gratification, and that users may occasionally desire serious relationships with the individuals they meet on these platforms.

Tests of our proposed model uncovered a number of individual factors related to participants' mate poaching intentions and likelihood of meeting offline. Based on research showing that individuals with stronger entity beliefs are more likely to perceive others' behaviors as indicative of their future actions (e.g., “once a cheater, always a cheater”),15 we proposed that participants with more fixed views of personality would be less inclined to mate poach or meet offline. Interestingly, we found that participants' attitudes toward online infidelity, but not their implicit theories of personality, predicted their mate poaching intentions and likelihood of meeting FtF. Perhaps people attribute others' reasons for mate poaching to forces external to the individual, such as frequent conflicts with a partner or feeling undervalued in a relationship, thereby exhibiting self-serving bias rooted in their own engagement in online infidelity.

As expected, participants' mate poaching intentions were a strong predictor of whether they would consider meeting FtF. There was also a mediating effect of mate poaching intentions on the association between attitudes toward online infidelity and the likelihood of transitioning a relationship offline. For individuals who are less inclined to meet others in the flesh, Ashley Madison may be more about the fantasy of infidelity than the reality of FtF contact. Future research can build on these findings by exploring the motivations and behaviors of individuals who use infidelity websites for reasons not involving FtF encounters. In addition, we found that men were less likely than women to anticipate meeting someone in person. If men do indeed outnumber women on these platforms, then it could be that there is more competition among men for partners, while at the same time, women encounter a larger mating pool that allows them to be more selective and presents more opportunities for meeting FtF. These results emphasize the importance of mate poaching intentions for explaining why online encounters transgress offline, where they could potentially develop into traditional affairs.

Our study highlights the connection between the evolutionary roots of human mate poaching behaviors and online relationship-seeking practices. Infidelity websites enable mating strategies that are challenging to implement. People often guard their partners from perceived threats,4 but infidelity websites expand the eligible dating pool by providing access to individuals who are open to extradyadic involvement. There are also consequences to mate poaching that might deter some users of infidelity websites from meeting FtF, including reputational damage,38 the loss of social network ties,10 and retribution by a current partner.39 However, the characteristics of the online environment (e.g., increased anonymity) eliminate some risks, which may explain the enduring popularity of platforms such as Ashley Madison despite the stigma surrounding their use.

Limitations and future directions

This study has limitations. First, users of Ashley Madison and other similar platforms are often men, which limits our ability to make claims about women's experiences on infidelity websites. Second, despite asking participants whether their partner consented to their behaviors on Ashley Madison, we do not know the individual circumstances of other users or the extent to which they made it known whether their relationships were monogamous. Third, to avoid overwhelming participants and risking attrition, we used abbreviated measures to keep the survey short. Fourth, this study focused on user intentions rather than on actual behaviors, and there may sometimes be barriers to meeting others FtF. For instance, Ashley Madison has received scrutiny in the past for using female bots to communicate with male users,40 which would clearly prevent some relationships from leaving the platform. Finally, our study was cross-sectional and relied on participant self-reports. Some Ashley Madison users may hesitate to disclose an interest in permanent mating, and thus the occurrence of poaching for long-term or exclusive relationships may be underestimated. Future longitudinal research should continue to examine the long-term outcomes of the relationships formed through infidelity websites, as well as patterns of serial poaching among users of such platforms.

A valid evaluation of the theory of multiple intelligences is not yet possible: Problems of methodological quality for intervention studies

A valid evaluation of the theory of multiple intelligences is not yet possible: Problems of methodological quality for intervention studies. Marta Ferrero, Miguel A. Vadillo, Samuel P.León. Intelligence, Volume 88, September–October 2021, 101566. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.intell.2021.101566

Highlights

• A meta-analysis of the impact of MIT-inspired interventions on learning was performed.

• The qualitative analysis showed that the primary studies have important methodological flaws.

• The reported effect sizes were remarkably larger than the usual in education.

• MIT-inspired interventions for enhancing academic achievement learning is not recommended.

Abstract: Since Gardner suggested that human beings hold multiple intelligences, numerous teachers have adapted and incorporated the multiple intelligence theory (MIT) into their daily routine in the classroom. However, to date, the efficacy of MIT–inspired methodologies remains unclear. The focus of the present study was to perform a systematic review and a meta–analysis to assess the impact of these interventions on academic achievement through reading, maths, or science tests. The inclusion criteria for the review required that studies should estimate quantitatively the impact of an MIT–based intervention on the academic performance and that they followed a pre–post design with a control group. The final sample included 39 articles comprising data from 3009 pre-school to high school students, with diverse levels of achievement, from 14 different countries. The results showed that the studies had important methodological flaws, like small sample sizes or lack of active control groups; they also reported insufficient information about key elements, such as the tools employed to measure the outcomes or the specific activities performed during training, and revealed signs of publication or reporting biases that impeded a valid evaluation of the efficacy of MIT applied in the classroom. The educational implications of these results are discussed.

Keywords: InterventionMultiple intelligencesSystematic reviewMeta–analysis

4. Discussion

Since Gardner developed his theory about the existence of multiple intelligences, a growing number of teachers have adapted and incorporated the theory into their daily routine in the classroom (White, 2004). In spite of this unexpected success, as Gardner himself has recurrently recognized, there is no solid data about the effectiveness of applying MIT–inspired interventions in the academic achievement of students. To date there are only two meta–analyses on this matter and, as we have discussed above, both of them present important methodological shortcomings, such as an absence of any assessment of the quality of the studies included or a lack of control for publication bias. The aim of the present systematic review was to assess the quality of the studies testing the impact of MIT–inspired instructional methodologies on academic achievement of learners, overcoming the existing flaws of previous reviews as much as possible.

In general, the qualitative analysis of the results showed that the studies included in this review have important methodological flaws and report insufficient information about essential elements to make a critical appraisal of the methods, such as whether participants and instructors were blind to experimental manipulation, or whether the measures employed were reliable and valid. Perhaps more importantly, only a handful of studies described the intervention undertaken in sufficient detail to allow its replication. In other words, there is no way of knowing what the interventions consisted of and how the dependent variable was measured. When methodological information was given, many of the studies failed to meet important quality criteria, such as the randomisation of participants or the inclusion of an active control group. In fact, only a couple of quality criteria were clearly fulfilled by the majority of studies.

The quantitative analysis of the data replicates the results of previous meta–analyses, but with important caveats. As explained in the introduction, Bas (2016) and Batdi (2017) reported large effect sizes for MIT–based interventions (d = 1.077 and 0.95, respectively). Consistent with them, we find remarkably large effect sizes of gΔ = 1.49 and gp = 1.15. The sheer size of these effects should, on its own, be sufficient reason for skepticism (Pashler, Rohrer, Abramson, Wolfson, & Harris, 2016). To put these effect sizes in proper context, Fig. 7 shows the distribution of gΔ and gp from the studies included in the present meta–analysis, together with the effect sizes (standardized mean differences) of two large sets of high–quality educational studies commissioned by the Education Endowment Foundation (EEF) in the UK and the National Center for Educational Evaluation and Regional Assistance (NCEE) in the USA (Lortie-Forgues & Inglis, 2019). It is clear that the effects reported for the MIT–based interventions reviewed here are remarkably larger than the effects reported by the studies funded by these two institutions. They are also much larger than the typical effect sizes reported in psychological research (Funder & Ozer, 2019; Rubio-Aparicio, Marín-Martínez, Sánchez-Meca, & López-López, 2018).

Fig. 7

What factors could explain the striking difference between the effect sizes found in the present studies and those reported in other areas of educational research? The funnel plots depicted in Fig. 6 offer a plausible response to this question. As can be seen, the largest effect sizes come from the studies with the lowest precision, that is, with the smallest number of participants. This pattern of results suggests that the average effect size is probably inflated by the (large) results of the lowest–quality studies.

In addition, all the studies commissioned by the EEF and the NCEE are required to meet the highest methodological standards, including the use of powerful sample sizes, active control groups, reliable and valid outcome measures, preregistered methods and analyses, and unconditional publication regardless of outcome (Lortie-Forgues & Inglis, 2019). In comparison, Fig. 2 shows that only a handful of the studies reviewed here complied with these standards. Only one of the studies included an active control group. This is unfortunate, because the available evidence shows that educational studies relying on passive control groups yield grossly overestimated effect sizes (Sala & Gobet, 2017). In fact, the inclusion of an active control group has been considered a decisive measure to test the efficacy of educational interventions (e.g. Datta, 2007), as long as the expectations of students in an active control group is guaranteed to be the same as the ones of those in the experimental group (Boot, Simons, Stothart, & Stutts, 2013).

None of the studies were preregistered, which, again, is an essential protection against biases in research (Kaplan & Irvin, 2015; Warren, 2018) as it reduces researchers' degree of freedom and questionable research practices, such as the selective publication of analyses that “worked” (Simmons, Nelson, & Simonsohn, 2011). Similarly, measurement error can inflate effect sizes when a population effect size is estimated across small sample sizes (Loken & Gelman, 2017), a bias whose impact on the present studies is difficult to estimate because most of them failed to report psychometric information about the dependent measures. Fig. 2 also shows that none of the articles reviewed explicitly stated that participants and instructors were blind to experimental manipulation, which means that the results of the interventions could be entirely due to the positive expectations of participants, as mentioned above (Boot et al., 2013). Although difficult, it is possible to blind participants and instructors through the use of active control groups where the actors involved do not know whether they are being trained by the intervention under study or under an alternative one.

Given these caveats (and other problems highlighted in Fig. 2), the fact that the effect sizes reported in this literature are large is unsurprising. In our opinion, this literature should not be taken as evidence that MIT–based interventions work. All in all, although the majority of studies included in the present work suggested that MIT–inspired interventions yielded significant improvements in the academic achievement of students, it is imperative to interpret these results in the light of critical shortcomings that have emerged in the qualitative and quantitative analyses of the data.

To put these results in context, it is also important to note that the main tenet of MIT about the existence of multiple intelligences is not supported by the scientific community. Research in cognitive psychology has systematically pointed out the existence of a single intelligence, or general factor, that explains most of the variance in cognitive performance in different tasks (Lubinski, 2004; Visser et al., 2006a). Most relevant for this study, the central claim regarding the application of MIT in schools lacks sound evidence. Presumably, all the intelligences should be used as channels when presenting new materials so that students experience the material via their best intelligence, and thus understanding will be promoted. However, studies in the field of learning psychology have shown that the best way to learn something is usually defined by the content itself, and not by the particular abilities or, in terms of Gardner, the specific intelligences profile of learners (Willingham, 2004). In other words, according to the best evidence available so far, teaching should be subordinated to the object of learning, not to the characteristics of individual learners.

Aside from these important gaps in the theory and its translation into classroom practice, any attempt to test the efficacy of MIT–inspired interventions in the future should address the methodological flaws of the existing literature that we have highlighted in the present review. Ideally, these studies should adopt experimental designs, use large samples, guarantee the blinding of participants and instructors, include an active control group, and follow detailed reporting guidelines, including precise information about the sample, procedure and materials employed in study, so that the results can be replicated by independent researchers.

MIT might have contributed to rethinking some important questions among educators, such as the fact that children are unique and valuable regardless of their capacities and that schools are responsible for helping all of them bring out their best and find their real interests and strengths. Or the fact that, too often, schools have exclusively focused on purely academic skills, such as reading or mathematics, at the expense of other skills, such as music or corporal expression, leading many children to fail in finding their real interests and strengths. Bearing this undeniable contribution to education in mind, it is understandable that many teachers have embraced MIT-inspired interventions in the classroom with great enthusiasm. However, as shown in the present study, the evidence gathered to date on the effectiveness of these educational actions does not allow for a valid assessment of their impact on learning. Due to the importance of implementing class well-grounded methods of instruction (Cook & Cook, 2004), it is imperative to perform high-quality research on the effectiveness of MIT-based intervention before its use in the classroom can be recommended or promoted.

Preferences for younger female mates is observed in species that exhibit long-term reproductive pair bonds (humans & hamadryas baboons); preference for older females is observed in species that mate promiscuously (chimps & savannah baboons)

The Effects of Age on Mate Choice Across Primate Species and its Correlation to Mating Systems. Ece Kremers. BSc Thesis, Univ. of Minnesota, Spring 2021. https://static1.squarespace.com/static/593ffd7ac534a5e73da04ccf/t/608c24f148a2f16ef8409d8f/1619797234523/

Age can be an important factor in mate choice as it affects experience, access to resources and reproductive value. The hypothesis of this thesis is that in species with long-term mating bonds, males will prefer to mate with younger females whereas in species that mate promiscuously, male will prefer to mate older females. Tackling this question of effect age has on mate choice will help contribute to knowledge on mating behavior and mate choice in primates. The methods for this thesis included gathering evidence from the scientific literature on mate patterns and mate choice in humans (Homo sapiens), chimpanzees (Pan troglodytes), hamadryas baboons (Papio hamadryas), and savannah baboons. Due to the large variation in human behavior across the globe, a cross-cultural analysis is used to draw conclusions regarding how men tend to perceive attractiveness in terms of age and how they choose potential reproductive partners. Similarities and difference in mating patterns and perception of attractiveness in primate are examined. Cross-cultural analysis concluded men generally find youthfulness attractive. Preferences for younger female mates is observed in species that exhibit long-term reproductive pair bonds (humans and hamadryas baboons), whereas preference for older females is observed in species that mate promiscuously (chimpanzees and savannah baboons). Females across all species prefer to mate in way that increase the survival of their offspring. For species with long term pair bonds, this means a preferences for males of high social status, independent of what age. In species that don’t experience long-term pair bonds, this means mating with many males in order to confuse paternity and reduce the risk of infanticide. However, in most primate species (those other than humans), it can be challenging to determine female mate preferences are because of the suppression of female choice through sexual coercion and male-male competition.

The social facilitation of eating: Why does the mere presence of others cause an increase in energy intake?

The social facilitation of eating: Why does the mere presence of others cause an increase in energy intake? Helen K. Ruddock, Jeffrey M. Brunstrom, Suzanne Higgs. Physiology & Behavior, July 28 2021, 113539. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.physbeh.2021.113539

Highlights

• People eat more when eating with friends and family, relative to when eating alone

• This is known as the ‘social facilitation of eating’

• We discuss gaps in the understanding of this phenomenon, and highlight areas for future research

Abstract: There is strong evidence that people eat more when eating with friends and family, relative to when eating alone. This is known as the ‘social facilitation of eating’. In this review, we discuss several gaps in the current scientific understanding of this phenomenon, and in doing so, highlight important areas for future research. In particular, we discuss the need for research to establish the longer-term consequences of social eating on energy balance and weight gain, and to examine whether people are aware of social facilitation effects on their own food intake. We also suggest that future research should aim to establish individual and contextual factors that moderate the social facilitation of eating (e.g. sex/gender), and it should clarify how eating socially causes people to eat more. Finally, we propose a novel evolutionary framework in which we suggest that the social facilitation of eating reflects a behavioural strategy that optimises the evolutionary fitness of individuals who share a common food resource.

Key words: Social facilitation of eatingSocial influencesEating behaviourEvolution

Both laypeople & working professionals (fraud investigators and auditors) use suspects’ angry responses to accusations as cues of guilt, but such anger is an invalid cue of guilt and is instead a valid cue of innocence

Anger Damns the Innocent. Katherine A. DeCelles et al. Psychological Science, July 28, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797621994770

Abstract: False accusations of wrongdoing are common and can have grave consequences. In six studies, we document a worrisome paradox in perceivers’ subjective judgments of a suspect’s guilt. Specifically, we found that people (including online panelists, n = 4,983, and working professionals such as fraud investigators and auditors, n = 136) use suspects’ angry responses to accusations as cues of guilt. However, we found that such anger is an invalid cue of guilt and is instead a valid cue of innocence; accused individuals (university students, n = 230) and online panelists (n = 401) were angrier when they are falsely relative to accurately accused. Moreover, we found that individuals who remain silent are perceived to be at least as guilty as those who angrily deny an accusation.

Keywords: accusations, deception, guilt, affect, decision making, open data, open materials, preregistered

A School-Based Drug Prevention Program on Sexual Risk Behavior Among Adolescents in Brazilian Schools may be ineffective & possibly harmful for preventing sexual risk behaviors, especially among girls

Effects of a School-Based Drug Prevention Program on Sexual Risk Behavior Among Adolescents in Brazilian Schools. Larissa F. Reis, Juliana Y. Valente, Zila M. Sanchez & Pamela J. Surkan. Archives of Sexual Behavior, Jul 27 2021. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007%2Fs10508-021-01977-y

Abstract: Sexual risk behaviors are closely related to the use of alcohol, tobacco, and other illicit drugs as well as teen dating violence. School-based drug prevention programs that teach social and personal skills could potentially also reduce sexual risk behaviors. We examined the effects of the #Tamojunto program on youth sexual risk behaviors. A randomized controlled trial was conducted with 6391 7th and 8th grade students in 72 public schools in six Brazilian cities. Baseline data were collected prior to program implementation. Two waves of follow-up assessments occurred after 9 and 21 months. Analyses were performed taking into account the multilevel structure of the data. We used intention-to-treat to evaluate changes in the prevalence of sexual risk behaviors over time and between groups. Adolescent age ranged from 11 to 15 years, with a mean of 12.6 ± 0.8 years, and 51.0% were female. Among all participants, receipt of #Tamojunto was associated with higher risk of lifetime sex at 21 months follow-up (OR 1.27, 95% CI [1.03, 1.56]). Among girls, at 9 months follow-up, the program was associated with higher likelihood of having engaged in sex in the last month (OR 1.76, 95% CI [1.13, 2.74]). At 21 months follow-up, girls receiving the program were more likely to report engaging in condomless sex in the last month (OR 1.64, 95% CI [1.07, 2.50]). #Tamojunto may be ineffective and possibly harmful for preventing sexual risk behaviors, especially among girls. We suggest further investigation of the possible mediating role of life skills intervention components on girl’s sexual behaviors.

Attentional Bias in Humans Toward Human and Bonobo Expressions of Emotion: The sex scenes were rated very positively, especially by male participants

Attentional Bias in Humans Toward Human and Bonobo Expressions of Emotion. Mariska E. Kret, Evy van Berlo. Evolutionary Psychology, July 28, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1177/14747049211032816

Abstract: Correctly recognizing and efficiently attending to emotional situations are highly valuable skills for social species such as humans and bonobos, humans' closest living relatives. In the current study, we investigated whether humans perceive a range of emotional situations differently when these involved other humans compared to bonobos. A large group of children and adults participated in an emotion perception task and rated scenes showing either bonobos or humans in situations depicting distressed or aggressive behavior, yawning, scratching, grooming, playing, sex scenes or neutral situations. A new group of people performed a dot-probe task to assess attentional biases toward these materials. The main finding is that humans perceive emotional scenes showing people similarly as emotional scenes of bonobos, a result reflecting a shared evolutionary origin of emotional expressions. Other results show that children interpreted bonobos’ bared teeth displays as a positive signal. This signal is related to the human smile, but is frequently seen in distressed situations, as was the case in the current experiment. Children may still need to learn to use contextual cues when judging an ambiguous expression as positive or negative. Further, the sex scenes were rated very positively, especially by male participants. Even though they rated these more positively than women, their attention was captured similarly, surpassing all other emotion categories. Finally, humans’ attention was captured more by human yawns than by bonobo yawns, which may be related to the highly contagious nature of yawns, especially when shown by close others. The current research adds to earlier work showing morphological, behavioral and genetic parallels between humans and bonobos by showing that their emotional expressions have a common origin too.

Keywords: emotion perception, attentional bias, evolution, cross-species, gender, age

Three key elements that drive character judgments: behavior (good vs. bad, norm violations, & deliberation), mind (intentions, explanations, capacities), & identity (appearance, social groups, & warmth).

Deconstructing Moral Character Judgments. Rachel Hartman, Will Blakey, Kurt Gray. Current Opinion in Psychology, July 28 2021. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.copsyc.2021.07.008

Abstract: People often make judgments of others’ moral character—an inferred moral essence that presumably predicts moral behavior. We first define moral character and explore why people make character judgments before outlining three key elements that drive character judgments: behavior (good vs. bad, norm violations, and deliberation), mind (intentions, explanations, capacities), and identity (appearance, social groups, and warmth). We also provide a taxonomy of moral character that goes beyond simply good vs. evil. Drawing from the Theory of Dyadic Morality, we outline a two-dimensional triangular space of character judgments (valence and strength/agency), with three key corners—heroes, villains, and victims. Varieties of perceived moral character include saints and demons, strivers/sinners and opportunists, the non-moral, virtuous and culpable victims, and pure victims.

Keywords: moralitymind perceptionsocial identitydyadic moralityagency

Box 1: Why people make moral character judgments

-  The Descriptive Reason: Because it is How People Think Exploring moral character is important because people naturally tell stories about their moral world with other people as characters. People generally create narratives to explain the world [5] and make sense of other people’s behaviors [69]—and characters are the stars of narratives. When people witness an immoral act, they construct stories about the agent committing the act. People are also essentialists: they view others as having an enduring essence, particularly when it comes to their morality [70] and use this essence to explain their behavior.

-  The Normative Reason: Because it is Useful for Predicting the Future In our evolutionary past, our survival depended on identifying cooperative partners [6,7]. We needed to know who to befriend and who to avoid, but cooperative situations are often complex [71]. Perceiving internal essences helps to make sense of our complex world [72] and seeing another’s behavior as driven by moral character helps to connect their underlying thoughts, feelings, motivations, desires, and intentions into a simple explanatory framework— they do good/evil because they are good/evil. Moral character perceptions therefore help reduce unwanted uncertainty [73, M.H. Turpin et al.].

We provide evidence that pet dogs distinguish between human true beliefs & false beliefs scenarios, suggesting that the mechanisms underlying sensitivity to others' beliefs have not evolved uniquely in the primate lineage

Dogs follow human misleading suggestions more often when the informant has a false belief. Lucrezia Lonardo, Christoph J. Völter, Claus Lamm and Ludwig Huber. Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences, July 21 2021. https://doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2021.0906

Abstract: We investigated whether dogs (Canis familiaris) distinguish between human true (TB) and false beliefs (FB). In three experiments with a pre-registered change of location task, dogs (n = 260) could retrieve food from one of two opaque buckets after witnessing a misleading suggestion by a human informant (the ‘communicator’) who held either a TB or a FB about the location of food. Dogs in both the TB and FB group witnessed the initial hiding of food, its subsequent displacement by a second experimenter, and finally, the misleading suggestion to the empty bucket by the communicator. On average, dogs chose the suggested container significantly more often in the FB group than in the TB group and hence were sensitive to the experimental manipulation. Terriers were the only group of breeds that behaved like human infants and apes tested in previous studies with a similar paradigm, by following the communicator's suggestion more often in the TB than in the FB group. We discuss the results in terms of processing of goals and beliefs. Overall, we provide evidence that pet dogs distinguish between TB and FB scenarios, suggesting that the mechanisms underlying sensitivity to others' beliefs have not evolved uniquely in the primate lineage.

4. Discussion

This study aimed at investigating whether dogs would spontaneously behave in a different way in response to a misleading suggestion from a human informant with a TB or a FB and this is indeed what we found in experiment 1. The combined results of experiments 1 and 2 suggest that retroactive interference is not a likely explanation for the behaviour of dogs in this task. Finally, the results of experiment 3 show that performance in this task is subject to breed (group) differences.

Both conditions of experiment 1 (TB and FB) were characterized by very similar behavioural cues: the hider always moved food from container A to container B; the communicator always left and re-entered the room after the same amount of time, and afterwards always suggested the empty container A. Hence, the only difference between the TB and FB condition in experiment 1 was the moment in which the communicator re-entered the room: before (TB) or after (FB) the food displacement by the hider. From this difference, it could be inferred whether the communicator could or could not see the displacement of food and hence whether she was left with a FB (that food was still in bucket A), or whether her belief (that food was in bucket B) was updated and veridical.

In the absence of any previous training, dogs in the two groups of experiment 1 (TB, FB) behaved differently in response to the same misleading suggestion. More dogs in the FB than in the TB group approached and touched the suggested (empty) container. Given that the two scenarios differed in the timing of the communicator re-entering the room, we introduced a third condition to rule out the possible influence of the moment of re-entry. Indeed, one could have argued that dogs in the FB group of experiment 1 might have been distracted by the salient event of the communicator re-entering the room after the final hiding of food and hence were more inclined to trust the human signal due to retroactive interference (as already proposed for FB studies with human infants and adults [20,49]).

The events in the CTB condition had the potential to elicit the same retroactive interference (if not more) as those in the FB scenario. Indeed, dogs in the CTB witnessed the communicator both leaving and re-entering the room after the final hiding of food. The combined results of experiments 1 and 2, however, show that dogs in the two true belief scenarios reacted in the same way despite the difference in the order of the events. Therefore, dogs' responses did not depend on subtle details of the sequence of events in the experimental procedure. In line with findings that dogs showed an ability to judge human informants on the basis of what these have seen or not [40], our findings thus add further evidence that dogs possess the ability to differentiate between human knowledge states.

Prior to running the experiments, we had predicted that more dogs from the true belief group should have followed the communicator's cue. Surprisingly, instead, more dogs followed the communicator's misleading suggestion when the latter was absent during the food displacement (FB group). Thus, their behaviour was opposite to that of Buttelmann et al.'s human infants and apes [17,41], and to our own pre-registered hypothesis. A possible explanation for this behavioural pattern might reside in the way the communicator's intention was interpreted. In our experiment, the communicator first (during the familiarization trials) proved to be a reliable helper for the dogs and then during the test suggested for the first time the wrong container. In Buttelmann et al.'s studies [17,41], the participants were the ones asked to help the experimenter retrieve a hidden object, which was of no value for the participants themselves. In this kind of helping paradigm, the experimenter's goal was not to communicate to participants the location of the hidden object, therefore it is unlikely that participants viewed the experimenter as untrustworthy. In our task, however, it is possible that dogs in the true belief group interpreted the communicator's misleading behaviour as deceitful, or driven by another (unknown) intention, and therefore more dogs in this group (TB) than in the FB group ignored her suggestion and chose bucket B.

Previous studies have shown that dogs do not follow human misleading pointing gestures blindly (although sometimes they find them difficult to ignore [50]); instead, they can adjust their behaviour flexibly depending on the trustworthiness of the informant [51] and can discriminate between helpful and uncooperative experimenters [52]. Along this line of argument, it seems plausible to assume that dogs in both groups remembered the final location of food (bucket B). However, the communicator's misleading suggestion in the TB scenario might have appeared as deceitful if dogs attributed a true belief to the communicator. Whereas the same misleading suggestion (of bucket A) might have appeared as a mistake ‘in good will’ in the FB scenario if dogs understood that the communicator lacked the relevant knowledge (ignorance) or that she believed food was actually in container A (FB). This might explain why more dogs in the FB than in the TB group followed the misleading suggestion. Indeed, previous research indicates that dogs readily conform to a familiar and unfamiliar human's influence in object-choice tasks even when there is no apparent need to do so and, crucially, even when conforming leads to a suboptimal outcome for the dog [45,53–57]. In particular, Prato-Previde et al. [53] found that younger dogs were more easily misled by a human's influence than older ones, similar to the age effect revealed when pooling experiments 1 and 2 in the current study. We decided to test dogs from five months of age because Barnard et al. [55] had shown that the tendency to conform to human misleading suggestions is present in puppies already at 4 months. Similarly to what happened in our setting, Topál et al. [44] found that dogs in a hiding-finding game kept searching for a toy in previous hiding locations they knew to be empty. The authors suggest that such a ‘rule-following’ behaviour might minimize social conflicts and enhance social cohesion with humans [26,58]. In our task, the communicator with a FB might have been perceived as a mistaken informant who was still playing the game by the same rules as in the familiarization. Instead, the communicator with a true belief (suddenly switching to uncooperativeness) might have been perceived as less trustworthy or violating the rules of the game and this might explain why her suggestion was ignored more often.

Although we did not predict nor pre-register substantial breed effects, we had decided to test only pure-bred dogs in order to be able to explore possible differences. This resulted in the finding that the behaviour of terriers deviated from the one of most other breed groups (electronic supplementary material, figure S2 and S6). In particular, already in experiment 1, we observed a difference in the choice pattern of terriers (FCI group 3), on the one hand, and other breed groups, such as FCI group 2 (in our sample, Schnauzers, Molossoids and Swiss Mountain and Cattledogs), FCI group 7 (pointing dogs) and FCI group 8 (in our sample, retrievers) on the other hand. Unlike other breeds, more terriers from the TB group than from the FB group chose the empty container.

To confirm this unpredicted result, we tested new cohorts of terriers and border collies in experiment 3. We replicated our initial findings: while border collies behaved in accordance with the majority of breeds in experiment 1 (although we did not find a statistically significant difference between conditions; for comparison, the performance of the border collies in experiment 1 is shown in electronic supplementary material, figure S2) terriers exhibited the opposite behavioural pattern. The response pattern of the latter FCI group matches our initial prediction and is consistent with human infants' and great apes’ performance in a similar task [17,41].

We can only speculate about the reasons for the observed differences between FCI groups. The breed differences that have been reported in a scientific context mainly concern specific temperament traits [59,60], behaviours [61–63] and interspecific communicative abilities (e.g. tendency to look at a human's face and to follow pointing gestures [64–66]). Based on the working history of some breeds, Gácsi et al. [64] classified dogs into two main categories: cooperative and independent workers. Accordingly, dogs in the first category have been selected for cooperating while keeping continuous visual contact with their human partner, whereas the latter have been selected for working without any human visual contact. The authors found that cooperative workers (e.g. shepherds and gundogs) were more willing than independent ones (e.g. terriers, hounds, greyhounds and sledge dogs) to follow human distal, temporary pointing gestures. However, only limited attention has been devoted to the empirical investigation of dog breed differences in cognition [67]. An interesting exception is the study by Heberlein et al. [68], who found that independent workers and family dogs, when forbidden to eat food, were more skilled at taking their owner's perspective than cooperative workers. Based on the results of experiment 1, we decided to compare dogs considered as cooperative workers (here: border collies) to independent workers (here: terriers) in experiment 3. Terriers were chosen because they had shown the initially hypothesized response pattern in experiment 1; border collies because they have been extensively tested in studies on social cognition in our and other laboratories [69–71].

In the current study, breed differences might be indicative of different interpretations of the intentions behind human communicative signals. Indeed, terriers were not only more independent of the communicators' signal irrespective of condition, but they also reacted in the opposite way to the scenarios compared to pointing dogs, retrievers, molossoids and border collies (electronic supplementary material, figure S2 and S6). In particular, it is possible that many of the ‘cooperative workers’ in our study interpreted the communicators' cue in the TB scenario as deceitful while many terriers interpreted it as motivated by the intention to show something new. Marshall-Pescini et al. [45] suggested that the intentions behind human actions might play an important role in causing dogs’ social bias (i.e. the tendency to make counterproductive choices under the influence of human signalling). From our findings, it seems possible that artificial selection made cooperative workers more skilled at detecting human deception relative to independent workers. Indeed, it has been suggested that one of the necessary conditions for the emergence of reciprocal altruism is that the cooperating animals need to be able to recognize cheaters [72]. However, to test this hypothesis, future research is needed to target specifically the reaction of a larger sample of other ‘independent workers' (e.g. sled dogs, hounds and greyhounds) to this task.

The evolutionary origin of dogs' ability to distinguish between TB and FB of humans remains an open question. Future studies should examine how dogs and wolves (Canis lupus) compare in the current paradigm. If dogs’ increased attention to human mental states results from the process of domestication, wolves are not likely to perform similarly to dogs. Additionally, future research should clarify based on broader phylogenetic comparisons (e.g. comparing dogs with other domesticated species or primate species) whether identical or only superficially similar mechanisms have evolved across species and taxa.

In conclusion, our study provides the first experimental evidence that dogs distinguish between a TB and a FB condition in a change-of-location task. Although in both conditions the communicator suggested the empty container, different numbers of dogs in the two groups followed this cue. For most dog breeds, this response pattern was in contrast to those found in human infants and great apes—with the notable exception of the terrier breed group. This raises the possibility that pet dogs attribute to human informants, in the absence of any training, not only different knowledge states, but also different intentions and beliefs. Distraction [20] is very unlikely to account for this finding. Indeed, not only the good performance in the familiarization phase but also the fact that the majority of dogs in experiment 1 (61.5%) and in the CTB group (72%) followed their own knowledge proved that the dogs were sufficiently attentive to find food hidden and displaced.

Based on the experience dogs made during the familiarization phase that the communicator's suggestion was trustworthy, the cueing of the empty container in the test has likely caused a conflicting information for the dogs. A possible account for the difference between FB and TB groups in dealing with this misleading suggestion by the human informant is in terms of mental state attribution. In the FB group, a decent number of dogs from cooperative breeds might have followed the wrong suggestion of the informant by attributing to her a FB and consequently a ‘justified’ mistake in good will. However, in the TB groups, a lower number of dogs followed the same suggestion because this appeared deceitful or at least unjustified based on the informant's epistemic state. By contrast, dogs from more independent breeds like terriers may have interpreted the TB informant's suggestion as invitation to explore the first hiding place further and therefore relatively more terriers of the TB group followed it. Of course, such mentalistic accounts in terms of how the situation appears from the communicator's perspective and what the intention of the communicator is when suggesting the wrong container, would need additional evidence from experiments with specific controls for other accounts (behavioural rules, ignorance, submentalizing, minimalist accounts, experiential record-keeping and awareness relations; see [6,18,20,49]). Until that, the possibility that dogs possess what seems at least an implicit FB understanding remains an exciting hypothesis.