Humans are social animals, but not everyone will be mindful of others to the same extent: Social mindfulness and prosociality vary across the globe (study of 31 nations and regions)

Social mindfulness and prosociality vary across the globe. Niels J. Van Doesum. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, August 31, 2021 118 (35) e2023846118; https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2023846118

Significance: Cooperation is key to well-functioning groups and societies. Rather than addressing high-cost cooperation involving giving money or time and effort, we examine social mindfulness—a form of interpersonal benevolence that requires basic perspective-taking and is aimed at leaving choice for others. Do societies differ in social mindfulness, and if so, does it matter? Here, we find not only considerable variation across 31 nations and regions but also an association between social mindfulness and countries’ performance on environmental protection. We conclude that something as small and concrete as interpersonal benevolence can be entwined with current and future issues of global importance.

Abstract: Humans are social animals, but not everyone will be mindful of others to the same extent. Individual differences have been found, but would social mindfulness also be shaped by one’s location in the world? Expecting cross-national differences to exist, we examined if and how social mindfulness differs across countries. At little to no material cost, social mindfulness typically entails small acts of attention or kindness. Even though fairly common, such low-cost cooperation has received little empirical attention. Measuring social mindfulness across 31 samples from industrialized countries and regions (n = 8,354), we found considerable variation. Among selected country-level variables, greater social mindfulness was most strongly associated with countries’ better general performance on environmental protection. Together, our findings contribute to the literature on prosociality by targeting the kind of everyday cooperation that is more focused on communicating benevolence than on providing material benefits.

Keywords: social mindfulnesscross-national differenceslow-cost cooperation

Discussion

Large-scale, industrialized societies differ in low-cost cooperation as operationalized using SoMi; in this broad overview, we found strong support for substantial cross-national variation (Fig. 1). This confirms that research on cooperation should look at nation-level differences (cf. ref. 28). Across three broad themes, SoMi was associated with individual trust and SVO and some societal and economic indices (religiosity, power distance, GDP, and Gini) but most strongly with the level of EPI within the targeted countries. We also found limited associations with demographic variables (parental education and SES). Ranking and pattern of associations for SoMi and SVO overlapped meaningfully but not substantially, confirming that low-cost cooperation should be investigated independently from costly cooperation.

Our primary aim was to provide an overview of cross-national differences in SoMi. The proportion of socially mindful decisions differed considerably across the samples in our study. Scores ranged from 46.2 (Indonesia) to 72.0% (Japan), with a gradual incline between the lowest and highest values (see Fig. 1). This pattern indicates that low-cost cooperation varies across nation-based populations and should be further investigated. Other than costly cooperation measured using tasks with monetary consequences, there is little research on nonmonetary, low-cost cooperation, even though “social life also involves low-cost cooperation, such as information sharing, showing respect, and conveying appreciation such as gratitude and compliments” [(36), p. 503].

Exploring potential mechanisms in a second step, we organized selected variables in three broader themes. Within the first theme, trusting others was associated with SoMi at individual level but not at country level. A common factor in research on costly cooperation (26, 30, 37), this finding could suggest that functional trust in low-cost cooperation is different from how trust operates in costly cooperation; however, scale reliability was low, and conclusions should be treated with caution. Looking at social preferences, we did find the expected positive association with SVO, which was moderate at individual level and larger at country level (4). Fig. 1 illustrates this correlation but at the same time shows clear differences of where countries are on the list. This distinction is corroborated by a fully different pattern of associations in step two of the analyses across all three themes. Only level of education seems to provide common ground, but even there it concerns parental (SoMi) versus individual (SVO) education. Together these findings provide evidence for the unique place of low-cost cooperation in general and SoMi in particular within the broader concept of human cooperation.

The second theme, investigations of selected societal variables and economic indices at country level, showed higher levels of SoMi for countries with lower levels of religiosity. This brings to mind that the common positive association between religiosity and subjective well-being strongly depends on societal factors; difficult life circumstances predict higher religiosity and thus greater well-being (38). SoMi seems associated with easier life circumstances, as indicated by associations with GDP, GNI, and Gini. We did not measure individual level religiosity, however, which makes it unclear if and how religiosity and SoMi are connected at the personal level. The simple relation between religiosity and cooperation in the literature (e.g., ref. 39) would suggest a positive association (but see refs. 26 and 40), and the community aspect of many religions could well promote SoMi, at least within one’s own community (2, 5). Additionally, the democratically installed and maintained rule of law showed a positive association with SoMi. The negative association with power distance (Hofstede dimensions) points in the same direction: SoMi—low-cost cooperation—is not driven by obeying those in power but by truly interpersonal relations in which others are seen and acknowledged as equals living under the same norms (3).

Following the third theme, SoMi was not correlated at individual level with most of the demographic variables we investigated. Although several correlations were statistically significant, effect sizes were generally too small to be meaningful. At country level, we found that SoMi was positively associated with parental education but negatively with SES. Seemingly contradictory, both parental education and SES are used as operationalizations of social class. One explanation for the divergent pattern is that parental education reflects what often is described as cultural capital, or class background (41), whereas the social ladder as a measure of subjective social class is based on one’s actual economic assessment, or class foreground (42, 43). Foreground and background complement each other but do not automatically overlap. That SoMi is positively related with background cultural capital but negatively with foreground economic hierarchy once more underlines that SoMi skips the economic costs. It also shows that social class is and remains a complex and multifaceted phenomenon to define (6).

Among all potential mechanisms we investigated, one solid effect needs to be highlighted. The country-level association between SoMi and EPI that washed out all other relations in our final model suggests that prosocial tendencies may not only be revealed in people’s orientation toward individual strangers but also toward a collective of strangers with a broader concern for environmental sustainability. This broader concern specifically combines protection of environmental health with the protection of ecosystems (44). The positive association connects with growing research on the social aspects of biodiversity conservation and sustainability initiatives that suggests that greater social capital is accompanied by greater and more successful environmental protection (45, 46), possibly a form of collective action (47). In terms of the SoMi paradigm, SoMi may not only reflect how people leave others choice at a micro level but also how they may want to leave the broader community of others a reasonably healthy earth to live on at a macro level. SoMi, then, is shaped by a socially interconnected environment in which the awareness of a “we,” “us,” and “our future” may all be equally accessible units of thought and action. Among other things, this may promote a social and political climate that helps recognize, address, and reduce climate change.

In the end, what best explains the general picture? Considering all findings, we suggest that SoMi may be conceptualized as a specific and effective expression of social capital (47⇓⇓–50), a comprehensive perspective on society with important implications for its development and functioning (30). Following one of the definitions, the economic function of social capital is to diminish the costs of formal coordination tasks by using informal social communication channels (51). From a relational perspective, such capital materializes through social interactions that include low-cost cooperation. Requiring no monetary or otherwise effortful investments to acknowledge, confirm, and promote high-trust social relationships, SoMi would be specifically set up to do so; the socially mindful person signals benevolence and trustworthiness (2, 3, 21). A promising connection with social capital is also suggested in the ranking of our locations: Japan, highest on the SoMi list, is traditionally known for stressing the value of social capital (52), and ranks 12th (of 180) on the Global Sustainable Competiveness Index social capital world index (53), while Indonesia, lowest on the SoMi list, ranks 70. A simple bivariate correlation without corrections learns that SoMi and social capital scores are associated at r (30) = 0.56, P = 0.002. Although quantifying social capital is difficult, this is corroborated by the relations we found between SoMi and the ensemble of variables lead by EPI and followed by economic indices (GDP, GNI, and Gini), rule of law, power distance, individual and generalized trust, and civic cooperation (tendency only), which all in their own way have been connected to presence and development of social capital (45⇓–47, 51). Future research could develop this.

Limitations and Future Research.

It should be noted that our findings specifically pertain to low-cost cooperation as measured using SoMi and that different results may be obtained when material costs of cooperation become high(er). Higher costs could make self-related thoughts more salient and thus may move people away from a “we mode” of thinking that is more natural for low-cost cooperation. Moreover, our explanation of SoMi as low-cost prosociality is mainly theoretical. To complete our tests, future research could compare SoMi with specific other forms of low-cost (e.g., helping that does not require time or effort) and costly cooperation (e.g., dictator or ultimatum games) in terms of important background psychological variables like personal values, personality (4, 54, 55), trust, intra- and intergroup dynamics, generalized reciprocity, and identification with the collective (56). One suggestion would be that low-cost cooperation is more common and even more intuitive than high-cost cooperation (57, 58). Numerous daily situations lend themselves to simple decisions that reflect regard for others—see our wine choice example—and have more important outcomes at the relational level than with regards to resource allocation. This makes it likely that for many individuals, kind behaviors are a matter of habit without much deliberation, but only when it does not cost them.

Importantly, the current data provide preliminary evidence; confirmatory research is certainly needed. Our findings are based on a cross-national investigation among mostly young, college-aged individuals, mainly in cities with reasonable access to universities or other institutions of higher education. As much as this constrains generalizability, however, the strength of this approach is that it provided much-needed experimental control and comparability between samples in this initial research. For a next step, more general samples could be targeted. Moreover, the mechanisms we examined were derived from three common theoretical frameworks but, given the novelty of the construct to cross-national comparisons, remain largely exploratory. For example, there may be factors we have not included that could shed more light on why SoMi varies across nations and regions. Hence, we strongly recommend follow-up research to include different samples that are representative of other parts of the population and use complementary experimental designs.

From 2003...The Second Law of Thermodynamics Is the First Law of Psychology: Evolutionary Developmental Psychology and the Theory Of Tandem, Coordinated Inheritances

From 2003... Tooby, J., Cosmides, L., & Barrett, H. C. (2003). The Second Law of Thermodynamics Is the First Law of Psychology: Evolutionary Developmental Psychology and the Theory Of Tandem, Coordinated Inheritances: Comment on Lickliter and Honeycutt (2003). Psychological Bulletin, 129(6), 858–865. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.129.6.858

Abstract: Organisms inherit a set of environmental regularities as well as genes, and these two inheritances repeatedly encounter each other across generations. This repetition drives natural selection to coordinate the interplay of stably replicated genes with stably persisting environmental regularities, so that this web of interactions produces the reliable development of a functionally organized design. Selection is the only known counterweight to the tendency of physical systems to lose rather than grow functional organization. This means that the individually unique and unpredictable factors in the web of developmental interactions are a disordering threat to normal development. Selection built anti-entropic mechanisms into organisms to orchestrate transactions with environments so that they have some chance of being organization-building and reproduction-enhancing rather than disordering.

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As evolutionary psychologists, we believe in design reincarnation based on two inheritances, not genetic preformationism based on one.

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Lessons for Psychology From Thermodynamics and Darwinism

The most basic lesson is that natural selection is the only known natural process that pushes populations of organisms thermodynamically uphill into higher degrees of functional order, or even offsets the inevitable increase in disorder that would otherwise take place. Therefore, all functional organization in undomesticated organisms that is greater than could be expected by chance (which is nearly all functional organization) is ultimately the result of the operation of natural selection and hence must be explained in terms of it (if it is to be explained at all). This is why understanding natural selection is enormously beneficial to any theoretically principled psychology. In effect, natural selection defines the design criteria to which organisms were built to conform. This is why knowledge of ancestral natural selection combined with knowledge of ancestral environments provides a principled theoretical framework for deriving predictions about the reliably developing design of the human mind. Natural selection is (a) the set of enduring, nonrandom, cause-and-effect relationships in the world that (b) interact with the reliably developing features of organisms (c) in such a way that they consistently cause some design variants to reproduce their designs more frequently than others because of their design differences. Hence, those traits that do not reliably develop across generations cannot be systematically interacted with by selection and thus will not be organized by the long-term operation of selection. Reciprocally, if a property of the world does not stably endure across generations, then it will not last long enough to cause some design features to supplant others in large populations, and its effects will not show up in the species-typical designs of organisms. Selection brings about a functional coordination between the stable, long-term properties of environments and the stable, cross-generationally recurrent, reliably developing (and hence predictable or prespecifiable) properties of organisms. In contrast, there is no process that guarantees that unique, novel interactions between environments and organisms will be functional. Hence, natural selection predicts and explains the extraordinarily nonrandom, functionally organized relationships that interpenetrate the species-wide designs of all organisms, including humans. Whenever one sees functional order, one is seeing the downstream contrivances of natural selection.

The outcomes of over 5 million chess games were analyzed; controlling for differences in chess skills, there was an enhanced performance among players who were competing outside of their home countries; advantage is approx 2%

The performance advantage of traveling. Uri Zak. Journal of Economic Psychology, August 28 2021, 102431. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.joep.2021.102431

Abstract: Many individuals travel between countries as part of their professional routines. How do they perform during those short trips abroad? To begin to answer this question, I analyzed the outcomes of over 5 million chess games played around the world. Importantly, tournament chess provides a clean setting in which location-dependent factors are mostly irrelevant; the audiences are quiet and the referees make hardly any judgments. Controlling for differences in chess skills, I found enhanced performance among players who were competing outside of their home countries. This finding was robust to additional controls such as age, sex, and skill momentum or game practice, and to the inclusion of individual or country fixed effects. This advantage, an approximately 2% increase in game outcome, suggests that traveling has a positive effect on performance.

Keywords: Home advantageChessCognitive performanceTravelSports

Similarities and differences in concepts of mental life among adults and children in five cultures (US, Ghana, Thailand, China, & Vanuatu)

Similarities and differences in concepts of mental life among adults and children in five cultures. Kara Weisman, Cristine H. Legare, Rachel E. Smith, Vivian A. Dzokoto, Felicity Aulino, Emily Ng, John C. Dulin, Nicole Ross-Zehnder, Joshua D. Brahinsky & Tanya Marie Luhrmann. Nature Human Behaviour, Aug 26 2021. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41562-021-01184-8

Abstract: How do concepts of mental life vary across cultures? By asking simple questions about humans, animals and other entities – for example, ‘Do beetles get hungry? Remember things? Feel love?’ – we reconstructed concepts of mental life from the bottom up among adults (N = 711) and children (ages 6–12 years, N = 693) in the USA, Ghana, Thailand, China and Vanuatu. This revealed a cross-cultural and developmental continuity: in all sites, among both adults and children, cognitive abilities travelled separately from bodily sensations, suggesting that a mind–body distinction is common across diverse cultures and present by middle childhood. Yet there were substantial cultural and developmental differences in the status of social–emotional abilities – as part of the body, part of the mind or a third category unto themselves. Such differences may have far-reaching social consequences, whereas the similarities identify aspects of human understanding that may be universal.

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We asked simple questions (Do beetles remember things? Do ghosts get hungry? Do chickens feel love?), and used people's answers to reconstruct concepts of mental life from the bottom up among adults and 6-12yo children in the US, Ghana, Thailand, China, & Vanuatu

Multivariate analysis of 1.5 million people identifies 579 genome-wide significant loci associated with a liability toward externalizing outcomes (problems of self-regulation and addiction)

Multivariate analysis of 1.5 million people identifies genetic associations with traits related to self-regulation and addiction. Richard Karlsson Linnér et al. Nature Neuroscience, Aug 26 2021. https://www.nature.com/articles/s41593-021-00908-3

Abstract: Behaviors and disorders related to self-regulation, such as substance use, antisocial behavior and attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, are collectively referred to as externalizing and have shared genetic liability. We applied a multivariate approach that leverages genetic correlations among externalizing traits for genome-wide association analyses. By pooling data from ~1.5 million people, our approach is statistically more powerful than single-trait analyses and identifies more than 500 genetic loci. The loci were enriched for genes expressed in the brain and related to nervous system development. A polygenic score constructed from our results predicts a range of behavioral and medical outcomes that were not part of genome-wide analyses, including traits that until now lacked well-performing polygenic scores, such as opioid use disorder, suicide, HIV infections, criminal convictions and unemployment. Our findings are consistent with the idea that persistent difficulties in self-regulation can be conceptualized as a neurodevelopmental trait with complex and far-reaching social and health correlates.

This chapter argues that the conventional theories and processes at the core of the discipline of political communication are rooted in assumptions that no longer hold and contexts that no longer exist

Young, Dannagal G., & Joanne Miller 2021. “Young and Miller, Political Communication in Oxford Handbook of Poli Psych 3rd Ed.” OSF Preprints. August 27. doi:10.31219/osf.io/mwdtu

Abstract: This chapter argues that the conventional theories and processes at the core of the discipline of political communication are rooted in assumptions that no longer hold and contexts that no longer exist. Today’s media users experience decentralized, interpersonal, horizontal, networked politically relevant communication every day. And they experience this socially-contextualized messaging within a system predicated on the economics and logics of micro-segmentation. We assert that these are qualitative shifts that necessitate a fundamental reconsideration and reimagining of the field of political communication. Specifically, we focus on how the shift away from traditional mass media models to networked, decentralized media systems through digital technologies has crucial implications for: a) the scope of what constitutes political communication and b) the integration of political psychology into the study of political communication.

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Echo Chambers. Another implication of the increasingly interpersonal nature of media experiences and the micro-segmentation of audiences is the potential formation of echo chambers and filter bubbles. As media choice increases, individuals can increasingly “opt in” or “out” of media experiences, facilitating selective exposure to and avoidance of ideologicallyconsonant – or even politically-relevant (Prior, 2007) – media content. In their paradigmchallenging essay, Bennett and Iyengar (2008) suggested that selectivity behaviors would be so great in this new media landscape, that media persuasion effects would all but disappear, even as other effects like agenda setting or priming might continue. “As media audiences devolve into smaller, like-minded subsets of the electorate,” they wrote, “it becomes less likely that media messages will do anything other than reinforce prior predispositions. Most media users will rarely find themselves in the path of attitude-discrepant information.” (p. 724).

Such “echo chambers” or “filter bubbles” became a growing concern among political scientists and political communication scholars from 2000 - 2010s (Sunstein, 2001), as empirical examinations pointed to a public engaging in selective exposure and avoidance of politicallydissonant mediated information in ways that could fuel political polarization (Stroud, 2011; see below). Yet, while echo chambers and filter bubbles are certainly made possible through media fragmentation, research has failed to produce substantial evidence to support the notion that most people restrict themselves to only like-minded media content (see Guess et al, 2018; Guess, 2021). Although selective exposure to like-minded content does occur, and moral-emotional content from elites spreads efficiently within their ideological social networks (especially on the 27 right) (Brady et al., 2019), evidence of selective-avoidance of belief-disconfirming information is scarce (Garrett, 2009). Barbera et al, (2015) conclude that “homophilic tendencies in online interaction do not imply that information about current events is necessarily constrained by the walls of an echo chamber” (p. 1539). Users tend to have diverse media diets and vary in the extent to which they pay attention to political or current events information (Guess, 2018), and those users who do pay attention to like-minded political content, pay more, not less attention to belief-dissonant programming (Garrett, Carnahan, & Lynch, 2011, Nelson & Webster, 2017). Even on social media, where algorithms and users themselves increase the ideological homogeneity of their newsfeeds (Bakshy, Messing, and Adamic 2015), users are still exposed to some belief-disconfirming information. In fact, in the most fragmented context of all, the internet, selective exposure and avoidance is complicated by social networks, where social media posts of friends and family can serve as heuristics that guide ideologically diverse information consumption (Masip, SuauMartinez, & Ruiz-Caballero, 2017; Messing and Westwood, 2014; Flaxman, Goel, & Rao, 2016; Zuiderveen et al., 2016), even trumping partisan selective exposure (Anspach, 2017). These results are supported by Dylko et al (2018) who find that although customized media experiences increase selective exposure dynamics in ways that increase political polarization, this effect is limited to customization processes that are automatically embedded within a technology. When users have the ability to customize media experiences, these relationships shrink, again highlighting how user agency often diversifies – rather than homogenizes – media diets. Such findings certainly call into question Bennett and Iyengar’s (2008) pronouncement of the “demise of the inadvertent audience” (p. 717). Whereas media fragmentation facilitates selective exposure and avoidance, the interpersonal networked nature of the social media experience does not. Yet attending to and being receptive to belief-disconfirming content are two different things that may be motivated by different goals. Knobloch-Westerwick and Klienman (2012), for example, find that people engage in less selective avoidance of belief-disconfirming information when they expect their side is going to lose, pointing to anticipated “informational utility” as individuals anticipate that exposure to belief-disconfirming content “can aid individuals in making future decisions” (p. 171). Valentino et al.’s (2009) work is consistent with this explanatory mechanism, with individuals seeking out belief-disconfirming content as a way of monitoring their information environments. In this work, anxiety was found to fuel information seeking behaviors, thereby increasing exposure to belief-disconfirming content, illustrating that these consumption behaviors are shaped by emotional needs of the audience. Finally, calls to relax the fears of echo chambers and filter bubbles are focused on the modal cases – the most likely outcomes for most people. This raises questions about whether we should be more concerned about the outcomes of users at the margins - culturally and politically. Boutyline and Willer (2017) for example, found that social networks (on Twitter) were most homogenous among those users with the most extreme political views. Evidence about the moderating role of political engagement is mixed; Guess (20121 finds a positive relationship between political engagement and media diet homogeneity, whereas Dubois and Blank (2018) find the reverse (see also Eady et al. 2019). Emotions such as anger may fuel the kind of dynamics that lead to concerning echo-chambers, while fear and anxiety may mitigate them (Wollebaek et al., 2019). Recent work by Stier et al. (2020) indicates that populist attitudes interact with contextual factors to fuel selective exposure patterns, with populist attitudes 29 contributing to lower (but not zero) exposure to traditional news and greater exposure to hyperpartisan outlets.

Investors who are male, or above the age of 45, or married, or have more dependents, or who self-identify as having excellent investment experience or knowledge tend to freak out with greater frequency

Elkind, Daniel and Kaminski, Kathryn and Lo, Andrew W. and Siah, Kien Wei and Wong, Chi Heem, When Do Investors Freak Out?: Machine Learning Predictions of Panic Selling (August 4, 2021). SSRN: http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3898940

Abstract: Despite standard investment advice to the contrary, individuals often engage in panic selling, liquidating significant portions of their risky assets in response to large losses. Using a novel dataset of 653,455 individual brokerage accounts belonging to 298,556 households, we document the frequency, timing, and duration of panic sales, which we define as a decline of 90% of a household account’s equity assets over the course of one month, of which 50% or more is due to trades. We find that a disproportionate number of households make panic sales when there are sharp market downturns, a phenomenon we call ‘freaking out’. We show that panic selling and freak outs are predictable and fundamentally different from other well-known behavioral patterns such as over trading or the disposition effect. Investors who are male, or above the age of 45, or married, or have more dependents, or who self-identify as having excellent investment experience or knowledge tend to freak out with greater frequency. We use a five-layer neural network model to predict freak out events one month in advance, given recent market conditions and an investor’s demographic attributes and financial history, which exhibited true negative and positive accuracy rates of 81.5% and 69.5%, respectively, in an out-of-sample test set. We measure the opportunity of cost of panic sales and find that, while freaking out does protect investors during a crisis, such investors often wait too long to reinvest, causing them to miss out on significant profits when markets rebound.

Keywords: Panic Selling; Stop-Loss; Tactical Asset Allocation; Freaking Out; Deep Learning; Behavioral Finance

JEL Classification: G11, G01, G02, D14, D91

Given the overwhelming whiteness of BDSM in both research and practice, we need to build inclusive BDSM communities that continue to naturalize this whiteness

Overwhelming whiteness of BDSM: A critical discourse analysis of racialization in BDSM. Katherine Martinez. Sexualities, July 17, 2020. https://doi.org/10.1177/1363460720932389

Abstract: Ahmed’s (2007) theory of the phenomenology of whiteness serves as a theoretical tool for assessing how whiteness presents itself within bondage, discipline, dominance/submission, and sadomasochism (BDSM) play. Given the “overwhelming whiteness” of BDSM in both research and practice, this study serves as a theory-building exercise for analyzing the relationship between what researchers have described as inclusive BDSM communities that continue to naturalize the whiteness of BDSM spaces. Through critical discourse analysis of interviews and blog submissions from BDSM participants, this study reflects on the whiteness of BDSM. Analyses suggest that the differences between white and racialized BDSM participants in their explanations for the whiteness of BDSM continue to support and privilege the white experience in white BDSM spaces.

Keywords: Critical discourse analysis, racialization, sadomasochism, whiteness

Consecration in American Sociology, 1980–2020: The number of awards & honorable mentions has grown dramatically despite the number of American Sociology Asssociation sections being constant & membership having declined

Visualizing the Expanding Space of Consecration in American Sociology, 1980–2020. Nicholas Hoover Wilson, Damon Mayrl. Socius: Sociological Research for a Dynamic World, August 26, 2021. https://doi.org/10.1177/23780231211038366

Abstract: This visualization explores changes in the scope and dynamics of consecration within American sociology by examining awards granted to members of the American Sociological Association’s (ASA) constituent sections. Consecration is important because it signals quality to nonspecialists, boosts intellectual careers, and can be a crucial vector introducing various forms of inequality. We show that with ASA sections, the number of awards, multiple award winners, and honorable mentions has grown dramatically, especially since 2010, and that this has occurred even as the number of ASA sections has remained constant and overall ASA membership has declined.

Keywords: knowledge, science, consecration, awards, academic disciplines

Capuchin monkeys: Cognitive performance was impaired by negative experiences; contrary to predictions, positive experiences did not have a facilitative effect on cognitive performance

Webster, M. F., & Brosnan, S. F. (2021). The effects of positive and negative experiences on subsequent behavior and cognitive performance in capuchin monkeys (Sapajus [Cebus] apella). Journal of Comparative Psychology, Aug 2021. https://doi.org/10.1037/com0000277

Abstract: Our understanding of animals’ affective processing is notably limited compared to the wealth of research on humans, largely due to difficulties in measurement. Moreover, despite a recent increase in the understanding of the interaction between affect and cognition in animals, most research has focused on negative affect, with the result that we continue to know little about the effects of positive affect. In this study, we tested 15 adult capuchin monkeys (Sapajus [Cebus] apella) using a novel methodology that took advantage of capuchins’ species-typical behavior to engineer both a positive and negative experience, using the same apparatus to minimize extraneous impacts. Following a positive or negative experience (that presumably induced positive and negative affect, respectively), or a control with no manipulation, we assessed subjects’ performance on a cognitive task, a computerized delayed match-to-sample. As predicted, behavior following the negative condition suggested a negative affective state, with increased rates of scratching (commonly used as an indicator of stress in nonhuman primates) compared to both the positive and control conditions. Cognitive performance was also impaired in the negative condition compared to the other two. Contrary to predictions, however, the positive condition did not have a facilitative effect on cognitive performance, but behavioral results indicate that we may not have induced a truly positive affective state. Although we add to evidence that a negative experience can influence subsequent behavior and cognitive performance in nonhuman primates, our work highlights our lack of knowledge about the impact of positive affect, if any, on behavior and cognition.

Jealousy was 29% heritable, and non-shared environmental influences explained the remaining variance (71%); no transmission of relationship models from parents to children

Why are some people more jealous than others? Genetic and environmental factors. Tom R. Kupfer et al. Evolution and Human Behavior, August 27 2021. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2021.08.002

Abstract: Research on romantic jealousy has traditionally focused on sex differences. We investigated why individuals vary in romantic jealousy, even within the sexes, using a genetically informed design of ~7700 Finnish twins and their siblings. First, we estimated genetic, shared environmental and nonshared environmental influences on jealousy, Second, we examined relations between jealousy and several variables that have been hypothesized to relate to jealousy because they increase the risk (e.g., mate-value discrepancy) or costs (e.g., restricted sociosexuality) of infidelity. Jealousy was 29% heritable, and non-shared environmental influences explained the remaining variance. The magnitude and sources of genetic influences did not differ between the sexes. Jealousy was associated with: having a lower mate value relative to one's partner; having less trust in one's current partner; having been cheated by a previous or current partner; and having more restricted sociosexual attitude and desire. Within monozygotic twin pairs, the twin with more restricted sociosexual desire and less trust in their partner than his or her co-twin experienced significantly more jealousy, showing that these associations were not merely due to the same genes or family environment giving rise to both sociosexual desire or trust and jealousy. The association between sociosexual attitude and jealousy was predominantly explained by genetic factors (74%), whereas all other associations with jealousy were mostly influenced by nonshared environmental (non-familial) factors (estimates >71%). Overall, our findings provide some of the most robust support to date on the importance of variables predicted by mate-guarding accounts to explain why people vary in jealousy.

Keywords: JealousyTwinsMate value discrepancyTrustInfidelitySociosexualityIndividual differencesGenetics

4. Discussion

The current research aimed to shed light on why people differ in romantic jealousy. Our findings suggest that people differ in jealousy partly because of genetic influences, but mostly because of nonshared environmental influences. We did not detect an influence of the shared environment on jealousy. We also examined associations between jealousy and specific variables that have been hypothesized by mate-guarding accounts to influence jealousy proneness. Our findings provide some of the most robust evidence to date that mate value discrepancy, trustworthiness of a mate, and sociosexuality are associated with romantic jealousy.

Overall, 29% of variation in jealousy was attributable to genetic factors, with the remainder attributable to the nonshared environment. This genetic contribution to variation is on the low side compared to other psychological traits, including measurements of personality and emotions, for which the heritability is typically closer to 50% (Polderman, Benyamin, de Leeuw, et al., 2015). However, our finding is in line with those of Walum, Larsson, Westberg, Lichtenstein, and Magnusson (2013), who reported that sexual and emotional jealousy were 32% and 26% heritable, respectively. Also in line with Wallum et al., we found no evidence for sex differences in the magnitude of genetic and environmental influences on jealousy, or for different genetic or non-shared environmental influences operating in men or women. In other words, even though women reported higher jealousy than men, individual variation in jealousy within the sexes was influenced similarly by genetic and environmental factors.

The finding that familial environmental influences did not influence jealousy has theoretical implications. According to influential accounts of attachment theory, mental models of relationship expectations are transmitted from parents to children, through learning during infancy (Fonagy & Target, 2005; Van IJzendoorn, 1995; Verhage et al., 2016; c.f., Barbaro et al., 2017), and these mental models later determine emotion reactions, including jealousy, towards perceived relationship threats in adulthood (Mikulincer & Shaver, 2005; Sharpsteen & Kirkpatrick, 1997). Our finding that variation in jealousy is not influenced by familial environmental factors, which includes parenting, is inconsistent with these accounts. An implication is that research that seeks to understand variation in – and the development of – jealousy should attend more to genetic and nonshared environmental influences than to shared environmental factors such as parenting behavior. However, one caveat is that a limitation of twin studies is that they do not control for genetic and environmental interplay (for example, parental genes shaping the twin's family environment) which can confound the estimate of the influence of the family environment (Keller, Medland, & Duncan, 2010). Therefore, it is safest to say that we found no influence of the family environment ‘independent of genetic factors’ (Turkheimer, D'Onofrio, Maes, & Eaves, 2005).

In contrast to attachment theory's parental transmission account, mate-guarding perspectives hypothesize that jealousy should be primarily influenced by factors that increase the risk of infidelity by one's mate (Buss, 2013). These will often be socio-ecological variables (e.g., the attractiveness of one's mate, or the number of rivals in one's environment) which presumably derive more from the nonshared environment than the shared environment. Our finding of a substantial nonshared environmental influence on variation in jealousy is therefore consistent with mate-guarding accounts (though not uniquely consistent with those accounts). Note, however, that the estimate of the nonshared environment also includes measurement error.

The second aim of our study was to examine three of the variables predicted by mate-guarding accounts to influence jealousy: mate value discrepancy, cues to a mate's likelihood of infidelity (namely trust and actual experiences of infidelity), and sociosexuality. The strongest predictors of jealousy were more restricted sociosexual attitude and desire. Further, these relations were stronger for people in a relationship and for women. More sociosexually-restricted individuals may be more invested in fewer relationships and more motivated to protect them and, hence, experience more jealousy in response to cues to infidelity threats (Brase et al., 2014; Buss, 2013; Russell & Harton, 2005). Previous studies have most often not detected associations between jealousy and sociosexual orientation (Harris, 2003; Peters et al., 2014; Russell & Harton, 2005), but our findings were based on a much larger sample of individuals (N > 7000) than previous studies. The current finding was further strengthened by the discordant-twin design analysis within monozygotic twin pairs, which also detected a negative association between sociosexual desire and jealousy. This approach suggests that the association does not arise merely because sociosexual desire and jealousy emerge from the same genetic or family environmental sources. Results from the bivariate twin analyses were in accordance because they showed that nonshared environmental factors instead of familial factors explained the majority of the association (71%). Although it is therefore possible that restricted sociosexual desire causes higher jealousy, co-twin-control analyses cannot guarantee causal relationships or rule out reverse causation (McGue et al., 2010). Reverse causation (or bi-directional causation) is plausible, if, for example, individuals with higher jealousy pursue more exclusive relationships to reduce the possibility of infidelity by their mate.

Consistent with previous findings, people who reported being cheated on in the past, and those cheated on in their current relationship, also reported greater jealousy (Bendixen et al., 2015; Burchell & Ward, 2011; Edlund et al., 2006; Murphy et al., 2006; Sagarin et al., 2003). Additionally, having lower trust in one's partner was associated with higher jealousy (both on individual level and when we compared monozygotic co-twins discordant on trust in their partner). Therefore, findings suggest that variables assessing cues to a mate's likelihood of infidelity (trust and actual experiences of infidelity) relate to jealousy.

Also consistent with previous studies (Buss & Shackelford, 1997; Sidelinger & Booth-Butterfield, 2007), individuals who reported having a lower mate value than their partner reported higher jealousy. When examining associations within monozygotic twins only, those associations were non-significant (unlike associations between jealousy and sociosexual desire and mate trustworthiness), so the possibility that the association is due to similar genes influencing both mate value discrepancy and jealousy cannot be ruled out. However, the regression betas in the discordant twin design did not decrease in size, suggesting that the sample size of monozygotic twins may have been underpowered to detect an association. Moreover, the bivariate analyses did not detect familial influences on the association between jealousy and mate value discrepancy, indicating that the association between mate value discrepancy and jealousy is unlikely to be explained by similar genes or shared familial influences.

The study has some limitations. First, all measurements were based on self-reports. While the use of self-report questionnaires is common in psychology research (including most of the jealousy literature), they can be prone to measurement bias due to factors such as social desirability, which could, for example, have contributed to the low prevalence of cheating reported in our sample. Nonetheless, our self-report jealousy scale, which used 11 items describing jealousy-eliciting situations of varying severity, was likely to be a more sensitive measure of jealousy than measures commonly used. Many previous studies (e.g., Walum et al., 2013) have assessed jealousy with only two items asking participants how upset they would be in response to their partner's sexual infidelity and their partner's emotional infidelity. Another limitation was that the sample of discordant twin pairs contributing to the discordant-twin design analyses was much smaller than the sample in the overall regression analyses. Therefore, non-significant effects of sociosexual attitude, being cheated on in the past, and mate value discrepancy on jealousy within monozygotic twins could be due to lower power in these analyses. There are other potentially influential environmental variables that we were not able to assess in the current research. For example, perceived number and quality of rivals has been hypothesized to increase jealousy by increasing risks of cuckoldry or mate poaching (Buss, 2013; Pollet & Saxton, 2020), and perspectives other than the mate-guarding account propose that variables such as self-esteem are associated with jealousy (DeSteno, Valdesolo, & Bartlett, 2006). Future research on these factors using genetically informed studies would be valuable. Additionally, future research would benefit from using children-of-twins or nuclear twin designs that allow for the estimation of interplay between sources of variance that are impossible to disentangle using classical twin designs and might bias estimation of shared environmental influences (Keller et al., 2010).

In summary, this study confirms that people differ in jealousy partly because of genetic influences, but mostly because of nonshared environmental influences. Our findings provide some of the most robust evidence in support of several factors that have been hypothesized by mate-guarding accounts to influence jealousy proneness, and show that these factors similarly influence both men and women. Discerning the causes of variation in jealousy is an important step towards tackling the socially harmful consequences of jealousy, such as domestic violence and homicide.

Increases in happiness, but not in depression, were associated with people being in a higher group of cardiovascular risk, despite the literature that says that subjective well-being has a protective role over cardiovascular health

Happiness is related to cardiovascular risk: a cross-sectional study in Spain. Oriol Yuguero, Ana Blasco-Belled, Álvaro Vilela & Carles Alsinet. Psychology, Health & Medicine, Aug 26 2021. https://doi.org/10.1080/13548506.2021.1971726

Abstract: The study of cardiovascular risk factors has been deeply described in recent years, but the findings on the complex role of psychological indicators (i.e. happiness and depression) on cardiovascular health are mixed. The primary goal of our study was to examine the extent to which certain psychological aspects, namely happiness and depression, can predict cardiovascular risk. A sample of 173 (Mage = 44.9, SD = 14; 62% females) individuals from the general population who attended a public hospital of Lleida (Spain) participated voluntarily in the study. We measured happiness, depression and different clinical and sociodemographic variables. The sample reported low levels of depression and moderate levels of happiness, overweight levels of body mass index and mainly low levels of cardiovascular risk. Happiness was correlated positively to cardiovascular risk and negatively to depression. Increases in happiness, but not in depression, were associated with people being in a higher group of cardiovascular risk. Despite a body of literature indicates that subjective well-being has a protective role over cardiovascular health, the contradictory findings of our study might be explained by several factors. The present findings invite to consider the complex and indirect influence of happiness on physical health. Future research should investigate the potential biological and behavioral processes of happiness linked with increases in cardiovascular risk.

KEYWORDS: Happinessdepressioncardiovascular riskmental healthcardiovascular health

A 15 to 25 pct reduction in expected returns for drugs in the top quintile of expected returns is associated with a 0.5 pct annual reduction in number of new drugs in the 1st decade, increasing to an 8 pct in the 3rd decade

Simulation Model of New Drug Development. CBO, Working Paper 2021-09. Aug 26 2021. https://www.cbo.gov/publication/57010

Summary: This paper presents the Congressional Budget Office’s simulation model for analyzing legislative proposals that may substantially affect new drug development. The model uses estimates of changes in expected future profits or development costs to estimate the percent change in the number of drug candidates entering the various stages of human clinical trials. Given changes in decisions to enter at each stage, the model estimates when and by how much the number of new drugs entering the market will change. To illustrate the implications of the model, the paper considers a legislative change that lowers expected returns for the top-earning drugs. A 15 percent to 25 percent reduction in expected returns for drugs in the top quintile of expected returns is associated with a 0.5 percent average annual reduction in the number of new drugs entering the market in the first decade under the policy, increasing to an 8 percent annual average reduction in the third decade. The analysis takes the estimated impact of the policy on expected returns as given. In CBO’s assessment, those estimates are in the middle of a wide distribution of potential effects. The effects could be smaller if expenditures in late-phase human trials are larger, for example. Alternatively, the effects could be larger if the cost of capital is larger.

Keywords: health care, prescription drugs, new drug development

Notable sex differences in autonomic functioning among trauma-exposed individuals: A prospective examination

A prospective examination of sex differences in posttraumatic autonomic functioning. Antonia V. Seligowski et al. Neurobiology of Stress, Volume 15, November 2021, 100384. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ynstr.2021.100384

Abstract

Background: Cross-sectional studies have found that individuals with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) exhibit deficits in autonomic functioning. While PTSD rates are twice as high in women compared to men, sex differences in autonomic functioning are relatively unknown among trauma-exposed populations. The current study used a prospective design to examine sex differences in posttraumatic autonomic functioning.

Methods: 192 participants were recruited from emergency departments following trauma exposure (Mean age = 35.88, 68.2% female). Skin conductance was measured in the emergency department; fear conditioning was completed two weeks later and included measures of blood pressure (BP), heart rate (HR), and high frequency heart rate variability (HF-HRV). PTSD symptoms were assessed 8 weeks after trauma.

Results: 2-week systolic BP was significantly higher in men, while 2-week HR was significantly higher in women, and a sex by PTSD interaction suggested that women who developed PTSD demonstrated the highest HR levels. Two-week HF-HRV was significantly lower in women, and a sex by PTSD interaction suggested that women with PTSD demonstrated the lowest HF-HRV levels. Skin conductance response in the emergency department was associated with 2-week HR and HF-HRV only among women who developed PTSD.

Conclusions: Our results indicate that there are notable sex differences in autonomic functioning among trauma-exposed individuals. Differences in sympathetic biomarkers (BP and HR) may have implications for cardiovascular disease risk given that sympathetic arousal is a mechanism implicated in this risk among PTSD populations. Future research examining differential pathways between PTSD and cardiovascular risk among men versus women is warranted.

Keywords: TraumaPTSDAutonomicSexCardiovascular

5. Discussion

This study used a prospective design to examine sex differences in autonomic functioning among a sample of recently traumatized men and women. Sex differences were observed and varied by biomarker. While men demonstrated significantly higher BP and rates of hypertension, women demonstrated significantly higher HR and lower HF-HRV, and these effects were strongest among women who subsequently developed PTSD. Further, acute sympathetic arousal (indexed via skin conductance response) associated with HR and HF-HRV during fear conditioning but only among women who developed PTSD.

Our findings regarding BP and hypertension are consistent with what is commonly observed in the general population, such that men are more likely than women to experience hypertension (American Heart Association, heart.org). This sex difference is known to decrease among older age groups and it is thought that decreasing estradiol levels as a result of menopause in women play a role (i.e., estradiol is cardioprotective and may explain lower rates of hypertension in pre-menopausal women; for reviews, see Colafella and Denton, 2018; Regitz-Zagrosek et al., 2016). It is important to note that the average age in our sample was 35 and thus most women were pre-menopausal. While prior studies have found that individuals with PTSD demonstrate higher BP than those without PTSD (for a review, see Buckley and Kaloupek, 2001), we did not observe an effect of PTSD status. One potential explanation is that our sample is not as highly traumatized as comparisons in prior work (e.g., most participants were in motor vehicle collisions). Similarly, BP was assessed with only one measurement and this occurred two weeks following trauma exposure. It is therefore possible that the higher levels of BP observed in prior PTSD studies were a result of more chronic PTSD symptoms and sympathetic hyperarousal, which our study did not capture.

In terms of HR and HF-HRV, our findings indicate that women experienced worse autonomic functioning during fear conditioning compared to men, and this was particularly seen in those women who subsequently developed PTSD. Specifically, trauma-exposed women demonstrated stronger sympathetic arousal and worse parasympathetic control than men during fear learning, where main effects of sex were observed, and those with PTSD demonstrated particularly worse functioning during extinction. This is consistent with prior literature implicating extinction deficits as a biomarker specific to PTSD (Jovanovic et al., 2012) and further suggests that women may be more likely than men to experience these deficits. Given that HF-HRV has been shown to be higher in healthy women compared to men (for a review, see Koenig and Thayer, 2016), our findings also highlight the importance of trauma and PTSD status in sex differences in autonomic function. The lack of sex differences in eyeblink startle (a brainstem-mediated reflex and not an autonomic indicator) suggests that there may be specificity of our sex-based findings to peripheral autonomic and cardiovascular physiology (i.e., HR and HF-HRV). Additionally, low levels of estradiol have been implicated as a contributing factor to fear inhibition and extinction deficits in women with PTSD (indexed via eyeblink startle; Glover et al., 2012, 2013) as well as healthy controls (indexed via skin conductance; Milad et al., 2010). Thus, future research is needed to determine if an interaction between PTSD status and high versus low estradiol confers greater risk for autonomic and inhibition/extinction deficits (indexed via startle) in trauma-exposed women.

eSense has previously demonstrated utility in predicting PTSD status and symptom trajectory when used to measure skin conductance in recently traumatized individuals in emergency departments (Hinrichs et al., 2019). Our findings suggest it may have additional, and perhaps more specific utility among women, such that eSense skin conductance levels were significantly associated with future HR and HF-HRV only in women who developed PTSD. Given that autonomic deficits have been implicated in the increased risk of cardiovascular disease in PTSD, future research testing eSense as a predictor of autonomic functioning and subsequent cardiac events could be extremely useful in determining which trauma-exposed individuals are at highest risk for developing cardiovascular disease. Findings from the current study indicate that this may be a particularly useful tool among women, though replication is needed.

Our findings regarding sex differences in autonomic functioning may have clinical implications. Specifically, men and women differed in their sympathetic arousal, with men demonstrating higher BP and women demonstrating higher HR. Further, women demonstrated lower parasympathetic function than men. As mentioned above, autonomic deficits have been implicated in the increased risk of cardiovascular disease in PTSD. Our findings suggest that the specific autonomic mechanisms through which cardiovascular disease develops could differ for men versus women with PTSD. For example, there is preliminary evidence that blockade of the renin-angiotensin system (responsible for BP regulation) via ace-inhibitors and angiotensin receptor blockers is associated with decreased likelihood of PTSD diagnosis (Khoury et al., 2012; Seligowski et al., 2021). We recently observed a sex effect such that the protective effects of these medications may be greater among men versus women (Seligowski et al., 2021). Thus, medications targeting BP may be more effective in men versus women with PTSD because men are more likely to experience hypertension and therefore see an effect of such medications. Prospective trials of antihypertensive medications for PTSD are needed to further explore sex differences in their effects. Another possible avenue for future trials is to determine if the autonomic deficits we observed during extinction in women with PTSD translate to clinical outcomes (e.g., do women with PTSD experience less symptom reduction from exposure treatments than men?). Thus far, sex differences in exposure-based treatments have not been reported, but we are not aware of any trials that examined sex differences in autonomic functioning during these treatments.

While capturing acute trauma reactions with a prospective design is a strength of this study, an important limitation is that our sample is not as highly symptomatic as comparisons from the literature. For example, we did not see main effects of PTSD status on BP, HR, of HF-HRV and this may be due to the recency of trauma exposure and the absence of severe PTSD symptoms in this cohort. Another limitation relates to trauma type, such that the index trauma for most participants was a motor vehicle collision and the incidence of PTSD in that population is lower than that of other trauma types, such as interpersonal violence and combat exposure (Kessler et al., 2017). Additionally, while we used a recommended cutoff for provisional PTSD diagnosis (Bovin et al., 2016) at 8-weeks, the current study relied on self-reported symptoms and did not include a structured clinical interview of PTSD. Future studies with more robust PTSD assessment among individuals with a broader range of trauma exposure will be needed to replicate and extend our findings. Despite these limitations, this study adds to a very scant literature regarding both 1) prospective assessments of posttraumatic autonomic functioning and 2) sex differences in posttraumatic autonomic functioning.

The current study identified sex differences in multiple domains of autonomic functioning among a recently traumatized sample. Our findings suggest that men and women demonstrate different patterns of sympathetic arousal, with men exhibiting higher BP and women exhibiting higher HR. Women also exhibited worse parasympathetic function as indicated by lower HF-HRV during fear conditioning, as was particularly seen in women who developed PTSD. Acute sympathetic arousal indexed by skin conductance in the emergency department was associated with HR and HF-HRV among women who developed PTSD, suggesting it may be a useful biomarker of subsequent autonomic functioning in this population. Additional studies examining subsequent sex differences in cardiovascular risk as a result of differential autonomic mechanisms are warranted.

Consumers Believe That Products Work Better for Others... including that medical products, social distancing against COVID-19, and SARS-CoV-2 vaccines

Consumers Believe That Products Work Better for Others. Evan Polman, Ignazio Ziano, Kaiyang Wu, Anneleen Van Kerckhove. Journal of Consumer Research, ucab048, August 18 2021. https://doi.org/10.1093/jcr/ucab048

Abstract: Consumers tend to see themselves in a positive light, yet we present evidence that they are pessimistic about whether they will receive a product’s benefits. In 15 studies (N = 6,547; including nine pre-registered), we found that consumers believe that product efficacy is higher for others than it is for themselves. For example, consumers believe that consuming an adult coloring book (to inspire creativity), a sports drink (to satisfy thirst), medicine (to relieve pain), or an online class (to learn something new) will have a greater effect on others than on themselves. We show that this bias holds across many kinds of products and judgment-targets, and inversely correlates with factors such as product familiarity, product usefulness, and relationship closeness with judgment-targets. Moreover, we find this bias stems from consumers’ beliefs they are more unique and less malleable than others, and that it alters the choices people make for others. We conclude by discussing implications for research on gift-giving, advice-giving, usership, and interpersonal social, health, and financial choices.

Keywords: perceived product efficacy, self-other differences, stimulus sampling, linear mixed effects modeling, perceived uniqueness, perceived malleability