Disgust sensitivity relates to attitudes toward gay men and lesbian women across 31 nations

Previous work has reported a relation between pathogen-avoidance motivations and prejudice toward various social groups, including gay men and lesbian women. It is currently unknown whether this association is present across cultures, or specific to North America. Analyses of survey data from adult heterosexuals ( N = 11,200) from 31 countries showed a small relation between pathogen disgust sensitivity (an individual-difference measure of pathogen-avoidance motivations) and measures of antigay attitudes. Analyses also showed that pathogen disgust sensitivity relates not only to antipathy toward gay men and lesbians, but also to negativity toward other groups, in particular those associated with violations of traditional sexual norms (e.g., prostitutes). These results suggest that the association between pathogen-avoidance motivations and antigay attitudes is relatively stable across cultures and is a manifestation of a more general relation between pathogen-avoidance motivations and prejudice towards groups associated with sexual norm violations.

When intelligence hurts and ignorance is bliss: Global pandemic as an evolutionarily novel threat to happiness

Introduction

The savanna theory of happiness posits that it is not only the current consequences of a given situation that affect happiness but also its ancestral consequences, and that the effect of ancestral consequences on happiness is stronger among less intelligent individuals. But what about situations that did not exist in the ancestral environment and thus have no ancestral consequences? Global pandemic is one such situation that has no ancestral analog, and the theory predicts such evolutionarily novel threats to have a negative effect disproportionately on the life satisfaction of more intelligent individuals.

Methods

We analyzed prospectively longitudinal data from population samples from the National Child Development Study (Study 1) and the British Cohort Study (Study 2).

Results

Consistent with the theoretical prediction, while more intelligent individuals were generally more satisfied with their lives than less intelligent individuals were throughout adulthood (albeit not because they were more intelligent but because they earned more money, were more likely to be married, and healthier), more intelligent individuals were less satisfied with their lives during the COVID‐19 global pandemic because they were more intelligent.

Conclusion

Higher intelligence may have a downside in the modern world, by allowing life satisfaction to be more vulnerable from being better able to comprehend the severity of problems that did not exist in the ancestral world.

Sunshine on my shoulders makes me happy. . . especially if I'm less intelligent: how sunlight and intelligence affect happiness in modern society

The savanna theory of happiness proposes that, due to evolutionary constraints on the human brain, situations and circumstances that would have increased our ancestors' happiness may still increase our happiness today, and those that would have decreased their happiness then may still decrease ours today. It further proposes that, because general intelligence evolved to solve evolutionarily novel problems, this tendency may be stronger among less intelligent individuals. Because humans are a diurnal species that cannot see in the dark, darkness always represented danger to our ancestors and may still decrease our happiness today. Consistent with this prediction, the analysis of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent to Adult Health (Add Health) data shows that exposure to sunlight was associated with happiness but the association was significantly weaker among more intelligent individuals.

Testing the Mate Preference Priority Model with the Profile-Based Experimental Paradigm: A Replication and Extension

OBJECTIVE

Although the mate preference priority model (MPPM; Li et al., 2002) has advanced our understanding of mate preferences, tests of the MPPM have relied on methods using text labels and thus lack ecological validity. We address this gap by testing the MPPM using Townsend and colleagues' (1990a; 1990b; 1993) profile-based experimental paradigm, which utilizes profiles comprising photos of pre-rated models to manipulate physical attractiveness as well as costumes and descriptions to manipulate social status.

METHOD

Using Singaporean samples, we conducted two studies (Study 1 n = 431, Study 2 n = 964) where participants judged the short-term and long-term mating desirability of opposite-sex profiles varying systematically on physical attractiveness and social status. We also tested whether treating these attributes as ordinal or continuous variables would be more valid.

RESULTS

Results showed broad support for evolutionary predictions of mate preferences and priorities while revealing an increased premium placed on social status in our sample. We also found that continuous operationalizations produced less inflated results.

CONCLUSIONS

The current research provides the first non-label, profile-based test of the MPPM, a well-powered replication of the profile-based paradigm, and an opportunity to observe the robustness and variations of mate preferences in a non-Western culture.

Noncompliance With Safety Guidelines as a Free-Riding Strategy: An Evolutionary Game-Theoretic Approach to Cooperation During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Evolutionary game theory and public goods games offer an important framework to understand cooperation during pandemics. From this perspective, the COVID-19 situation can be conceptualized as a dilemma where people who neglect safety precautions act as free riders, because they get to enjoy the benefits of decreased health risk from others' compliance with policies despite not contributing to or even undermining public safety themselves. At the same time, humans appear to carry a suite of evolved psychological mechanisms aimed at curbing free riding in order to ensure the continued provision of public goods, which can be leveraged to develop more effective measures to promote compliance with regulations. We also highlight factors beyond free riding that reduce compliance rates, such as the emergence of conspiratorial thinking, which seriously undermine the effectiveness of measures to suppress free riding. Together, the current paper outlines the social dynamics that occur in public goods dilemmas involving the spread of infectious disease, highlights the utility and limits of evolutionary game-theoretic approaches for COVID-19 management, and suggests novel directions based on emerging challenges to cooperation.

Conditional Love: Threat and Attitudinal Perceptions of Immigrants Depend on Their Instrumentality to Locals' Basic Psychological Needs

Although threat perceptions are commonly used to explain attitudes toward immigrants, the psychological factors underlying threat are surprisingly understudied. Drawing from goal pursuit and self-determination theory, we examined the perceived instrumentality of immigrants as an antecedent of locals' threat and attitudinal perceptions. Through four studies (N = 1,372) with different configurations of local population segments and target immigrant groups, we investigated the impact of immigrants' instrumentality in terms of hindrances to locals' autonomy, belonging, and competence needs. Including hindrances to our proposed model of threats and attitudes led to an improvement in the overall fit with the data, allowed for a better specification of the threats-to-attitudes pathways, and elucidated the complexity and downstream consequences (endorsement of pro-immigration policies) of attitudes. The present findings underscore the utility of goal-driven approaches to studying intergroup conflicts, and implications for understanding and improving locals' attitudes toward immigrants are discussed.

Not so much rational but rationalizing: Humans evolved as coherence-seeking, fiction-making animals

The evidence for biased perceptions and judgments in humans coupled with evidence for ecological rationality in nonhuman animals suggest that the claim that humans are the rational animal may be overstated. We instead propose that discussions of human psychology may benefit from viewing ourselves not so much as rational animals but rather as the rationalizing animal. The current article provides evidence that rationalization is unique to humans and argues that rationalization processes (e.g., cognitive dissonance reduction, post hoc justification of choices, confabulation of reasons for moral positions) are aimed at creating the fictions we prefer to believe and maintaining the impression that we are psychologically coherent and rational. Coherence appears to be prioritized at the expense of veridicality, suggesting that distorted perceptions and appraisals can be adaptive for humans-under certain circumstances, we are better off understanding ourselves and reality not so accurately. Rationalization also underlies the various shared beliefs, religions, norms, and ideologies that have enabled humans to organize and coordinate their actions on a grand scale, for better or worse. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of this unique human psychological trait. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Subjective social status and inflammation: The role of culture and anger control

OBJECTIVE

Research on subjective social status (SSS) and inflammation risk suffers from a lack of cross-cultural data as well as inconsistent findings between SSS and the biomarker C-reactive protein (CRP). The current study addressed these issues by examining possible cultural differences in the SSS-CRP link with anger control as an underlying mechanism while controlling for potential confounds such as wealth, education, and health factors.

METHOD

Participants comprised 1,435 adults from the Biomarker Project of the MIDUS (American) and MIDJA (Japanese) studies. Participants' SSS and tendency to control anger were assessed through surveys, and their CRP levels were measured through fasting blood samples.

RESULTS

Results showed that for Americans, CRP levels increased as SSS decreased, but for the Japanese, there was no relationship between SSS and CRP. Furthermore, this moderating effect of culture was mediated by anger control such that Americans controlled their anger less as SSS decreased, which then predicted higher levels of CRP, whereas the Japanese controlled their anger less as SSS increased, but this relationship did not predict CRP levels. These findings were specific to anger control (and not other varieties of anger) and robust to adjustment for a variety of potential confounds.

CONCLUSIONS

Our findings demonstrate that culture exerts a moderating effect on the relationship between SSS and CRP, and this effect occurs through cultural differences in how SSS relates to anger control. The current study also highlights the need to consider cultural factors and psychosocial processes in further research on SSS and health. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Confidence is sexy and it can be trained: Examining male social confidence in initial, opposite-sex interactions

OBJECTIVE

We investigated whether men's social confidence in an initial, opposite-sex chatting context can be improved through a video tutorial and the extent to which being perceived as socially confident results in being seen as more romantically desirable and worthy of future contact.

METHOD

Women chatted with men who had received or not received a tutorial on how to handle speed-dating chats (Study 1: N = 129; Study 2: N = 60) or with male targets selected for having high versus moderate confidence in handling initial, opposite-sex encounters (Study 3: N = 46).

RESULTS

Tutorial-trained men felt more confident going into the chats and they, as well as male targets selected for their confidence, were perceived by female chat partners to be higher in social confidence, status, and dominance. However, only perceptions of social confidence were further associated with being perceived as more romantically desirable (as a short-term mate) and worthy of future contact.

CONCLUSIONS

Findings indicate that social confidence is trainable and that other-perceived social confidence can impact the outcomes of social interactions.

Putting adversity in perspective: purpose in life moderates the link between childhood emotional abuse and neglect and adulthood depressive symptoms

Background: Childhood emotional abuse and neglect is linked with a host of adverse outcomes later in life, including depression. However, potential psychological resources that may mitigate the adverse outcomes of childhood emotional abuse and neglect are not well-understood.Aims: Drawing from the insight that having a sense of purpose can help individuals deal with setbacks and difficulties better, we propose that purpose in life can also help sufferers of childhood maltreatment cope more effectively and reduce the onset of depressive symptoms.Methods: Participants were drawn from two large, nationally representative studies comprising a total of 3664 respondents. Purpose in life, childhood emotional abuse and neglect, and depressive symptoms were measured with validated scales.Results: We found convergent evidence that purpose in life attenuates the effect of childhood emotional abuse and neglect on subsequent depressive symptoms across a range of measures of mood and depression.Conclusions: The current study highlights the important role played by purpose in life in building resilience, coping against adverse life events, and psychological well-being.

Culture moderates the link between perceived obligation and biological health risk: Evidence of culturally distinct pathways for positive health outcomes

RATIONALE

Although perceived obligations to meet the expectations of family, friends, and society can be detrimental to physical health, much research in this area has thus far been conducted exclusively on Western samples. Cross-cultural research importantly suggests that positive health can be dependent on whether one engages in modes of being that are sanctioned by one's culture. Specifically, studies show that better health is predicted when people from cultures that value independence are able to exercise their personal autonomy and when people from cultures that value interdependence are able to maintain relational harmony (Kitayama et al., 2010).

OBJECTIVE

Based on these lines of research, as the fulfillment of perceived obligations can facilitate relational harmony but infringe on personal autonomy, we posit that culture will moderate the impact of perceived obligations on health outcomes. To gain further insight, we additionally examined people's goal disengagement tendency as an individual difference that may influence their likelihood of shunning perceived obligations in order to avoid associated stressors.

METHOD

Drawing from the parallel biomarker projects of Midlife in the United States and Midlife in Japan, we examined the interaction between perceived obligations and goal disengagement tendency on health among American and Japanese middle-aged adults. Health outcomes were indexed by biomarkers of inflammation (interleukin-6 and C-reactive protein levels) and cardiovascular risk (systolic blood pressure and total/high-density lipoprotein cholesterol).

RESULTS

We found that a higher tendency to disengage from stressful social obligations is associated with better health for Americans. In contrast, we found poorer health outcomes amongst Japanese participants who tend to disengage from their perceived obligations.

CONCLUSIONS

Our results highlight the importance of examining how perceived obligations influence physical health from a cultural perspective. The current study supports the hypothesis that culturally distinct pathways underlie health outcomes.

Dispositional Gratitude Moderates the Association between Socioeconomic Status and Interleukin-6

Socioeconomic disparities in health are prevalent and growing in importance as a concern among academics, policymakers, and the general public. However, psychological resources that can narrow such disparities have not been well-examined. The current study examined the moderating role of dispositional gratitude in the relationship between socioeconomic status (SES) and inflammation risk as an index of health. Participants consisted of 1,054 midlife adults from the biomarker project of the Midlife in the United States. Inflammation risk was measured by interleukin-6 biomarker and SES was operationalized by education attainment and income. We found that dispositional gratitude significantly moderated the relationships between SES and interleukin-6. Among individuals with low dispositional gratitude, higher SES was significantly associated with lower levels of interleukin-6. However, the association between SES and interleukin-6 was not significant among individuals with high dispositional gratitude. More importantly, the findings remained robust after controlling for demographic characteristics, health status, health behaviours, and personality traits. Our findings suggest that gratitude may serve as an important psychological resource in attenuating health-related risk from socioeconomic stressors.

Measurement matters: higher waist-to-hip ratio but not body mass index is associated with deficits in executive functions and episodic memory

Background

The current study aimed to reconcile the inconsistent findings between obesity, executive functions, and episodic memory by addressing major limitations of previous studies, including overreliance on body mass index (BMI), small sample sizes, and failure to control for confounds.

Methods

Participants consisted of 3,712 midlife adults from the Cognitive Project of the National Survey of Midlife Development. Executive functions and episodic memory were measured by a battery of cognitive function tests.

Results

We found that higher waist-to-hip ratio was associated with deficits in both executive functions and episodic memory, above and beyond the influence of demographics, comorbid health issues, health behaviors, personality traits, and self-perceived obesity. However, higher BMI was not associated with deficits in executive functions and episodic memory. More importantly, these differential associations were robust and stable across adulthood.

Discussion

Our findings confirm the association between obesity and episodic memory while highlighting the need for better measures of obesity when examining its associations with individual differences in cognitive functions.

The Perception of Spontaneous and Volitional Laughter Across 21 Societies

Laughter is a nonverbal vocalization occurring in every known culture, ubiquitous across all forms of human social interaction. Here, we examined whether listeners around the world, irrespective of their own native language and culture, can distinguish between spontaneous laughter and volitional laughter—laugh types likely generated by different vocal-production systems. Using a set of 36 recorded laughs produced by female English speakers in tests involving 884 participants from 21 societies across six regions of the world, we asked listeners to determine whether each laugh was real or fake, and listeners differentiated between the two laugh types with an accuracy of 56% to 69%. Acoustic analysis revealed that sound features associated with arousal in vocal production predicted listeners’ judgments fairly uniformly across societies. These results demonstrate high consistency across cultures in laughter judgments, underscoring the potential importance of nonverbal vocal communicative phenomena in human affiliation and cooperation.

Knowledge for games, games for knowledge: designing a digital roll-and-move board game for a law of torts class

Game-based constructivist learning has gained considerable attention as educational institutions aim to move from traditional instructional teaching to interactive and collaborative methods. The question is less asked of whether games should be used in teaching but rather how games should be used to create deep learning in students. In light of this movement, the Grade Inflation Game, or GIGAME, was developed. This case study tackles the research question of how games may be designed to harness the benefits of constructivist learning. It first documents the conceptualization of GIGAME and next proposes theoretical frameworks that can be used to guide the development and evaluation of constructivist learning games. Through trial runs on two undergraduate law of torts classes, feedback was gathered from students and the instructor of these classes regarding their perceptions of GIGAME, including learning effectiveness and satisfaction. The feedback suggests that GIGAME can serve as a form of game-based constructivist learning as most students indicated that the game helped consolidate their course knowledge while having fun. These qualitative findings are useful for guiding the development of other games that similarly aim to promote socially interactive and constructivist learning environments. This case study recommends the use of GIGAME in classes, although refinements can still be made to its gameplay.

The role of instrumental emotion regulation in the emotions-creativity link: how worries render individuals with high neuroticism more creative

Based on the instrumental account of emotion regulation (Tamir, 2005), the current research seeks to offer a novel perspective to the emotions-creativity debate by investigating the instrumental value of trait-consistent emotions in creativity. We hypothesize that emotions such as worry (vs. happy) are trait-consistent experiences for individuals higher on trait neuroticism and experiencing these emotions can facilitate performance in a creativity task. In 3 studies, we found support for our hypothesis. First, individuals higher in neuroticism had a greater preference for recalling worrisome (vs. happy) events in anticipation of performing a creativity task (Study 1). Moreover, when induced to recall a worrisome (vs. happy) event, individuals higher in neuroticism came up with more creative design (Study 2) and more flexible uses of a brick (Study 3) when the task was a cognitively demanding one. Further, Study 3 offers preliminary support that increased intrinsic task enjoyment and motivation mediates the relationship between trait-consistent emotion regulation and creative performance. These findings offer a new perspective to the controversy concerning the emotions-creativity relationship and further demonstrate the role of instrumental emotion regulation in the domain of creative performance.

Cross-cultural variation in men's preference for sexual dimorphism in women's faces

Both attractiveness judgements and mate preferences vary considerably cross-culturally. We investigated whether men's preference for femininity in women's faces varies between 28 countries with diverse health conditions by analysing responses of 1972 heterosexual participants. Although men in all countries preferred feminized over masculinized female faces, we found substantial differences between countries in the magnitude of men's preferences. Using an average femininity preference for each country, we found men's facial femininity preferences correlated positively with the health of the nation, which explained 50.4% of the variation among countries. The weakest preferences for femininity were found in Nepal and strongest in Japan. As high femininity in women is associated with lower success in competition for resources and lower dominance, it is possible that in harsher environments, men prefer cues to resource holding potential over high fecundity.

Mate preferences do predict attraction and choices in the early stages of mate selection

Although mate preference research has firmly established that men value physical attractiveness more than women do and women value social status more than men do, recent speed-dating studies have indicated mixed evidence (at best) for whether people's sex-differentiated mate preferences predict actual mate choices. According to an evolutionary, mate preference priority model (Li, Bailey, Kenrick, & Linsenmeier, 2002; Li & Kenrick, 2006; Li, Valentine, & Patel, 2011), the sexes are largely similar in what they ideally like, but for long-term mates, they should differ on what they most want to avoid in early selection contexts. Following this model, we conducted experiments using online messaging and modified speed-dating platforms. Results indicate that when a mating pool includes people at the low end of social status and physical attractiveness, mate choice criteria are sex-differentiated: Men, more than women, chose mates based on physical attractiveness, whereas women, more than men, chose mates based on social status. In addition, individuals who more greatly valued social status or physical attractiveness on paper valued these traits more in their actual choices. In particular, mate choices were sex-differentiated when considering long-term relationships but not short-term ones, where both sexes shunned partners with low physical attractiveness. The findings validate a large body of mate preferences research and an evolutionary perspective on mating, and they have implications for research using speed-dating and other interactive contexts.

Frequency-division-multiplexed polarimetric fiber laser current-sensor array

We demonstrate a novel frequency-domain-multiplexing technique for implementing polarimetric fiber laser current sensors. Each sensor operates at a different polarization-mode beat frequency that is modulated in response to applied electric current. A bank of bandpass filters can be used to separate signals from different sensors. A simple frequency-demodulation technique based on a phase-locked loop is used for signal processing.

Tumor crescents from intraglomerular metastases

A patient who died of bronchopneumonia complicating metastatic carcinoma of the larynx was found to have crescentic glomerulonephritis at autopsy. Further examination revealed the crescents to be tumor deposits in Bowman's space of most glomeruli, while no tumor was found elsewhere in the kidneys. The relevance of this observation to the possible mechanism of crescent formation is discussed.