Social status, masculinity, and testosterone in young men

Among other things, sexual selection theory posits that in species with limited male parental investment, males should evolve biological mechanisms to competitively dominate or otherwise compete with one another. It is unclear whether such proposed mechanisms would influence status hierarchies in small human groups. We report the results of a study investigating possible effects of prenatal (index-to-ring finger length ratio or 2D:4D) and salivary testosterone, and masculine identification, on status among 71 male college students living in nine residential groups. The results indicate no role of either prenatal or salivary testosterone in maintaining status hierarchies in these groups. A possible explanation is that peer-assessed status in these groups was arrived at cooperatively rather than through dominance contests.     

Evidence of differential performance on simultaneous and sequential lineups for individuals with autism-spectrum traits

Given the impaired facial recognition of autistic individuals, we examined whether certain autism-spectrum traits affected eyewitness identification performance in a general adult population. In a sample of 120 individuals, levels of autism-spectrum traits were examined in relation to performance on simultaneous vs. sequential lineups using a signal detection paradigm. For simultaneous lineups, total Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ) scores and scores on the excessive Attention to detail subscale were related to fewer hits and a more conservative response criterion. Attention to detail interacted with lineup type in that it was significantly related to improved discrimination accuracy and a less conservative response criterion in sequential lineups, but with impaired discrimination accuracy and a more conservative response criterion in simultaneous lineups. Higher AQ scores on the Attention switching subscale resulted in fewer hits, lower discrimination accuracy, and a more conservative response criterion with sequential lineups. Additionally, partial disguises led to more false alarms but not decreased accuracy. More thorough investigations of the effect of lineup type on identifications are needed before policy changes are recommended.     

Why are Benevolent Sexists Happier?

Research indicates that the endorsement of sexist ideology is linked to higher subjective wellbeing for both men and women. We examine gender differences in the rationalisations which drive this effect in an egalitarian nation (New Zealand). Results from a nationally representative sample (N?=?6,100) indicated that the endorsement of Benevolent Sexism (BS) predicted life satisfaction through different mechanisms for men and women. For men, BS was directly associated with life satisfaction. For women, the palliative effect of BS was indirect and occurred because BS-ideology positioning women as deserving of men??s adoration and protection was linked to general perceptions of gender relations as fair and equitable, which in turn predicted greater levels of life satisfaction.     

Influences of problem format and SES on preschoolers’ understanding of approximate addition

Recent studies suggest that 5-year-olds can add and compare large numerical quantities through approximate representations of number. However, the nature of this understanding and its susceptibility to environmental influences remain unclear. We examined whether children's early competence depends on the canonical problem format (i.e., arithmetic operations presented on the left side). Sixty children from middle-to-high-SES backgrounds (Experiment 1) and 47 children from low-SES backgrounds (Experiment 2) viewed events that required them to add and compare large numbers. Events were shown in a canonical or noncanonical format. Children from both SES backgrounds performed above chance on the approximate addition tasks, but children from middle-to-high-SES backgrounds performed significantly better. Moreover, children from middle-to-high SES backgrounds performed better when problems were presented in the canonical format, whereas children from low-SES backgrounds did not. These results suggest that children's understanding of approximate number is affected by some of the same environmental factors that affect performance on exact arithmetic tasks.     

The ease-of-processing heuristic and the stability bias: dissociating memory, memory beliefs, and memory judgments

Judgments about memory are essential in promoting knowledge; they help identify trustworthy memories and predict what information will be retained in the future. In the three experiments reported here, we investigated the mechanisms underlying predictions about memory. In Experiments 1 and 2, single words were presented once or multiple times, in large or small type. There was a double dissociation between actual memory and predicted memory: Type size affected predicted but not actual memory, and future study opportunities affected actual memory but scarcely affected predicted memory. The results of Experiment 3 suggest that beliefs and judgments are largely independent, and neither consistently resembles actual memory. Participants' underestimation of future learning-a stability bias-stemmed from an overreliance on their current memory state in making predictions about future memory states. The overreliance on type size highlights the fundamental importance of the ease-of-processing heuristic: Information that is easy to process is judged to have been learned well.     

Us versus them: social identity shapes neural responses to intergroup competition and harm

Intergroup competition makes social identity salient, which in turn affects how people respond to competitors' hardships. The failures of an in-group member are painful, whereas those of a rival out-group member may give pleasure-a feeling that may motivate harming rivals. The present study examined whether valuation-related neural responses to rival groups' failures correlate with likelihood of harming individuals associated with those rivals. Avid fans of the Red Sox and Yankees teams viewed baseball plays while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging. Subjectively negative outcomes (failure of the favored team or success of the rival team) activated anterior cingulate cortex and insula, whereas positive outcomes (success of the favored team or failure of the rival team, even against a third team) activated ventral striatum. The ventral striatum effect, associated with subjective pleasure, also correlated with self-reported likelihood of aggressing against a fan of the rival team (controlling for general aggression). Outcomes of social group competition can directly affect primary reward-processing neural systems, which has implications for intergroup harm.     

Respecting the LDS/Mormon Minority on Campus: College Students’ Attitudes Toward Latter‐Day Saints

Members of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter‐Day Saints remain a minoritized and marginalized population in the United States at large, a pattern mirrored on the majority of college and university campuses across the United States. This study addresses how social identities, institutional contexts, and intergroup dynamics within the postsecondary education environment contribute to cultivating college students’ attitudes toward LDS/Mormons and Mormonism. Using data collected from 13,584 college students attending 52 institutions across the country, the study employs multilevel modeling to examine these relationships. The analyses highlight the importance of productive interreligious contact in a supportive institutional context for shaping out‐group attitudes. Affirming the interplay between social identity and intergroup contact, effects on out‐group attitudes vary to some extent by religion/worldview. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

States of Spiritual Awareness by Time,Activity, and Social Interaction

We explore how people experience the sacred in their everyday lives using a recently developed research technique—smartphone‐based experience sampling method (S‐ESM). The primary goal of our experience‐driven approach is to explore the contours and variations of spiritual awareness within people's day‐to‐day lives. We seek to better understand when and where spiritual awareness is likely to arise, and the contexts in which it is rare. Our smartphone‐based data allow us to track the many contexts in which an awareness of the sacred occurs, as reported in real time during people's normal daily activities. We parse out how immediate contextual factors and how people's more habitual behaviors are related to their spiritual experiences. This illuminates a wide range of factors that influence spiritual experiences that have not received much scholarly attention, and enables us to connect cutting‐edge quantitative methods with qualitative scholarship on spirituality. We hope this will open the door to the development of new theories of situated spiritual experience.     

Religion,Altruism, and Helping Strangers: A Multilevel Analysis of 126 Countries

This article tests how religion relates to helping strangers, an important but rarely studied measure of social solidarity and informal social capital. It uses the Gallup World Poll, a survey with nationally representative samples of 179,961 respondents from 126 countries. It finds that religious people, members of minority religions, and people in religiously diverse countries were more likely to help a stranger. Individuals living in devout countries were more likely to help strangers even if they themselves were not religious. The results suggest that religion plays a particularly important role in promoting the prosocial norms and values that motivate helping strangers.     

Comparing fixed‐amount and progressive‐amount DRO Schedules for tic suppression in youth with chronic tic disorders

Chronic tic disorders (CTDs) involve motor and/or vocal tics that often cause substantial distress and impairment. Differential reinforcement of other behavior (DRO) schedules of reinforcement produce robust, but incomplete, reductions in tic frequency in youth with CTDs; however, a more robust reduction may be needed to affect durable clinical change. Standard, fixed‐amount DRO schedules have not commonly yielded such reductions, so we evaluated a novel, progressive‐amount DRO schedule, based on its ability to facilitate sustained abstinence from functionally similar behaviors. Five youth with CTDs were exposed to periods of baseline, fixed‐amount DRO (DRO‐F), and progressive‐amount DRO (DRO‐P). Both DRO schedules produced decreases in tic rate and increases in intertic interval duration, but no systematic differences were seen between the two schedules on any dimension of tic occurrence. The DRO‐F schedule was generally preferred to the DRO‐P schedule. Possible procedural improvements and other future directions are discussed.