Republican Voters Prefer Candidates Who Have Conservative‐Looking Faces: New Evidence From Exit Polls

Research shows people share common political facial stereotypes: They associate faces with political ideologies. Moreover, given that many voters rely on party affiliation, political ideology, and appearances to select political candidates, we might expect that political facial stereotypes would sway voting preferences and, by extension, the share of votes going to each candidate in an election. And yet few studies have examined whether having a stereotypically conservative‐looking (or liberal‐looking) face predicts a candidate's vote shares. Using data from U.S. election exit polls, we show that the Republican voters within each state are more likely to vote for a candidate (even a Democrat) the more that person has a stereotypically Republican‐looking face. By contrast, the voting choices of the Democratic voters within each state are unrelated to political facial stereotypes. Moreover, we show that the relationship between political facial stereotypes and voting does not depend on state‐level ideology: Republican voters in both right‐leaning (“red”) and left‐leaning (“blue”) states are more likely to vote for candidates with conservative‐looking faces. These results have several important practical and theoretical implications concerning the nature and impact of political facial stereotypes, which we discuss.     

Rousseau's Descartes: The Rejection of Theoretical Philosophy as First Philosophy

Rousseau's Savoyard Vicar makes creative use of Descartes's meditative method by applying it to practical life. This ‘misuse’ of the Cartesian method highlights the limits of the thinking thing as a ground for morality. Taking practical philosophy as first philosophy, the Vicar finds bedrock certainty of the self as an agent in the world and of moral truths while distancing himself from Cartesian positions on the distinction, union and interaction of mind and body. Rousseau's Moral Letters harmonize with the Vicar's view. Descartes would reject the Vicar's appropriation, as real-life problems cannot wait on meditation to answer them.     

Quine's Argument from Despair

Quine's argument for a naturalized epistemology is routinely perceived as an argument from despair: traditional epistemology must be abandoned because all attempts to deduce our scientific theories from sense experience have failed. In this paper, I will show that this picture is historically inaccurate and that Quine's argument against first philosophy is considerably stronger and subtler than the standard conception suggests. For Quine, the first philosopher's quest for foundations is inherently incoherent; the very idea of a self-sufficient sense datum language is a mistake, there is no science-independent perspective from which to validate science. I will argue that a great deal of the confusion surrounding Quine's argument is prompted by certain phrases in his seminal ‘Epistemology Naturalized’. Scrutinizing Quine's work both before and after the latter paper provides a better key to understanding his remarkable views about the epistemological relation between theory and evidence.     

Sequential Down Syndrome Screening: The Importance of First and Second Trimester Test Correlations when Calculating Risk

Down syndrome screening can be particularly effective when both first and second trimester tests are performed. However, the counseling of women who have received sequential first and second trimester screening can be problematic. We evaluated an approximation where the post-test risk from the first trimester screening is used as the new a priori risk for the second trimester screening. The approximation disregards between-trimester test correlations. The Down syndrome detection rate based on the approximation (90.2%) would be close to that obtained when all correlations were considered (90.8%) but the false positive rate would be 26% higher (3.9% versus 3.1%, respectively). For any particular woman, the use of the approximation could result in highly inaccurate risks. We conclude that the correlations that exist between first and second trimester screening tests preclude the use of second trimester risks derived from the direct product of separate first and second trimester screening. Counseling issues in the delivery of sequential screening are discussed.     

Attitudes and behavior: An information integration perspective

The relationship between attitudes, beliefs, and behavior was investigated in the context of a behavioral alternative model of attitudes and Anderson's information integration theory. Forty teenagers indicated their attitudes toward using each of seven methods of birth control. The attitudes were used to predict self-reports of contraceptive behavior. Functional measurement methodology was applied to understand the informational bases of the attitudes. In general, the data were supportive of the theoretical framework.     

Temperament,classmate likability,and social perspective coordination as correlates of children's parent-rated type A behaviors

Parents of 58 boys and 62 girls from grades three through eight completed the Matthews Youth Test for Health (MYTH), a measure of Type A behavior. Normative and reliability data were similar to those obtained from teachers as reported in the literature, but a factor analysis of parents' ratings revealed four factors (Competitiveness, Irritability, Impatience, and Leadership) as opposed to the two factors (Impatience/Aggression and Competitiveness) that have been derived from teacher ratings. Boys had higher total MYTH scores than girls, but correlations with age were not significant. No grade or gender effects were obtained for any of the four MYTH factor scores. Correlates of the MYTH scores were computed separately for boys and for girls. For boys, Irritability was related to Reactivity, a Difficult Temperament, low classmate Likeability, and poor performance on two social cognitive tasks (compromising and friendship understanding). For girls, Leadership was related to Classmate Likeability and good performance on the two social cognitive tasks. For boys only, total MYTH scores were related to low Attention Span, high Reactivity, a Difficult Temperament, and low Friendship Understanding scores. Findings are related to the gender differences found in the study of both ego control and cooperation/ competition.     

The Biology of Morality

Abstract. The morality of human beings, defined here as our ability to determine whether our actions are right or wrong, depends not just on following rules but also on understanding the impact of our actions on another person. How we understand the impact of our actions on another person depends on our state of consciousness, which is mediated by our brain and nervous system. We describe how we understand our morality to flow naturally from the biological state we are living in and how we see our biology and our morality as mutually interactive. A change in one changes the other. Another way of saying this is that changing either our morality or our biology changes both—changes who we are and what we do.     

Implementing Housing First Across Sites and Over Time: Later Fidelity and Implementation Evaluation of a Pan-Canadian Multi-site Housing First Program for Homeless People with Mental Illness

This article examines later fidelity and implementation of a five‐site pan‐Canadian Housing First research demonstration project. The average fidelity score across five Housing First domains and 10 programs was high in the first year of operation (3.47/4) and higher in the third year of operation (3.62/4). Qualitative interviews (36 key informant interviews and 17 focus groups) revealed that staff expertise, partnerships with other services, and leadership facilitated implementation, while staff turnover, rehousing participants, participant isolation, and limited vocational/educational supports impeded implementation. The findings shed light on important implementation “drivers” at the staff, program, and community levels.     

Resting EEG in alpha and beta bands predicts individual differences in attentional blink magnitude

Accuracy for a second target (T2) is reduced when it is presented within 500 ms of a first target (T1) in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) - an attentional blink (AB). There are reliable individual differences in the magnitude of the AB. Recent evidence has shown that the attentional approach that an individual typically adopts during a task or in anticipation of a task, as indicated by various measures, predicts individual differences in the AB deficit. It has yet to be observed whether indices of attentional approach when not engaged in a goal-directed task are also relevant to individual differences in the AB. The current studies investigated individual differences in the AB by examining their relationship with attention at rest using quantitative measures of EEG. Greater levels of alpha at rest were associated with larger AB magnitudes, where greater levels of beta at rest were associated with smaller AB magnitudes. Furthermore, individuals with more beta than alpha demonstrated a smaller AB effect than individuals with more alpha than beta. Our results suggest that greater attentional engagement at rest, when not engaged in a goal-directed task, is associated with smaller AB magnitudes.