Analytical thinking does not decrease religious belief

It seems to me that psychology would benefit from taking a break from publishing new findings and clean house of all the junk that has accumulated over the years. Junk breeds junk, and if left unchecked can generate entire unwholesome disciplines (as the sad state of the social sciences proves to us daily).

Related:

• Excess Success for Psychology Articles in the Journal Science

PLoS ONE 12(2): e0172636. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0172636

Direct replication of Gervais & Norenzayan (2012): No evidence that analytic thinking decreases religious belief

Clinton Sanchez, Brian Sundermeier, Kenneth Gray, Robert J. Calin-Jageman

Gervais & Norenzayan (2012) reported in Science a series of 4 experiments in which manipulations intended to foster analytic thinking decreased religious belief. We conducted a precise, large, multi-site pre-registered replication of one of these experiments. We observed little to no effect of the experimental manipulation on religious belief (d = 0.07 in the wrong direction, 95% CI[-0.12, 0.25], N = 941). The original finding does not seem to provide reliable or valid evidence that analytic thinking causes a decrease in religious belief.

Link

Microagressions, debunked

A warning against taking politically-inspired gobbledygook (whose only benefit is to bureaucrats and as a means of virtue signalling by do-gooders) seriously.

Perspectives on Psychological Science Vol 12, Issue 1, 2017

Microaggressions Strong Claims, Inadequate Evidence

Scott O. Lilienfeld

The microaggression concept has recently galvanized public discussion and spread to numerous college campuses and businesses. I argue that the microaggression research program (MRP) rests on five core premises, namely, that microaggressions (1) are operationalized with sufficient clarity and consensus to afford rigorous scientific investigation; (2) are interpreted negatively by most or all minority group members; (3) reflect implicitly prejudicial and implicitly aggressive motives; (4) can be validly assessed using only respondents’ subjective reports; and (5) exert an adverse impact on recipients’ mental health. A review of the literature reveals negligible support for all five suppositions. More broadly, the MRP has been marked by an absence of connectivity to key domains of psychological science, including psychometrics, social cognition, cognitive-behavioral therapy, behavior genetics, and personality, health, and industrial-organizational psychology. Although the MRP has been fruitful in drawing the field’s attention to subtle forms of prejudice, it is far too underdeveloped on the conceptual and methodological fronts to warrant real-world application. I conclude with 18 suggestions for advancing the scientific status of the MRP, recommend abandonment of the term “microaggression,” and call for a moratorium on microaggression training programs and publicly distributed microaggression lists pending research to address the MRP’s scientific limitations.

Link

Educational achievement predicted by DNA

Predicting 9% of educational achievement from DNA is quite good. The authors used genotype arrays, so there's obvious room for growth in rare variation that is not covered by such arrays.

I wonder when the public and policymakers will get wind of the fact that educational achievement is highly heritable and can even be somewhat predicted with existing DNA technology.

Genetic egalitarianism is an edifice on which too much has been invested and I doubt that it will go down without a fight. It's of course a great idea to optimize learning for the students you've got. But, at the end of the day there's only so much you can do to foster achievement in a trait that is mostly genetically determined.

Molecular Psychiatry advance online publication 19 July 2016; doi: 10.1038/mp.2016.107

Predicting educational achievement from DNA

S Selzam et al.

A genome-wide polygenic score (GPS), derived from a 2013 genome-wide association study (N=127,000), explained 2% of the variance in total years of education (EduYears). In a follow-up study (N=329,000), a new EduYears GPS explains up to 4%. Here, we tested the association between this latest EduYears GPS and educational achievement scores at ages 7, 12 and 16 in an independent sample of 5825 UK individuals. We found that EduYears GPS explained greater amounts of variance in educational achievement over time, up to 9% at age 16, accounting for 15% of the heritable variance. This is the strongest GPS prediction to date for quantitative behavioral traits. Individuals in the highest and lowest GPS septiles differed by a whole school grade at age 16. Furthermore, EduYears GPS was associated with general cognitive ability (~3.5%) and family socioeconomic status (~7%). There was no evidence of an interaction between EduYears GPS and family socioeconomic status on educational achievement or on general cognitive ability. These results are a harbinger of future widespread use of GPS to predict genetic risk and resilience in the social and behavioral sciences.

Link

Phenotypic effects of Neandertal admixture

Now that we know that Neandertal-introgressed DNA had (deleterious) functional consequences for modern humans, I think we also need a study on "useful stuff" conferred by Neandertal admixture. So far, the Neandertal genome has been used (mostly) as our closest relative, in order to identify novel gene variants shared by all modern humans but absent in Neandertals: the goal is to find things that "made us special". Pickings of this search have been slim.

Doubtlessly, as we begin to better understand the genetics underlying positive human traits, some of these will end up having come from archaic humans. Neandertal admixture was a huge injection of "new stuff" into the Eurasian modern human gene pool, and there is every reason to think that even if the "bad stuff" outweighed the "good", there was still plenty of room for functionally beneficial variants to be acquired from them.

Science 12 Feb 2016:
Vol. 351, Issue 6274, pp. 737-741

The phenotypic legacy of admixture between modern humans and Neandertals

Corinne N. Simonti et al.

Many modern human genomes retain DNA inherited from interbreeding with archaic hominins, such as Neandertals, yet the influence of this admixture on human traits is largely unknown. We analyzed the contribution of common Neandertal variants to over 1000 electronic health record (EHR)–derived phenotypes in ~28,000 adults of European ancestry. We discovered and replicated associations of Neandertal alleles with neurological, psychiatric, immunological, and dermatological phenotypes. Neandertal alleles together explained a significant fraction of the variation in risk for depression and skin lesions resulting from sun exposure (actinic keratosis), and individual Neandertal alleles were significantly associated with specific human phenotypes, including hypercoagulation and tobacco use. Our results establish that archaic admixture influences disease risk in modern humans, provide hypotheses about the effects of hundreds of Neandertal haplotypes, and demonstrate the utility of EHR data in evolutionary analyses.

Link

Eye color and alcohol dependence

American Journal of Medical Genetics Part B: Neuropsychiatric Genetics DOI: 10.1002/ajmg.b.32316

Eye color: A potential indicator of alcohol dependence risk in European Americans

Arvis Sulovari et al.

In archival samples of European-ancestry subjects, light-eyed individuals have been found to consume more alcohol than dark-eyed individuals. No published population-based studies have directly tested the association between alcohol dependence (AD) and eye color. We hypothesized that light-eyed individuals have a higher prevalence of AD than dark-eyed individuals. A mixture model was used to select a homogeneous sample of 1,263 European-Americans and control for population stratification. After quality control, we conducted an association study using logistic regression, adjusting for confounders (age, sex, and genetic ancestry). We found evidence of association between AD and blue eye color (P = 0.0005 and odds ratio = 1.83 (1.31–2.57)), supporting light eye color as a risk factor relative to brown eye color. Network-based analyses revealed a statistically significant (P = 0.02) number of genetic interactions between eye color genes and AD-associated genes. We found evidence of linkage disequilibrium between an AD-associated GABA receptor gene cluster, GABRB3/GABRG3, and eye color genes, OCA2/HERC2, as well as between AD-associated GRM5 and pigmentation-associated TYR. Our population-phenotype, network, and linkage disequilibrium analyses support association between blue eye color and AD. Although we controlled for stratification we cannot exclude underlying occult stratification as a contributor to this observation. Although replication is needed, our findings suggest that eye pigmentation information may be useful in research on AD. Further characterization of this association may unravel new AD etiological factors. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Link

Genetic pacification of Western Europeans (?)

Evolutionary Psychology www.epjournal.net – 2015. 13(1): 230-243

Western Europe, State Formation, and Genetic Pacification

Peter Frost, Henry C. Harpending

Through its monopoly on violence, the State tends to pacify social relations. Such pacification proceeded slowly in Western Europe between the 5th and 11th centuries, being hindered by the rudimentary nature of law enforcement, the belief in a man’s right to settle personal disputes as he saw fit, and the Church’s opposition to the death penalty. These hindrances began to dissolve in the 11th century with a consensus by Church and State that the wicked should be punished so that the good may live in peace. Courts imposed the death penalty more and more often and, by the late Middle Ages, were condemning to death between 0.5 and 1.0% of all men of each generation, with perhaps just as many offenders dying at the scene of the crime or in prison while awaiting trial. Meanwhile, the homicide rate plummeted from the 14th century to the 20th. The pool of violent men dried up until most murders occurred under conditions of jealousy, intoxication, or extreme stress. The decline in personal violence is usually attributed to harsher punishment and the longer-term effects of cultural conditioning. It may also be, however, that this new cultural environment selected against propensities for violence.

Link (pdf)

Expectation of brilliance and gender distribution in academic disciplines

This is an interesting thesis which could be further examined if the researchers could undertake an examination of whether the under-represented groups do not have a deficiency of brilliance, but rather an over-abundance of modesty. Such an abundance would lead them to underestimate their own brilliance and thereby avoid areas where is is overvalued.

Expectations of brilliance underlie gender distributions across academic disciplines

Sarah-Jane Leslie1,*,†, Andrei Cimpian2,*,†, Meredith Meyer3, Edward Freeland4

ABSTRACT

The gender imbalance in STEM subjects dominates current debates about women’s underrepresentation in academia. However, women are well represented at the Ph.D. level in some sciences and poorly represented in some humanities (e.g., in 2011, 54% of U.S. Ph.D.’s in molecular biology were women versus only 31% in philosophy). We hypothesize that, across the academic spectrum, women are underrepresented in fields whose practitioners believe that raw, innate talent is the main requirement for success, because women are stereotyped as not possessing such talent. This hypothesis extends to African Americans’ underrepresentation as well, as this group is subject to similar stereotypes. Results from a nationwide survey of academics support our hypothesis (termed the field-specific ability beliefs hypothesis) over three competing hypotheses.

Link

Generalist Genes influence both reading and math ability

Nature Communications 5, Article number: 4204 doi:10.1038/ncomms5204

The correlation between reading and mathematics ability at age twelve has a substantial genetic component

Oliver S. P. Davis

Dissecting how genetic and environmental influences impact on learning is helpful for maximizing numeracy and literacy. Here we show, using twin and genome-wide analysis, that there is a substantial genetic component to children’s ability in reading and mathematics, and estimate that around one half of the observed correlation in these traits is due to shared genetic effects (so-called Generalist Genes). Thus, our results highlight the potential role of the learning environment in contributing to differences in a child’s cognitive abilities at age twelve.

Link

Psychological differences in China predicted by rice/wheat agriculture

Science 9 May 2014: Vol. 344 no. 6184 pp. 603-608
DOI: 10.1126/science.1246850

Large-Scale Psychological Differences Within China Explained by Rice Versus Wheat Agriculture

T. Talhelm et al.

Cross-cultural psychologists have mostly contrasted East Asia with the West. However, this study shows that there are major psychological differences within China. We propose that a history of farming rice makes cultures more interdependent, whereas farming wheat makes cultures more independent, and these agricultural legacies continue to affect people in the modern world. We tested 1162 Han Chinese participants in six sites and found that rice-growing southern China is more interdependent and holistic-thinking than the wheat-growing north. To control for confounds like climate, we tested people from neighboring counties along the rice-wheat border and found differences that were just as large. We also find that modernization and pathogen prevalence theories do not fit the data.

Link

Facial shape uncorrelated with aggression

Of interest is the calculation of sexual dimorphism for a variety of indices in different datasets (Figure 1; left). The figure caption:

Box and whisker plots of global sexual dimorphism computed across the different databases. Indices that differed significantly among sexes (after t-test for independent samples) are shown in solid grey. A) Howells database; b) Pucciarelli database, c) 2D Geometric Morphometric database, d) 3D Geometric Morphometric database, e) Patagonian groups database. Square: median; box: 25%–75%; whisker: minimum-maximum values.

Also of interest Figure S1 (bottom right), which breaks down the sexual dimorphism in different populations. The caption reads:

Box and whisker plots of fWHR depicting inter-sexual differences across the populations of each database. a) Howells database; b) Pucciarelli database, c) 2D Geometric Morphometric database, d) 3D Geometric Morphometric database, e) Patagonian groups database. Square: median; box: 25%–75%; whisker: minimum-maximum values. Orange: females, blue: males. Populations showing significantly greater male fWHR (after t-test for independent samples) are marked with grey boxes.

It would be nice if more anthropometric datasets were publicly available. Perhaps some of the above-mentioned are, but I didn't see any mention of how to obtain them in the paper itself.


PLoS ONE 8(1): e52317. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0052317

Lack of Support for the Association between Facial Shape and Aggression: A Reappraisal Based on a Worldwide Population Genetics Perspective

Jorge Gómez-Valdés et al.

Antisocial and criminal behaviors are multifactorial traits whose interpretation relies on multiple disciplines. Since these interpretations may have social, moral and legal implications, a constant review of the evidence is necessary before any scientific claim is considered as truth. A recent study proposed that men with wider faces relative to facial height (fWHR) are more likely to develop unethical behaviour mediated by a psychological sense of power. This research was based on reports suggesting that sexual dimorphism and selection would be responsible for a correlation between fWHR and aggression. Here we show that 4,960 individuals from 94 modern human populations belonging to a vast array of genetic and cultural contexts do not display significant amounts of fWHR sexual dimorphism. Further analyses using populations with associated ethnographical records as well as samples of male prisoners of the Mexico City Federal Penitentiary condemned by crimes of variable level of inter-personal aggression (homicide, robbery, and minor faults) did not show significant evidence, suggesting that populations/individuals with higher levels of bellicosity, aggressive behaviour, or power-mediated behaviour display greater fWHR. Finally, a regression analysis of fWHR on individual's fitness showed no significant correlation between this facial trait and reproductive success. Overall, our results suggest that facial attributes are poor predictors of aggressive behaviour, or at least, that sexual selection was weak enough to leave a signal on patterns of between- and within-sex and population facial variation.

Link

Orbital prefrontal cortex and social competence

Related article in Scientific American.

Neuropsychologia Volume 48, Issue 12, October 2010, Pages 3554–3562

Orbital prefrontal cortex volume correlates with social cognitive competence

Joanne L. Powell

Intentionality, or Theory of Mind, is the ability to explain and predict the behaviour of others by attributing to them intentions and mental states and is hypothesised to be one of several social cognitive mechanisms which have impacted upon brain size evolution. Though the brain activity associated with processing this type of information has been studied extensively, the neuroanatomical correlates of these abilities, e.g. whether subjects who perform better have greater volume of associated brain regions, remain to be investigated. Because social abilities of this type appear to have evolved relatively recently, and because the prefrontal cortex (PFC) was the last brain region to develop both phylogenetically and ontogenetically, we hypothesised a relationship between PFC volume and intentional competence. To test this, we estimated the volume of four regional prefrontal subfields in each cerebral hemisphere, in 40 healthy adult humans by applying stereological methods on T1-weighted magnetic resonance images. Our results reveal a significant linear relationship between intentionality score and volume of orbital PFC (p = 0.01). Since this region is known to be involved in the processing of social information our findings support the hypothesis that brain size evolution is, at least in part, the result of social cognitive mechanisms supporting social cohesion.

Link

Children of lesbians fare worse than children of heterosexual parents

From a related article in Slate by the author:

The rapid pace at which the overall academic discourse surrounding gay and lesbian parents’ comparative competence has swung—from the wide acknowledgement of challenges to “no differences” to more capable than mom and pop families—is notable, and frankly a bit suspect. Scientific truths are seldom reversed in a decade. By comparison, studies of adoption—a common method by which many same-sex couples (but even more heterosexual ones) become parents—have repeatedly and consistently revealed important and wide-ranging differences, on average, between adopted children and biological ones. The differences have been so pervasive and consistent that adoption experts now emphasize that “acknowledgement of difference” is critical for both parents and clinicians when working with adopted children and teens. This ought to give social scientists studying gay-parenting outcomes pause—rather than lockstep unanimity. After all, many children of gay and lesbian couples are adopted. 

... 

The basic results call into question simplistic notions of “no differences,” at least with the generation that is out of the house. On 25 of 40 different outcomes evaluated, the children of women who’ve had same-sex relationships fare quite differently than those in stable, biologically-intact mom-and-pop families, displaying numbers more comparable to those from heterosexual stepfamilies and single parents. Even after including controls for age, race, gender, and things like being bullied as a youth, or the gay-friendliness of the state in which they live, such respondents were more apt to report being unemployed, less healthy, more depressed, more likely to have cheated on a spouse or partner, smoke more pot, had trouble with the law, report more male and female sex partners, more sexual victimization, and were more likely to reflect negatively on their childhood family life, among other things. Why such dramatic differences? I can only speculate, since the data are not poised to pinpoint causes. One notable theme among the adult children of same-sex parents, however, is household instability, and plenty of it. The children of fathers who have had same-sex relationships fare a bit better, but they seldom reported living with their father for very long, and never with his partner for more than three years.

...

So why did this study come up with such different results than previous work in the field? And why should one study alter so much previous sentiment? Basically, better methods. When it comes to assessing how children of gay parents are faring, the careful methods and random sampling approach found in demography has not often been employed by scholars studying this issue, due in part—to be sure—to the challenges in locating and surveying small minorities randomly. In its place, the scholarly community has often been treated to small, nonrandom “convenience” studies of mostly white, well-educated lesbian parents, including plenty of data-collection efforts in which participants knew that they were contributing to important studies with potentially substantial political consequences, elevating the probability of something akin to the “Hawthorne Effect.” This is hardly an optimal environment for collecting unbiased data (and to their credit, many of the researchers admitted these challenges). I’m not claiming that all the previous research on this subject is bunk. But small or nonrandom studies shouldn’t be the gold standard for research, all the more so when we’re dealing with a topic so weighted with public interest and significance.

Social Science Research Volume 41, Issue 4, July 2012, Pages 752–770

How different are the adult children of parents who have same-sex relationships? Findings from the New Family Structures Study

Mark Regnerus

The New Family Structures Study (NFSS) is a social-science data-collection project that fielded a survey to a large, random sample of American young adults (ages 18–39) who were raised in different types of family arrangements. In this debut article of the NFSS, I compare how the young-adult children of a parent who has had a same-sex romantic relationship fare on 40 different social, emotional, and relational outcome variables when compared with six other family-of-origin types. The results reveal numerous, consistent differences, especially between the children of women who have had a lesbian relationship and those with still-married (heterosexual) biological parents. The results are typically robust in multivariate contexts as well, suggesting far greater diversity in lesbian-parent household experiences than convenience-sample studies of lesbian families have revealed. The NFSS proves to be an illuminating, versatile dataset that can assist family scholars in understanding the long reach of family structure and transitions.

Link

Should incestuous marriages be allowed?

German incest couple lose European Court case

A brother and sister from Germany who had an incestuous relationship, arguing they had the right to a family life, have lost their European court case.

Patrick Stuebing and Susan Karolewski had four children together, two of whom are described as disabled.

The European Court of Human Rights said Germany was entitled to ban incest.

Stuebing, who was convicted of incest and spent three years in prison, did not meet his natural sister until he tracked down his family as an adult.

He had been adopted as a child and only made contact with his natural relatives in his 20s.

The siblings grew close after their mother died.

Three of their four children are now looked after in care.

The couple insist that their love is no different to any other.

Of course, I applaud the decision of the ECHR, but I take a rather different view on the justification of it.

Regulation of marriage is central to the moral and legal codes of almost all human societies. Different societies limit marriage in diverse ways:

1. Age (young people are generally disallowed from marrying, and early marriage has become legally and socially more difficult in much of the world)
2. Sex (people of opposing sex may marry, although recently some societies have allowed same-sex marriage)
3. Number (some societies demand exclusivity, while others allow for husbands to marry multiple wives, or more commonly for women to take multiple husbands)
4. Relation (marriage between close relatives are often prohibited, (almost) universally for parent-offspring or sibling marriage; on the other hand cousin or uncle-niece marriage is prohibited in some societies, or encouraged in others)
5. Race (there were formerly legal prohibitions of inter-racial marriage, and there are societies in which such marriages are often frowned upon still)
6. Religion (some belief systems do not require that partners be of the same religion, while others do so)
7. Social status (marriage across class or caste lines was formerly prohibited either legally or socially, and is still often uncommon)
8. Former marriage status (divorce and re-marriage sometimes prohibited, provisions for widowhood, etc.)

It is clear that society has deemed the institution of marriage to be an important one, and this is why it has imposed so many legal and social rules upon it. In recent years, the trend has been one towards laissez-faire in the regulation of human affairs. This has been most evident in the case of same sex "marriage", whose advocates actively frame the question in terms of the "rights" of consenting persons.

If the matter is that of constitutional or other "rights", then the state oversteps its role in preventing two consenting persons from entering into the institution of marriage. Those who hold to this view, however, often promote the "right" to marriage of their own particular interest group (mostly of the homosexual community), but downplay similar claims to marriage of other groups (e.g., prohibition against polygamy, incest, young marriage, etc.)

There is a different line of thought, which frames the question of marriage in utilitarian terms. Marriage is seen as promoting child-rearing, family stability, engendering close social ties, and promoting the well-being and happiness of individuals. Again, those who hold to this view propose that their particular form of marriage is useful, while opposing certain forms of marriage for its adverse effects (e.g., the costs associated with invalids born of incestuous marriages, or increased expenditure when economic benefits are extended to new forms of marriage).

When the moral compass of a society atrophies, then its most fundamental institutions become the playing ground of lawyers and economists. Of course, this is a perfectly valid point of view -if one thinks that lawyers and economists, rather than ethicists and priests- make the better judges of what is to be allowed.

Proponents of the modern, secular, and democratic way of doing things will argue that it is an improvement for the rules to be made in the context of Constitutional Law, Democratic Choice, and Economic Expediency.

But, we must not forget that their chosen framework of accepted behavior is not as sure-footed as they may think, because what else is Democracy than the idea that the many are right over the few? What else is adherence to a Constitution than the faith in the idea that what men voted for generations ago should guide the behavior of the living? And, what else is Economics, other than the idea that human prosperity revolves around the maximization of some economic quantity?

To conclude: questions such as "should incestuous marriage be allowed?" force us all to think about who decides the "should."

Shortage of female math geniuses not due to "stereotype threat"

Men are over-represented at the high end of math performance: there are more male math geniuses than female ones.

A theory that was proposed to explain that fact is that of stereotype threat. According to this theory, there is a stereotype in society that "women are bad in math"; women internalize this stereotype and lose confidence about their math abilities, and so they tend to perform sub-optimally in math tests, hence rendering the idea of "women are bad in math" a self-fulfilling prophecy.

This new study demonstrates that much of the literature that has accumulated around the idea of a "stereotype threat" can be relegated to the trash bin, and those who hope that fighting the stereotype will lead to more females joining the mathematical elite have their work cut out for them.

A video on the topic by the first author:






Review of General Psychology, Jan 16 , 2012, No Pagination Specified. doi: 10.1037/a0026617

Can stereotype threat explain the gender gap in mathematics performance and achievement?

Stoet, Gijsbert; Geary David C.

Men and women score similarly in most areas of mathematics, but a gap favoring men is consistently found at the high end of performance. One explanation for this gap, stereotype threat, was first proposed by Spencer, Steele, and Quinn (1999) and has received much attention. We discuss merits and shortcomings of this study and review replication attempts. Only 55% of the articles with experimental designs that could have replicated the original results did so. But half of these were confounded by statistical adjustment of preexisting mathematics exam scores. Of the unconfounded experiments, only 30% replicated the original. A meta-analysis of these effects confirmed that only the group of studies with adjusted mathematics scores displayed the stereotype threat effect. We conclude that although stereotype threat may affect some women, the existing state of knowledge does not support the current level of enthusiasm for this as a mechanism underlying the gender gap in mathematics. We argue there are many reasons to close this gap, and that too much weight on the stereotype explanation may hamper research and implementation of effective interventions.

Link

Huge differences in personality between men and women

From the paper's conclusion:

In conclusion, we believe we made it clear that the true extent of sex differences in human personality has been consistently underestimated. While our current estimate represents a substantial improvement on the existing literature, we urge researchers to replicate this type of analysis with other datasets and different personality measures. An especially critical task will be to compare self-reported personality with observer ratings and other, more objective evaluation methods. Of course, the methodological guidelines presented in this paper can and should be applied to domains of individual differences other than personality, including vocational interests, cognitive abilities, creativity, and so forth. Moreover, the pattern of global sex differences in these domains may help elucidate the meaning and generality of the broad dimension of individual differences known as “masculinity-femininity” [11]. In this way, it will be possible to build a solid foundation for the scientific study of psychological sex differences and their biological and cultural origins.

From the press release:

The researchers used personality measurements from more than 10,000 people, approximately half men and half women. The personality test included 15 personality scales, including such traits as warmth, sensitivity, and perfectionism. When comparing men's and women's overall personality profiles, which take multiple traits into account, very large differences between the sexes became apparent, even though differences look much smaller when each trait is considered separately. However, the study indicates that previous methods to measure such differences have been inadequate, both because they focused on one trait at a time and because they failed to correct for measurement error.

PLoS ONE 7(1): e29265. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0029265

The Distance Between Mars and Venus: Measuring Global Sex Differences in Personality

Marco Del Giudice et al.

Abstract

Background

Sex differences in personality are believed to be comparatively small. However, research in this area has suffered from significant methodological limitations. We advance a set of guidelines for overcoming those limitations: (a) measure personality with a higher resolution than that afforded by the Big Five; (b) estimate sex differences on latent factors; and (c) assess global sex differences with multivariate effect sizes. We then apply these guidelines to a large, representative adult sample, and obtain what is presently the best estimate of global sex differences in personality.

Methodology/Principal Findings

Personality measures were obtained from a large US sample (N = 10,261) with the 16PF Questionnaire. Multigroup latent variable modeling was used to estimate sex differences on individual personality dimensions, which were then aggregated to yield a multivariate effect size (Mahalanobis D). We found a global effect size D = 2.71, corresponding to an overlap of only 10% between the male and female distributions. Even excluding the factor showing the largest univariate ES, the global effect size was D = 1.71 (24% overlap). These are extremely large differences by psychological standards.

Significance

The idea that there are only minor differences between the personality profiles of males and females should be rejected as based on inadequate methodology.

Link

Mastery through practice, but not for all

From the press release:

In one survey of chess players in Argentina, Campitelli and Gobet found that, indeed, practice is important. All of the players that became masters had practice at least 3,000 hours. "That was not surprising," he says. There is a theory in psychology that the more you practice, the better you'll do in areas like sports, music, and chess. "But the thing is, of the people that achieved the master level, there are people that achieved it in 3,000 hours. Other people did, like, 30,000 hours and achieved the same level. And there are even people that practiced more than 30,000 hours and didn't achieve this."

...

Campitelli and Gobet suggest that more intelligent children may be attracted to chess, and use their good reasoning skills to play well, but later they need to practice hard to learn all the strategies and plans that make a good chess player -- and intelligence isn't much help.

Intelligence is definitely necessary for achieving mastery in chess, but one of the most critical components of current practice is having a good memory. Without a substantial knowledge of opening and endgame theory, chess players of higher ability are at a disadvantage against less able but better prepared opponents. This knowledge can only be obtained by diligent study, but having the right hardware helps. But, even in the middle game one needs a good working memory, since one needs to basically do a tree traversal with a lot of redundancy whenever one analyzes variants.

Chess seems like the perfect game to use for analyzing learning and high-performance human brain functioning, as it is entirely rational, and there are literally millions of test subjects around the world.

Current Directions in Psychological Science October 2011 vol. 20 no. 5 280-285

Deliberate Practice Necessary But Not Sufficient

Guillermo Campitelli, Fernand Gobet

Deliberate practice (DP) occurs when an individual intentionally repeats an activity in order to improve performance. The claim of the DP framework is that such behavior is necessary to achieve high levels of expert performance. The proponents of the framework reject evidence that suggests that other variables are also necessary to achieve high levels of expert performance, or they claim that the relationship between those variables and expert performance is mediated by DP. Therefore, the DP framework also implies that DP is sufficient to achieve high levels of expert performance. We test these claims by reviewing studies on chess expertise. We found strong evidence that abundant DP is necessary (but not sufficient) and estimated that the minimum requirement to achieve master level is 3,000 hours of DP. We also review evidence showing that other factors play a role in chess skill: general cognitive abilities, sensitive period, handedness, and season of birth.

Link

British men's hair color preferences

Scand J Psychol. 2011 Aug 29. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-9450.2011.00911.x. [Epub ahead of print]

British men's hair color preferences: An assessment of courtship solicitation and stimulus ratings.

Swami V, Barrett S.

Abstract

British men's hair color preferences: An assessment of courtship solicitation and stimulus ratings. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology. Two studies examined the influence of women's hair color on approach behavior by British men and on ratings of physical attractiveness and personality. In Study 1, a female confederate whose hair color was dyed blonde, brunette, or red was instructed to sit in several nightclubs. It was found that she was approached significantly more frequently by men in the blonde condition. In Study 2, images of the same confederate were rated by 126 men. Results showed that the brunette stimulus was rated as more physically attractive, intelligent, approachable, competent, and arrogant, whereas the blonde stimulus was rated as more needy. These results are discussed in relation to the literature on hair color and attractiveness, but also in terms of women's own perceptions of their hair color.

Link

Broad-faced behavioral correlates / the rise of the new physiognomics?

The width-to-height ratio of the face had been previously found to be positively linked to aggressiveness and untrustworthiness.

A couple of new papers discover new correlations between broad faces and behavior.

From LiveScience:

Shape of CEO's Face Linked to Company Performance
The shape of a CEO's face can predict his company's financial performance, according to a new study in which researchers analyzed photos of 55 male chief executive officers of Fortune 500 businesses.

The crucial feature: Facial width. Corporate leaders with faces that were wide relative to their length — such as Herb Kelleher, the former CEO of Southwest Airlines — tended to lead better-performing companies than CEOs with narrower faces, such as Dick Fuld, the long-faced final CEO of Lehman Brothers, the study found.

And:

Wide Faces Predict Unethical Behavior
A man's face might hint whether he is bad to the bone, with scientists finding that wider faces might predict unethical behavior in men.

Wide faces in men have been linked with aggression and perceptions of untrustworthiness. Now researchers have discovered that broad-faced men appear more likely to deceive their counterparts in negotiations and are more willing to cheat in order to increase their financial gain.

I will add the CEO study abstract when I see it on the journal website (post a link in the comments if you've found it).

These results certainly go against the "don't judge a book by its cover" adage, and may mean that the old physiognomists from Pseudo-Aristotle to Lavater may have been onto something. I don't know what, if anything, they had to say about broad faces in particular, but it is certainly the case that the easy dismissal of their work in more recent times may have been premature.

Of course much of what was in the old physiognomy may have been the result of personal preferences/prejudices/experiences. Thankfully, nowadays we can evaluate stereotypes statistically to see whether they contain a grain of truth, and even discover novel associations.

I've always thought that there is an element of truth to physiognomy, judging from the visual and theatrical arts: heroes, villains, comical characters, princesses and evil witches are so often presented with distinctive visual cues that their presentation must touch on some objective anthropometric-behavioral reality.

Proceedings of the Royal Society B doi: 10.1098/rspb.2011.1193

Bad to the bone: facial structure predicts unethical behaviour
Michael P. Haselhuhn and Elaine M. Wong

Abstract

Researchers spanning many scientific domains, including primatology, evolutionary biology and psychology, have sought to establish an evolutionary basis for morality. While researchers have identified social and cognitive adaptations that support ethical behaviour, a consensus has emerged that genetically determined physical traits are not reliable signals of unethical intentions or actions. Challenging this view, we show that genetically determined physical traits can serve as reliable predictors of unethical behaviour if they are also associated with positive signals in intersex and intrasex selection. Specifically, we identify a key physical attribute, the facial width-to-height ratio, which predicts unethical behaviour in men. Across two studies, we demonstrate that men with wider faces (relative to facial height) are more likely to explicitly deceive their counterparts in a negotiation, and are more willing to cheat in order to increase their financial gain. Importantly, we provide evidence that the link between facial metrics and unethical behaviour is mediated by a psychological sense of power. Our results demonstrate that static physical attributes can indeed serve as reliable cues of immoral action, and provide additional support for the view that evolutionary forces shape ethical judgement and behaviour.

Link

Blue-eyed attractiveness: stereotype and reality

Aesthetic Plast Surg. 2011 Aug 20. [Epub ahead of print]

The Blue-Eyes Stereotype: Do Eye Color, Pupil Diameter, and Scleral Color Affect Attractiveness?

Abstract
BACKGROUND:
Blue eyes have been the embodiment of attractiveness not only for decades but even for centuries. The primary aim of this study was to determine whether iridal color, particularly color blue, can increase the attractiveness of a person's eye area. As a secondary aim, the study examined the impact of pupil diameter and scleral color on the attractiveness of the eye area.

METHODS:
The stimulus material comprised images of the eye areas of 60 women ages 15-65 years. A total of 80 participants rated the attractiveness of each eye area on a 7-point Likert scale and estimated the age of the person. The color values of the iris and sclera were measured. As an additional subsample, 50% of the participants were asked what features of each eye area they found particularly appealing.

RESULTS:
Most surprisingly, no correlation was found between iridal color and rated attractiveness. However, the participants mentioned the color blue more often as a positive aspect than other iridal colors. A high inverse correlation was observed between attractiveness of the eye area and age. The larger the pupil diameter and the whiter the scleral color, the lower was the real and perceived age and the higher was the attractiveness.

CONCLUSION:
The data showed that the "blue-eyes stereotype" does exist. People consider blue eyes attractive, but in reality, blue is rated as attractive as other iridal colors. Bright scleral color and large pupils positively affect attractiveness because both features are significantly correlated with youthfulness.

Link

Tight/loose culture influenced by a nation's past

Audio interview with lead author in NPR, also has a table with 10 loosest and 10 tightest cultures (left).

Another podcast in Science.

From the press release:

Gelfand and colleagues found that countries such as Japan, Korea, Singapore and Pakistan are much tighter whereas countries such as the Ukraine, Israel, Brazil, and the U.S. are looser. Their research further showed that a nation's tightness or looseness is in part determined by the ecological and human factors that have shaped its history – including wars, natural disasters, disease outbreaks, population density and scarcity of natural resources. Tight and loose societies also vary in their institutions—with tight societies having more autocratic governments, more closed media, and criminal justice systems that had more monitoring and greater deterrence of crime as compared to loose societies.

The study found that the situations that people encounter differ in tight and loose societies. For example, everyday situations—like being in park, a classroom, the movies, a bus, at job interviews, restaurants, and even one's bedroom—constrain behavior much more in tight societies and afford a wider range of behavior in loose societies.

"We also found that the psychological makeup of individual citizens varies in tight and loose societies," Gelfand said. "For example, individuals in tight societies are more prevention focused (attentive to rules), have higher self-regulation strength (more impulse control) and have higher needs for order and self-monitoring abilities than individuals in loose societies. These attributes, Gelfand said, help people to adapt to the level of constraint (or latitude) in their cultural context, and at the same time, reinforce it.

Science 27 May 2011:
Vol. 332 no. 6033 pp. 1100-1104
DOI: 10.1126/science.1197754

Differences Between Tight and Loose Cultures: A 33-Nation Study

Michele Gelfand et al.

With data from 33 nations, we illustrate the differences between cultures that are tight (have many strong norms and a low tolerance of deviant behavior) versus loose (have weak social norms and a high tolerance of deviant behavior). Tightness-looseness is part of a complex, loosely integrated multilevel system that comprises distal ecological and historical threats (e.g., high population density, resource scarcity, a history of territorial conflict, and disease and environmental threats), broad versus narrow socialization in societal institutions (e.g., autocracy, media regulations), the strength of everyday recurring situations, and micro-level psychological affordances (e.g., prevention self-guides, high regulatory strength, need for structure). This research advances knowledge that can foster cross-cultural understanding in a world of increasing global interdependence and has implications for modeling cultural change.

Link