bims-chumac Biomed News
on Context effects on human mate choice
Issue of 2020–01–26
nine papers selected by
Jay Dixit, Storytelling.NYC
  1. Accuracy and bias in first impressions of attachment style from faces.
  2. Sex Differences in Misperceptions of Sexual Interest Can Be Explained by Sociosexual Orientation and Men Projecting Their Own Interest Onto Women.
  3. Personality traits and emotion regulation: A targeted review and recommendations.
  4. The Value of Averageness in Aesthetic Rhinoplasty: Humans Like Average Noses.
  5. Does Mindfulness Training Without Explicit Ethics-Based Instruction Promote Prosocial Behaviors? A Meta-Analysis.
  6. Leading diversity: Towards a theory of functional leadership in diverse teams.
  7. The pace of modern culture.
  8. (I Think) You Are Pretty: a Behavior Analytic Conceptualization of Flirtation.
  9. Extrinsic emotion regulation.
  1. J Pers. 2020 Jan 19.
    Accuracy and bias in first impressions of attachment style from faces.
    Ravin Alaei, Germain Lévêque, Geoff MacDonald, Nicholas O Rule.
       OBJECTIVE: People gather important social information from subtle nonverbal cues. Given that one's attachment style can meaningfully affect the quality of one's relationships, we investigated whether people could perceive men's and women's attachment styles from photos of their neutral faces.
    METHOD: In two studies, we measured targets' attachment styles then asked participants (total N = 893) to judge the male and female targets' attachment anxiety and avoidance from photos of their neutral faces (total N = 331) and to report their own attachment anxiety and avoidance.
    RESULTS: Participants detected men's attachment style from face photos significantly better than chance in an initial exploratory study and in a preregistered replication but did not consistently detect women's attachment style from their face photos. Moreover, participants' own attachment style biased these first impressions: Individuals with greater attachment anxiety viewed others as more anxiously attached.
    CONCLUSIONS: People can detect some hints of unacquainted others' attachment styles from their faces but their own anxious attachment can bias these judgments.
    Keywords:  accuracy; attachment style; face; person perception; projection
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1111/jopy.12540
  2. Psychol Sci. 2020 Jan 23. 956797619900315
    Sex Differences in Misperceptions of Sexual Interest Can Be Explained by Sociosexual Orientation and Men Projecting Their Own Interest Onto Women.
    Anthony J Lee, Morgan J Sidari, Sean C Murphy, James M Sherlock, Brendan P Zietsch.
      Sex differences in misperceptions of sexual interest have been well documented; however, it is unclear whether this cognitive bias could be explained by other factors. In the current study, 1,226 participants (586 men, 640 women) participated in a speed-dating task in which they rated their sexual interest in each other as well as the sexual interest they perceived from their partners. Consistent with previous findings, results showed that men tended to overperceive sexual interest from their partners, whereas women tended to underperceive sexual interest. However, this sex difference became negligible when we considered potential mediators, such as the raters' sociosexual orientation and raters' tendency to project their own levels of sexual interest onto their partners. These findings challenge the popular notion that sex differences in misperceptions of sexual interest have evolved as a specialized adaptation to different selection pressures in men and women.
    Keywords:  attraction; error-management theory; mean-level bias; open data; sociosexual orientation; speed dating; tracking accuracy
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797619900315
  3. Emotion. 2020 Feb;20(1): 63-67
    Personality traits and emotion regulation: A targeted review and recommendations.
    David J Hughes, Ioannis K Kratsiotis, Karen Niven, David Holman.
      Where do individual differences in emotion regulation come from? This review examines theoretical and empirical evidence describing the role that personality traits play in shaping individuals' intrapersonal and interpersonal regulation styles. We define and delineate personality traits and emotion regulation and summarize empirical relations between them. Specifically, we review research on the Big Five personality traits in relation to each stage of Gross' (2015) extended process model of emotion regulation. In doing so, we document evidence concerning the relationships between personality traits and three key stages of emotion regulation, namely, identification (i.e., choosing which emotions to regulate), selection (i.e., choosing a broad regulatory approach), and implementation (i.e., adopting specific regulatory tactics). Finally, we make recommendations for future research that we hope will guide researchers in building a systematic understanding of how personality traits shape intrapersonal and interpersonal emotion regulation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000644
  4. Aesthet Surg J. 2020 Jan 21. pii: sjaa010. [Epub ahead of print]
    The Value of Averageness in Aesthetic Rhinoplasty: Humans Like Average Noses.
    Floris V W J van Zijl, David I Perrett, Peter J F M Lohuis, Carolina E Touw, Dengke Xiao, Frank R Datema.
       BACKGROUND: The aesthetic ideal of the nose eludes clear definition. Averageness may be an important determinant of ideal nasal shape: research has shown that averageness plays an important role in the human perception of facial attractiveness.
    OBJECTIVES: To test whether an averaged nasal shape is attractive, and whether deviation away from average is associated with decreased attractiveness.
    METHODS: Photographical series of the face were obtained from 80 Caucasian female volunteers aged 25-40 years. A mathematically averaged composite image was created using the first 40 volunteers. Forty-one panel members were recruited to judge the attractiveness of the nose of each original image and the composite, using a 5-point Likert scale ranging from 1 (very ugly) to 5 (very pretty). Deviation of nasal shape from average was calculated using a principal components analysis of standardized nasal landmarks.
    RESULTS: Twenty-one respondents were male (51%). Mean (SD) age of the respondents was 35.3 years (±15.6). The rating of the composite was significantly higher than the distribution of ratings for the 80 original nose images (4.2 vs 2.8, t=31.24, P<.001). The rating of the original nose images correlated negatively with deviation from average shape (r = -.40, n = 80, P<.001).
    CONCLUSIONS: In Caucasian females, a mathematically averaged nose is an attractive nose. Furthermore, the more an individual nose shape resembles average shape, the more attractive it is rated. Calculating deviation from average before and after rhinoplasty may aid in objectively measuring aesthetic rhinoplasty outcome.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1093/asj/sjaa010
  5. Pers Soc Psychol Bull. 2020 Jan 23. 146167219900418
    Does Mindfulness Training Without Explicit Ethics-Based Instruction Promote Prosocial Behaviors? A Meta-Analysis.
    Daniel R Berry, Jonathan P Hoerr, Selena Cesko, Amir Alayoubi, Kevin Carpio, Hannah Zirzow, Wesley Walters, Genny Scram, Katie Rodriguez, Vanessa Beaver.
      Scholarly discourse has raised concerns about the gravitas of secular mindfulness trainings in promoting prosocial outgrowths, as these trainings lack ethics-based concepts found in contemplative traditions. Random-effects meta-analyses were conducted to test whether mindfulness trainings absent explicit ethics-based instructions promote prosocial action. There was a range of small to medium standardized mean difference effect sizes of mindfulness training on overt acts of prosociality when compared with active and inactive controls, k = 29, N = 3,100, g = .426, 95% confidence interval (CI)(g) = [.304, .549]. Reliable effect size estimates were found for single-session interventions that measured prosocial behavior immediately after training. Mindfulness training also reliably promotes compassionate (but not instrumental or generous) helping and reliably reduces prejudice and retaliation. Publication bias analyses indicated that the reliability of these findings was not wholly dependent on selective reporting. Implications for the science of secular mindfulness training on prosocial action are discussed.
    Keywords:  meta-analysis; mindfulness; mindfulness training; prosocial
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1177/0146167219900418
  6. J Appl Psychol. 2020 Jan 23.
    Leading diversity: Towards a theory of functional leadership in diverse teams.
    Astrid C Homan, Seval Gündemir, Claudia Buengeler, Gerben A van Kleef.
      The importance of leaders as diversity managers is widely acknowledged. However, a dynamic and comprehensive theory on the interplay between team diversity and team leadership is missing. We provide a review of the extant (scattered) research on the interplay between team diversity and team leadership, which reveals critical shortcomings in the current scholarly understanding. This calls for an integrative theoretical account of functional diversity leadership in teams. Here we outline such an integrative theory. We propose that functional diversity leadership requires (a) knowledge of the favorable and unfavorable processes that can be instigated by diversity, (b) mastery of task- and person-focused leadership behaviors necessary to address associated team needs, and (c) competencies to predict and/or diagnose team needs and to apply corresponding leadership behaviors to address those needs. We integrate findings of existing studies on the interplay between leadership and team diversity with insights from separate literatures on team diversity and (team) leadership. The resulting Leading Diversity model (LeaD) posits that effective leadership of diverse teams requires proactive as well as reactive attention to teams' needs in terms of informational versus intergroup processes and adequate management of these processes through task- versus person-focused leadership. LeaD offers new insights into specific competencies and actions that allow leaders to shape the influence of team diversity on team outcomes and, thereby, harvest the potential value in diversity. Organizations can capitalize on this model to promote optimal processes and performance in diverse teams. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1037/apl0000482
  7. Nat Hum Behav. 2020 Jan 20.
    The pace of modern culture.
    Ben Lambert, Georgios Kontonatsios, Matthias Mauch, Theodore Kokkoris, Matthew Jockers, Sophia Ananiadou, Armand M Leroi.
      Here we investigate the evolutionary dynamics of several kinds of modern cultural artefacts-pop music, novels, the clinical literature and cars-as well as a collection of organic populations. In contrast to the general belief that modern culture evolves very quickly, we show that rates of modern cultural evolution are comparable to those of many animal populations. Using time-series methods, we show that much of modern culture is shaped by either stabilizing or directional forces or both and that these forces partly regulate the rates at which different traits evolve. We suggest that these forces are probably cultural selection and that the evolution of many artefact traits can be explained by a shifting-optimum model of cultural selection that, in turn, rests on known psychological biases in aesthetic appreciation. In sum, our results demonstrate the deep unity of the processes and patterns of cultural and organic evolution.
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-019-0802-4
  8. Perspect Behav Sci. 2018 Nov;41(2): 615-636
    (I Think) You Are Pretty: a Behavior Analytic Conceptualization of Flirtation.
    Jennifer A Wade.
      Much research in flirtation has been approached from a socio-cognitive perspective and has overemphasized subjective self-reports rather than overt behavior. Existing work pertinent to flirtation is reviewed here in addition to proposing a behavior-analytic perspective on the topic with a conception that includes both rule-governed and contingency-shaped behavior. Of particular interest within a verbal behavior conception of flirtation is the importance of autoclitics-features of a verbal response that affect the listener's reaction to the rest of the verbal response. Applications of a behavior analytic conception of flirtation and future directions relevant to research on interpersonal relationships are discussed.
    Keywords:  Autoclitics; Contingency-shaped behavior; Flirtation; Interpersonal relationships; Rule-governed behavior
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1007/s40614-018-0136-y
  9. Emotion. 2020 Feb;20(1): 10-15
    Extrinsic emotion regulation.
    Yuki Nozaki, Moïra Mikolajczak.
      To date, the field of emotion regulation (ER) has largely focused on intrinsic ER (i.e., regulation of one's own emotions) and has only recently started to investigate extrinsic ER (i.e., regulation of another person's emotions). This article selectively reviews current findings in order to answer the following questions: (a) What is extrinsic ER, and how can it be distinguished from related constructs such as emotion contagion, empathy, prosocial behavior, and social support? (b) How can we best model the processes through which extrinsic ER occurs as well as individual differences in extrinsic ER ability? The answers show that although extrinsic ER has much in common with intrinsic ER, the 2 cannot be equated. Research is therefore needed on the extrinsic side of ER. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).
    DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1037/emo0000636
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