"Groups lie more than individuals"

Via Reddit: "...even individuals who have a proven track record of honest behavior are no match for the potentially negative influences present in a group dynamic, especially when money is at stake, according to a new study."

The study authors, Martin G. Kocher, Simeon Schudy and Lisa Spantig, all of the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich, studied 273 participants in both individual and group situations. Participants, who were paid for their role in the study, were shown video of dice rolls and asked to report the number shown on the die. The higher the reported die roll, the larger the monetary compensation. Participants were evaluated on an individual basis, and in two group settings: one in which all members of the group must report the same die roll to receive a payoff, and another in which members do not have to report the same die roll to receive a payoff. In the group settings, members are able to communicate with each other via a chat feature.

“We observed that groups lie significantly more than individuals when group members face mutual financial gain and have to coordinate an action in order to realize that financial gain,” said Kocher.

Of the 78 groups that participated in the study, arguments for dishonesty were explicitly mentioned in 51 percent of the group chats. In fact, of the messages that were exchanged among group members, 43.4 percent argued for dishonest reporting, while only 15.6 percent consisted of arguments for honesty. Interestingly, the authors found that the number of individuals in each group who had exhibited dishonest behavior in the individual portion of the study had no real impact on these results, as dishonesty occurred even in groups where all members had previously responded honestly.

“The ability for group members to exchange and discuss potential justifications for their dishonest behavior can create an overall shift in the group’s beliefs of what constitutes moral behavior,” said Spantig. “This allows them to establish a new norm regarding what does or does not constitute dishonest behavior,” according to Schudy.

(Link to more)

"Sleep deprivation may impact brain like binge drinking, researchers say"

Via Instapundit: “Our reaction time, our movement time, our cognitive decisions, our awareness of space and temporal positioning — that’s what alcohol [influences]. Sleep deprivation does the same thing,” said Farrell Cahill, associate research director of Medisys Health Group.

For what is considered adequate sleep, people typically need between seven and nine hours of sleep at a time. Six hours or fewer is considered sleep deprivation, Cahill said.

Signs that Cahill said indicate you may suffer from chronic sleep deprivation include:

• Lethargy and lack of energy
• Increase in inappropriate appetite
• Increased irritability
• Inability to govern sleep patterns
• Emotional imbalance
• Difficulty dealing with day-to-day stressors

Because sleep deprivation impacts bodily functions and metabolism, including appetite-regulating hormones, it also may cause someone to consume food when they don’t actually need it, Cahill said.

(Link to more)

Dark sense of humour could be early sign of dementia - study

Well Twitter, looks like we're all screwed. pic.twitter.com/QYqb3DA4zI

— The Refined Ruffian (@CulturedRuffian) June 19, 2016

News from the past.

"Researchers reveal the 'building blocks' of storytelling"

DailyMail:  From Harry Potter and Romeo and Juliet to the stories of Oedipus and Icarus, almost every tale told conforms to one of just six plots, researchers have claimed.

A major new analysis of over 1,700 stories identified the core plots 'which form the building blocks of complex narratives'.  Researchers used complex data-mining to locate words linked to positive or negative emotion in each story to reveal the set of arcs.

To conduct the study, researchers used sentiment analysis, which is the idea that words have both positive and emotional impacts, to map the emotional arcs.  Words can be measured of the emotional valence of text and how it changes from moment to moment.

The team then analyzed the emotional polarity of 'word windows' and slid these windows through the text to create a picture of how the emotional valence changes.  This task was performed on fictional works taken from the Project Gutenberg website that had been downloaded more than 150 times each.

"People under 30 have way weaker grips than they did a few decades ago"

Quartz:  Researchers from the Winston-Salem State University in North Carolina found that men and women under 30 have weaker grip strength than they did back in 1985. Their work was published (paywall) in the Journal of Hand Therapy.

The researchers asked almost 240 men and women under 30—most 20 to 24 years old—to exert as much force as they could on a hand dynamometer, which measures grip force in pounds. On average, men’s hand strength decreased by 20 pounds, and women’s hand strength decreased by 10 pounds.

The culprit? Probably a combination of increased technology use at home and at work, and less manual labor. “As a society, we’re no longer agricultural or manufacturing,” Elizabeth Fain, an occupational therapist and lead author of the study, told NPR. “What we’re doing more now is technology-related, especially for millennials.”

It’s possible that looser grip strength could translate into a weaker handshake. That would be bad news for millennials, because handshakes have long been an important measure we use (paywall) to size up someone we’ve just met. (Link)

"The corporate ‘cure’ for sexual harassment only feeds the disease"

NY Post:  The last time you had to sit through a training program, you probably thought you were just wasting your time. You were wrong: Research suggests that efforts to raise awareness and train employees about sexual harassment may be worse than a waste. They may actually lead to more tolerance for sexual harassment, as well as greater reliance on stereotypes and more animosity between the sexes.

A research team at Stanford, for example, used an experiment in which one group of men heard a sexual-harassment policy before conducting a task with an unseen female partner.

The researchers found, compared to a control group, these men were more likely to believe “most people think both men and women are lower status, less competent, and less considerate,” and personally thought “everybody was lower in status.”

Another study of participants in a sexual-harassment training seminar found “male participants were less likely than other groups to perceive coercive sexual harassment, less willing to report sexual harassment, and more likely to blame the victim.”

So much for sensitivity training. These findings seem pretty obvious. Few people forced to read legalese or watch stilted programming about Johnny and Jane learning appropriate office behavior feel affirmed and inspired to be more respectful to others.

Rather, such programs tend to remind us of everything that’s wrong with our culture, with people assuming the worst of each other and forcing everyone to walk on eggshells lest they offend someone else. (read the whole thing)

"Free will could all be an illusion..."

"Research adds to evidence suggesting 'even our most seemingly ironclad beliefs about our own agency and conscious experience can be dead wrong'"

The idea was tested out by tricking subjects into believing that they had made a choice before the consequences of that choice could actually be seen. In the test, people were made to believe that they had taken a decision using free will – even though that was impossible.

The idea that human beings trick themselves into believing in free will was laid out in a paper by psychologists Dan Wegner and Thalia Wheatley nearly 20 years ago. They proposed the feeling of wanting to do something was real, but there may be no connection between the feeling and actually doing it....

In one of the studies undertaken by Adam Bear and Paul Bloom, of Princeton University, the test subjects were shown five white circles on a computer monitor. They were told to choose one of the circles before one of them lit up red.

The participants were then asked to describe whether they’d picked the correct circle, another one, or if they hadn’t had time to actually pick one.

Statistically, people should have picked the right circle about one out of every five times. But they reported getting it right much more than 20 per cent of the time, going over 30 per cent if the circle turned red very quickly.

The scientists suggest that the findings show that the test subjects’ minds were swapping around the order of events, so that it appeared that they had chosen the right circle – even if they hadn’t actually had time to do so.

The idea of free will may have arisen because it is a useful thing to have, giving people a feeling of control over their lives and allowing for people to be punished for wrongdoing.

But that same feeling can go awry, the scientists wrote in the Scientific American magazine. It may be important for people to feel they are control of their lives, for instance, but distortions in that same process might make people feel that they have control over external processes like the weather.

"Consciousness occurs in 'time slices' lasting only milliseconds, study suggests"

According to Herzog and fellow researcher Frank Scharnowski from the University of Zurich, neither the ‘continuous’ nor ‘discrete’ hypotheses can by themselves aptly describe how we process the world around us, as numerous studies testing people’s visual awareness seem to disprove both notions.

But what if elements of both hypotheses were taking place at the same time in a continuous interplay between conscious and unconscious thought?

“According to our model, the elements of a visual scene are first unconsciously analysed. This period can last up to 400 ms and involves, amongst other processes, the analysis of stimulus features such as the orientation or colour of elements and temporal features such as object duration and object simultaneity,” the authors write in PLOS Biology.

After this analysis is complete, the researchers say the features we’ve detected are integrated into our conscious perception, compressing all the unconscious recording into something we’re actually aware of.

In other words, while we’re taking the world in, we’re not actually consciously perceiving it. Instead, we’re just mutely using our senses to record data for up to 400 ms at a time. Then, in what could be called a moment of clarity, we consciously perceive the stimuli that our senses have detected.

The team thinks this presentation of information to our consciousness lasts for about 50 milliseconds, during which we also stop taking new sensory information in. And then repeat. (read more)

via Instapundit

Study: Women afraid of crime prefer dominant partners

UPI: Regardless of the circumstances, women who prefer physically formidable and dominant mates -- PPFDM for short -- also tend to feel more vulnerable to crime.

Psychologists have theorized that females who grow up in high-crime areas tend to place a heavy emphasis on security, and thus are more attracted to physically dominant men. Now, researchers at the University of Leicester have shown the correlation between fear of victimization and PPFDM is widely prevalent.

Even when a woman's actual risk of victimization is low, those with a strong PPFDM feel more at risk.

The experiments' results -- detailed in the journal Evolution and Human Behavior -- suggest changing circumstances and threat levels have little influence on PPFDM.

"PPFDM appears to be associated with women's self-assessed vulnerability," study author Hannah Ryder, a PhD researcher at Leicester, said in a press release. "Women with strong PPFDM feel relatively more at risk, fearful, and vulnerable to criminal victimization compared to their counterparts, regardless of whether there are situational risk factors present."

"Our research suggests that the relationship between feelings of vulnerability, as measured by fear of crime, and women's preference for physically formidable and dominant mates is stable, and does not update according to environmental circumstances or relative level of protection needed," Ryder added.

Claim: High CO2 Levels Are Making People Dumber

"First, United Nations officials label bacon and deli meats as carcinogens, and now scientists are claiming that higher concentrations of carbon dioxide are not only heating the planet, they’re making people dumber."

A new study by the Harvard School of Public Health claims “carbon dioxide (CO2) has a direct and negative impact on human cognition and decision-making,” according to ThinkProgress, a left-wing advocacy website.

Former Vice President Al Gore wasted no time tweeting out ThinkProgress’ in-depth article, trying to link higher carbon dioxide levels to lower cognition in humans.

Al Gore hardest hit.

Study: 1 in 6 Young Americans Have Stolen Something in the Past Year

"Geoffrey Fain Williams, an economist at Transylvania University, used data on self-reported thefts from Ohio State University’s National Longitudinal Study of Youth, which followed more than 8,000 people who were 12 to 16 years old when the survey launched in 1996. In the 15 years that followed, participants were asked about a variety of topics, including stealing. The subjects were regularly asked whether they had stolen something in the past year and if so, how much it was worth."

Williams found that theft is relatively common, with about 16% of the participants reporting having stolen something in the past year. One in 5 men have swiped something; 1 in 10 women report doing the same. But people generally only steal for a short period of time, with less than 5% continuing to steal for more than a year.

“For the majority of offenders, property crime may simply be an exploratory phase,” Williams wrote. Once offenders entered their late teen years, their interest in continuing to steal dropped off dramatically, with most thieves under the age of 24, the study found. One reason the young thieves may have lost interest is that they mostly stole objects of little value, only netting about $37.50 per theft. And the thieves generally didn’t need the money; most of the thieves were well off, and being poor didn’t drive the study participants to steal more.

One potential issue with the study is that stealing was self-reported, so actual numbers could be higher.

Is tax cheating worst, better or about the same?

"Loneliness Is A Mind Killer"

"Study Shows Link To Rapid Cognitive Decline In Older Adults"

Over the 12-year study, participants reporting loneliness experienced 20% faster cognitive decline than other participants. This result held true regardless of factors like demographics, socioeconomic status and the presence of other debilitating health conditions. Higher levels of depression also correlated significantly with more rapid cognitive decline.

“Our study suggests that even one or two depressive symptoms – particularly loneliness – is associated with an increased rate of cognitive decline over 12 years,” said Nancy J. Donovan, MD, of the Brigham and Women’s Hospital. “We found that lonely people decline cognitively at a faster rate than people who report more satisfying social networks and connections.”

The researchers also evaluated the possibility that reduced cognitive function might lead to greater loneliness, but didn’t find evidence to support a link in that direction.

“Although loneliness and depression appear closely linked, loneliness may, by itself, have effects on cognitive decline. This is important to know as we develop treatments to enhance cognitive health and quality of life for older adults,” added Donovan.

"Researchers Find Genes That Can Make You Look Younger By 10 Years"

Could the genetic advantage be called black privilege?

The researchers discovered that the younger gene is present in around 10 percent of white Americans and 20 percent of black Americans. The team believes that this gene has helped make these individuals look 10 years younger than they actually were.

These findings could help explain how celebrities, such as Hollywood actress Halle Berry, 48, and supermodel Iman, 59, could retain their youthful looks.

"Many of us felt that people with darker skin aged better because of more pigment and better photo [sunlight] protection, but we have found there is much more to it than that," Kimball said.

"They have other characteristics in their skin which confer good ageing, which until now we had no idea about."

"New Study: The world's a lot more violent than reported"

On his Twitter page Harvard's Niall Ferguson calls it "hugely important."

In the paper ["On the tail risk of violent conflict and its underestimation."] Nassim Nicholas Taleb, the author... argues that "Violence is much more severe than it seems from conventional analyses and the prevailing 'long peace' theory which claims that violence has declined."

Contrary to current discussions, all statistical pictures thus obtained show that 1) the risk of violent conflict has not been decreasing, but is rather underestimated by techniques relying on naive year-on-year changes in the mean, or using sample mean as an estimator of the true mean of an extremely fat-tailed phenomenon; 2) armed conflicts have memoryless inter-arrival times, thus incompatible with the idea of a time trend. Our analysis uses 1) raw data, as recorded and estimated by historians; 2) a naive transformation, used by certain historians and sociologists, which rescales past conflicts and casualties with respect to the actual population; 3) more importantly, a log transformation to account for the fact that the number of casualties in a conflict cannot be larger than the world population.

The authors base their article on the methods of extreme value theory.

A striking chart accompanying the article dramatically shows the impact of violence on all periods of recorded history. The chart measures conflicts featuring more than 50,000 deaths relative to today's world population. (Thus, 50,000 deaths today = 5,000 deaths in the eighteenth century.)

On second thought...

"Co-author disavows highly publicized study on public opinion and same-sex marriage"

...citing “irregularities” in the data provided by his partner in the research. He is seeking a retraction of the study, published in the journal Science.

The study purported to show the ease with which peoples’ minds can be changed on the subject of same-sex marriage after short conversations, particularly with gay advocates.

The co-author, Donald P. Green of Columbia University... said two University of California-Berkeley graduate students who had attempted their own research “brought to my attention a series of irregularities that called into question the integrity of the data we present.”

When Green’s co-author, Michael LaCour, was shown the information, Green said he could not provide the survey data he claimed to have collected. Nor would LaCour provide “the contact information of survey respondents so their participation in the survey could be verified…,” Green said.

“I am deeply embarrassed by this turn of events and apologize to the editors, reviewer, and readers of Science,” Green wrote at the conclusion of his memo. He also listed the paper as “retracted by Donald Green” on his curriculum vitae.

NYT Science: "Stupider With Monogamy"

"Forcing male flies into monogamy has a startling effect: After a few dozen generations, the flies become worse at learning."

This discovery, published on Wednesday in the Proceedings of the Royal Society, isn’t a biological excuse for men who have strayed from their significant other. Instead, it’s a tantalizing clue about why intelligence evolved. 

Concluding paragraphs...

The evolution of learning remains a puzzle for scientists. A smart animal can learn how to find more food or how to avoid predators. But if learning were such an unalloyed good, then one might expect all animals to be as smart as we are.

They are not because there is a cost to learning. Dr. Kawecki and his colleagues have found that flies that have been bred to be good learners are more likely to die when competing for scarce food with regular flies. Even when they’re not threatened with starvation, their life span is 15 percent shorter than average.

It’s still not clear why that is so. Changes to the nervous system that come with learning may cause long-term damage of some sort, or learning may simply use up energy that could be directed to other uses.

Because of the cost, evolution may increase learning only when its benefits outweigh its drawbacks — such as when it affects mating. Dr. Hollis and Dr. Kawecki suspect that fast-learning males may be able to swiftly recognize receptive females, and thus mate with more of them before they die. Forcing the flies into monogamy, on the other hand, gets rid of learning’s benefits, leaving only the cost behind.

To test this idea, Dr. Hollis and Dr. Kawecki compared the mating prowess of the evolved flies. They put a group of male flies in a vial with one receptive female and five unreceptive ones and tallied how many mated in an hour. The scientists found that the polygamous males quickly zeroed in on the receptive female. The monogamous males, on the other hand, wasted time courting unreceptive females and being rejected.

“They’re just not figuring it out,” said Dr. Hollis.

While no one has yet carried out an experiment like this on other species, Dr. Hollis suspects that the relationship between sex and the evolution of learning might apply beyond flies — perhaps even to our own species.

“I think it really can inform us quite a lot about what’s going on in nature, and why we have the brains we have,” said Dr. Hollis.

NY Times 

Study: "Would You Lie for Me?"

"WHAT is the chance that you could get someone to lie for you? What about vandalizing public property at your suggestion?

Most of us assume that others would go along with such schemes only if, on some level, they felt comfortable doing so. If not, they’d simply say “no,” right?

Yet research suggests that saying “no” can be more difficult than we believe — and that we have more power over others’ decisions than we think."

 

Read more here...

"Study: Having daughters makes parents more likely to be Republican"

"In newly published findings that challenge earlier research, Dalton Conley of New York University and Emily Rauscher of the University of Kansas found that having more daughters than sons and having a daughter first “significantly reduces the likelihood of Democratic identification and significantly increases the strength of Republican Party identification.”

Not only is the daughter effect statistically significant, it’s substantively large. They found that overall, “compared to those with no daughters, parents with all daughters are 14% less likely to identify as a Democrat….[and] 11% more likely to identify as a Republican than parents with no daughters,” they write in the journal Sociological Forum.

The daughters effect is considerably stronger among better educated and wealthier parents, they find. But among those farther down the socioeconomic ladder, it weakens to statistical insignificance.

Pew Research via Breitbart tweet

"MESSY or tidy — which is better"?

"... [I]f messiness is so bad, why do so many people tolerate, and even embrace, it?"      

Not long ago, two of my colleagues and I speculated that messiness, like tidiness, might serve a purpose. Since tidiness has been associated with upholding societal standards, we predicted that just being around tidiness would elicit a desire for convention. We also predicted the opposite: that being around messiness would lead people away from convention, in favor of new directions.

We conducted some experiments to test these intuitions, and as we reported in last month’s issue of the journal Psychological Science, our hunches were borne out.

Click here for the rest of the article.

 

 

***

 

mess

[Middle English mes, course of a meal, food, group of people eating together, from Old French, from Late Latin missus, from Latin, past participle of mittere, to place.]

 

Study: 'Men Feel Terrible When their Partner Succeeds'

According to a new study, men experience a blow to their self-esteem when their female partners experience success, even when they aren’t in direct competition. Women’s success also negatively impacts how men view the future of the relationship, researchers found.

“There is an idea that women are allowed to bask in the reflected glory of her male partner and to be the ‘woman behind the successful man,’ but the reverse is not true for men,” says study co-author Kate Ratliff of the University of Florida.

Skipping down, beyond the mundane details of how they did the study.

The researchers hypothesized a zero-sum approach to success and failure may be what was fueling men’s insecurities and resentment at their partners’ success, explaining that men may be more likely to see their partners’ success as their own failure.

You can read the full study here.

Salon