Beyond allyship:Motivations for advantaged group members to engage in action for disadvantaged groups

White Americans who participate in the Black Lives Matter movement, men who attended the Women’s March, and people from the Global North who work to reduce poverty in the Global South—advantaged group members (sometimes referred to as allies) often engage in action for disadvantaged groups. Tensions can arise, however, over the inclusion of advantaged group members in these movements, which we argue can partly be explained by their motivations to participate. We propose that advantaged group members can be motivated to participate in these movements (a) to improve the status of the disadvantaged group, (b) on the condition that the status of their own group is maintained, (c) to meet their own personal needs, and (d) because this behavior aligns with their moral beliefs. We identify potential antecedents and behavioral outcomes associated with these motivations before describing the theoretical contribution our article makes to the psychological literature

(Not so) powerful allies? Decision makers’ reactions to advantaged group allies in collective action

Do allies in collective action have a positive impact on political efficacy? Theoretical considerations and common sense might lead us to expect that advantaged group allies will be beneficial to the success of social movements. However, across five experimental studies, with samples from the United States and Germany (three pre-registered, total N = 696, 48% women, Mage = 38), we find that such involvement does not significantly affect authorities’ reactions to the demands of disadvantaged groups. Decision makers were given information about proposals supported either by only disadvantaged group members or by disadvantaged group members and advantaged group allies. Their support, budget allocations, voting intentions and perceptions of movements and proposals did not differ as a function of this information. However, collective actions including allies did reduce perceptions of intergroup conflict. These results were replicated across different contexts with student and local politicians and with participants acting as parliamentarians in fictional scenarios

Development and validation of a reference data set for assigning Staphylococcus species based on next-generation sequencing of the 16S-23S rRNA region

Many members of the Staphylococcus genus are clinically relevant opportunistic pathogens that warrant accurate and rapid identification for targeted therapy. The aim of this study was to develop a careful assignment scheme for staphylococcal species based on next-generation sequencing (NGS) of the 16S-23S rRNA region. All reference staphylococcal strains were identified at the species level using Sanger sequencing of the 16S rRNA, sodA, tuf, and rpoB genes and NGS of the 16S-23S rRNA region. To broaden the database, an additional 100 staphylococcal strains, including 29 species, were identified by routine diagnostic methods, 16S rRNA Sanger sequencing and NGS of the 16S-23S rRNA region. The results enabled development of reference sequences encompassing the 16S-23S rRNA region for 50 species (including one newly proposed species) and 6 subspecies of the Staphylococcus genus. This study showed sodA and rpoB targets were the most discriminative but NGS of the 16S-23S rRNA region was more discriminative than tuf gene sequencing and much more discriminative than 16S rRNA gene sequencing. Almost all Staphylococcus species could be distinguished when the max score was 99.0% or higher and the sequence similarity between the best and second best species was equal to or >0.2% (min. 9 nucleotides). This study allowed development of reference sequences for 21 staphylococcal species and enrichment for 29 species for which sequences were publicly available. We confirmed the usefulness of NGS of the 16S-23S rRNA region by identifying the whole species content in 45 clinical samples and comparing the results to those obtained using routine diagnostic methods. Based on the developed reference database, all staphylococcal species can be reliably detected based on the 16S-23S rRNA sequences in samples composed of both single species and more complex polymicrobial communities. This study will be useful for introduction of a novel diagnostic tool, which undoubtedly is an improvement for reliable species identification in polymicrobial samples. The introduction of this new method is hindered by a lack of reference sequences for the 16S-23S rRNA region for many bacterial species. The results will allow identification of all Staphylococcus species, which are clinically relevant pathogens

In search of a pan-European culture: European values, beliefs and models of selfhood in global perspective

What, if any, are the common cultural characteristics that distinguish European societies and groups when viewed against a backdrop of global cultural variation? We sought to identify any shared features of European cultures through secondary multilevel analyses of two large datasets that together provided measures of cultural values, beliefs and models of selfhood from samples in all inhabited continents. Although heterogeneous in many respects—including the value dimension of autonomy versus embeddedness—European samples shared two distinctive features: a decontextualized representation of personhood and a cultural model of selfhood emphasizing difference from others. Compared to samples from other regions, European samples on average also emphasized egalitarianism and harmony values, commitment to others in their models of selfhood, and an immutable concept of personhood, but not uniformly so. We interpret these findings in relation to a Durkheimian model of individualism

Relational mobility predicts social behaviors in 39 countries and is tied to historical farming and threat

International audienc

Nine newly identified individuals refine the phenotype associated with MYT1L mutations

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A Deletion in the Canine POMC Gene Is Associated with Weight and Appetite in Obesity-Prone Labrador Retriever Dogs.

Sequencing of candidate genes for obesity in Labrador retriever dogs identified a 14 bp deletion in pro-opiomelanocortin (POMC) with an allele frequency of 12%. The deletion disrupts the β-MSH and β-endorphin coding sequences and is associated with body weight (per allele effect of 0.33 SD), adiposity, and greater food motivation. Among other dog breeds, the deletion was only found in the closely related flat-coat retriever (FCR), where it is similarly associated with body weight and food motivation. The mutation is significantly more common in Labrador retrievers selected to become assistance dogs than pets. In conclusion, the deletion in POMC is a significant modifier of weight and appetite in Labrador retrievers and FCRs and may influence other behavioral traits.We are grateful to Rachel Moxon of Guide Dogs UK for collecting the assistance dog samples; Stephen J Sharp of the MRC Epidemiology Unit for his statistical advice; Jens Häggström, Karin Hultin Jäderlund and Berndt Klingeborn for the Swedish dog samples; Anne White for efforts to develop a canine beta MSH assay and adaptation of her original for figure 1b; and the Dogslife Consortium for samples from British Labrador retrievers (supported by an Institute Core Strategic Grant from the BBSRC to the Roslin Institute). A full list of the investigators who contributed to the Dogslife project is available from www.dogslife.ac.uk/who-runs-dogslife. AJG's academic post at the University of Liverpool is financially supported by Royal Canin. The work was primarily supported by the Wellcome Trust (Senior Investigator Award 095515/Z/11/Z and Strategic Award 100574/Z/12/Z), MRC (MRC Metabolic Diseases Unit, award 4050281695 and MRC_MC_UU_12012/5), and Dogs Trust. The authors would like to thank all the veterinary surgeons and nurses, owners and dogs who contributed samples.This is the final version of the article. It first appeared from Elsevier via https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cmet.2016.04.01

Being oneself through time: bases of self-continuity across 55 cultures

Self-continuity – the sense that one’s past, present, and future are meaningfully connected – is considered a defining feature of personal identity. However, bases of self-continuity may depend on cultural beliefs about personhood. In multilevel analyses of data from 7287 adults from 55 cultural groups in 33 nations, we tested a new tripartite theoretical model of bases of self-continuity. As expected, perceptions of stability, sense of narrative, and associative links to one’s past each contributed to predicting the extent to which people derived a sense of self-continuity from different aspects of their identities. Ways of constructing self-continuity were moderated by cultural and individual differences in mutable (vs. immutable) personhood beliefs – the belief that human attributes are malleable. Individuals with lower mutability beliefs based self-continuity more on stability; members of cultures where mutability beliefs were higher based self-continuity more on narrative. Bases of self-continuity were also moderated by cultural variation in contextualized (vs. decontextualized) personhood beliefs, indicating a link to cultural individualism-collectivism. Our results illustrate the cultural flexibility of the motive for self-continuity

Measurement invariance of the moral vitalism scale across 28 cultural groups

Moral vitalism refers to a tendency to view good and evil as actual forces that can influence people and events. The Moral Vitalism Scale had been designed to assess moral vitalism in a brief survey form. Previous studies established the reliability and validity of the scale in US-American and Australian samples. In this study, the cross-cultural comparability of the scale was tested across 28 different cultural groups worldwide through measurement invariance tests. A series of exact invariance tests marginally supported partial metric invariance, however, an approximate invariance approach provided evidence of partial scalar invariance for a 5-item measure. The established level of measurement invariance allows for comparisons of latent means across cultures. We conclude that the brief measure of moral vitalism is invariant across 28 cultures and can be used to estimate levels of moral vitalism with the same precision across very different cultural settings.Peer reviewe