Global study of social odor awareness

Olfaction plays an important role in human social communication, including multiple domains in which people often rely on their sense of smell in the social context. The importance of the sense of smell and its role can however vary inter-individually and culturally. Despite the growing body of literature on differences in olfactory performance or hedonic preferences across the globe, the aspects of a given culture as well as culturally universal individual differences affecting odor awareness in human social life remain unknown. Here, we conducted a large-scale analysis of data collected from 10,794 participants from 52 study sites from 44 countries all over the world. The aim of our research was to explore the potential individual and country-level correlates of odor awareness in the social context. The results show that the individual characteristics were more strongly related than country-level factors to self-reported odor awareness in different social contexts. A model including individual-level predictors (gender, age, material situation, education and preferred social distance) provided a relatively good fit to the data, but adding country-level predictors (Human Development Index, population density and average temperature) did not improve model parameters. Although there were some cross-cultural differences in social odor awareness, the main differentiating role was played by the individual differences. This suggests that people living in different cultures and different climate conditions may still share some similar patterns of odor awareness if they share other individual-level characteristics

Preferred interpersonal distances: a global comparison

Human spatial behavior has been the focus of hundreds of previous research studies. However, the conclusions and generalizability of previous studies on interpersonal distance preferences were limited by some important methodological and sampling issues. The objective of the present study was to compare preferred interpersonal distances across the world and to overcome the problems observed in previous studies. We present an extensive analysis of interpersonal distances over a large data set (N = 8,943 participants from 42 countries). We attempted to relate the preferred social, personal, and intimate distances observed in each country to a set of individual characteristics of the participants, and some attributes of their cultures. Our study indicates that individual characteristics (age and gender) influence interpersonal space preferences and that some variation in results can be explained by temperature in a given region. We also present objective values of preferred interpersonal distances in different regions, which might be used as a reference data point in future studies.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

An Adlerian Analysis of "The Kid" Movie

The main inspiration of cinema is human life, and cinema is an important tool in the journey to the human inner world. Therefore, psychology, as a science which tries to understand the individuals, has always been inside the cinema. This article presents an Adlerian approach towards the movie "The Kid" which was directed by Jon Turteltaub and written by Audrey Wells. The movie was released in 2001 in Turkey. Authors of the article focus on the life of the main character, Russ with an Adlerian perspective and analyse the movie using Adlerian terms such as social interest, lifestyle, inferiority feeling and superiority striving, superiority complex, family impact, life tasks and early recollections. It has been revealed in the document analysis conducted that childhood memories have left marks on the life of the main character, Russ; that his personality is influenced by the intense inferiority he felt during his childhood and that his lifestyle, his occupation, and his interpersonal relations have been shaped according to these life events. As a result, this study shows that the movie, "The Kid", can be used as an experimental learning material for teaching the theoretical knowledge about the Individual Psychology

The role of waist-to-hip ratio in evaluation of female physical attractiveness: Eye-tracker data

WOS: 000257363000006This study attempted to investigate the relative role of body weight and waist-to-hip ratio (WHR) on judgements of female physical attractiveness. The sample has consisted of 50 male and 50 female participants who are reportedly heterosexual with an age range of 18-22 years. Using a self-report technique, the participants judged the 12 three-dimensional female figures with different body weight and waist-to-hip ratios for their attractiveness. The participants' visual responses to the figures were recorded to test their judgements of attractiveness empirically. Overally, the Multi Dimensional Scaling (MDS) analysis indicated that the participants' judgements for attractiveness were mainly based on the WHR dimension. MDS data were reinforced by the data obtained from the eye-tracking system. The descriptive data suggested some sex differentiation in attractiveness ratings of the participants. The eye-tracking data provided clarifying information for these sex differences. The findings were discussed under the illumination of evolutionary hypotheses. Some methodological considerations were elaborated, and a set of resolutions were proposed

Emotional Dependency and Dysfunctional Relationship Beliefs as Predictors of Married Turkish Individuals' Relationship Satisfaction

In this study, we examined married individuals' relationship satisfaction in relation to their emotional dependency and dysfunctional relationship beliefs. Our participants consisted of 203 female and 181 male, a total of 384 married individuals from urban cities of Turkey. Controlling the effects of gender and length of marriage, we performed a hierarchical regression analysis. Results revealed that married Turkish individuals' relationship satisfaction was significantly explained by their emotional dependency (sr(2) = .300, p .05). When compared to perceptions of interpersonal rejection and unrealistic relationship expectations, emotional dependency had the largest role in explaining participants' satisfaction with their marriages. We discuss the results in light of current literature as well as cultural relevance. We also provide implications for future research and mental health practices

Visual Asymmetries in Japanese Quail (Coturnix japonica) Retain a Lifelong Potential for Plasticity

WOS: 000268530000013PubMed ID: 19634940Adult Japanese quail display left-eye/right-hemisphere dominance in visually guided sexual tracking. In 2 experiments, the authors set out to answer if this functional cerebral asymmetry is modifiable by posthatch monocular deprivation, In Experiment 1, the left or the right eye of 2-day old quail were closed for 70 days. Quail were run in a left- or a right-turning runway to obtain access to a conspecific of the opposite sex. The performance of both left and right eye systems was equal. In Experiment 2, the deprived eyes of the quail were opened and the previously open eyes were closed. They were tested with the same runways. Overall, running speed was very low, but the quail showed a left-eye/right-hemisphere superiority. Altogether, these experiments evince 3 insights into cerebral asymmetries in quail. First, posthatch asymmetries of visual input can alter lateralized behavior to an important extent. Second, cerebral asymmetries could involve an interhemispheric inhibition that can be modified by epigenetic factors. Third, even long-term visual deprivation does not abolish a previously established cerebral asymmetry