Does Being Attractive Always Help? Positive and Negative Effects of Attractiveness on Social Decision Making

Previous studies of organizational decision making demonstrate an abundance of positive biases directed toward highly attractive individuals. The current research, in contrast, suggests that when the person being evaluated is of the same sex as the evaluator, attractiveness hurts, rather than helps. Three experiments assessing evaluations of potential job candidates (Studies 1 and 3) and university applicants (Study 2) demonstrated positive biases toward highly attractive other-sex targets but negative biases toward highly attractive same-sex targets. This pattern was mediated by variability in participants’ desire to interact with versus avoid the target individual (Studies 1 and 2) and was moderated by participants’ level of self-esteem (Study 3); the derogation of attractive same-sex targets was not observed among people with high self-esteem. Findings demonstrate an important exception to the positive effects of attractiveness in organizational settings and suggest that negative responses to attractive same-sex targets stem from perceptions of self-threat

High Status Men (But Not Women) Capture the Eye of the Beholder

Two studies tested the hypothesis that people attend preferentially to high status men (but not women). Participants overestimated the frequency of high status men in rapidly presented arrays (Experiment 1) and fixated their visual attention on high status men in an eye-tracking study (Experiment 2). Neither study showed any evidence of preferential attention to high status women, but there was evidence that physically attractive women captured attention. The results from both studies support evolutionary theories regarding differential prioritization of social status and physical attractiveness in men versus women. These findings illustrate how examination of early-in-the-stream social cognition can provide useful insights into the adapted mind

Strategic Sexual Signals: Women's Display versus Avoidance of the Color Red Depends on the Attractiveness of an Anticipated Interaction Partner

The color red has special meaning in mating-relevant contexts. Wearing red can enhance perceptions of women's attractiveness and desirability as a potential romantic partner. Building on recent findings, the present study examined whether women's (N = 74) choice to display the color red is influenced by the attractiveness of an expected opposite-sex interaction partner. Results indicated that female participants who expected to interact with an attractive man displayed red (on clothing, accessories, and/or makeup) more often than a baseline consisting of women in a natural environment with no induced expectation. In contrast, when women expected to interact with an unattractive man, they eschewed red, displaying it less often than in the baseline condition. Findings are discussed with respect to evolutionary and cultural perspectives on mate evaluation and selection

Banding together to avoid exploitation:Dominant (but not prestige-based) leaders motivate collective moral opposition from followers

Although dominance is a common strategy for attaining high social rank, it often entails exploitative behavior, bringing leaders into conflict with followers. Anthropological work suggests that a long evolutionary history of such conflict has set the stage for moral systems designed to reduce exploitation from powerful people. Here we establish links between dominance (and prestige) and moral leadership, reporting three studies (total n = 1246) demonstrating that, in response to dominant leaders, followers band together in collective opposition aimed at resisting, and even toppling, incumbent leaders. These studies also identify specific social psychological pathways through which dominant leaders elicit moral opposition-low levels of trust and gossip both mediated effects of leader dominance on collective opposition by followers. While dominance may allow people to rise through the ranks of a social hierarchy, the long-term durability of dominance as a leadership strategy may be undermined by collective moral opposition from followers

The behavioral ecology of moral dilemmas: childhood unpredictability, but not harshness, predicts less deontological and utilitarian responding

Childhood unpredictability and harshness are associated with patterns of psychology and behavior that enable individuals to make the most of adverse environments. The current research assessed effects of childhood unpredictability and harshness on individual differences in sacrificial moral decision making. Six studies (N = 1,503) supported the hypothesis that childhood unpredictability, but not harshness, would be associated with fewer decisions to reject harm (consistent with deontological ethics) and to maximize overall outcomes (consistent with utilitarian ethics). These associations were not moderated by perceptions of current environmental unpredictability (Studies 3a and 3b) and were robust to potential confounds (religiosity, political conservativism, Big 5 personality traits, and social desirability; Study 5). The associations between childhood unpredictability and lower deontological and utilitarian tendencies were statistically mediated by low levels of empathic concern and poor-quality social relationships (Study 4). Findings are consistent with the possibility that early calibration to ecological unpredictability, but not harshness, undermines other-oriented psychological processes which, in turn, reduce moral concerns about harm and consequences for other people

Following in the Wake of Anger: When Not Discriminating Is Discriminating

Does seeing a scowling face change your impression of the next person you see? Does this depend on the race of the two people? Across four studies, White participants evaluated neutrally expressive White males as less threatening when they followed angry (relative to neutral) White faces; Black males were not judged as less threatening following angry Black faces. This lack of threat-anchored contrast for Black male faces is not attributable to a general tendency for White targets to homogenize Black males—neutral Black targets following smiling Black faces were contrasted away from them and seen as less friendly—and emerged only for perceivers low in motivation to respond without prejudice (i.e., for those relatively comfortable responding prejudicially). This research provides novel evidence for the overperception of threat in Black males

Social interactions through the eyes of macaques and humans

Group-living primates frequently interact with each other to maintain social bonds as well as to compete for valuable resources. Observing such social interactions between group members provides individuals with essential information (e.g. on the fighting ability or altruistic attitude of group companions) to guide their social tactics and choice of social partners. This process requires individuals to selectively attend to the most informative content within a social scene. It is unclear how non-human primates allocate attention to social interactions in different contexts, and whether they share similar patterns of social attention to humans. Here we compared the gaze behaviour of rhesus macaques and humans when free-viewing the same set of naturalistic images. The images contained positive or negative social interactions between two conspecifics of different phylogenetic distance from the observer; i.e. affiliation or aggression exchanged by two humans, rhesus macaques, Barbary macaques, baboons or lions. Monkeys directed a variable amount of gaze at the two conspecific individuals in the images according to their roles in the interaction (i.e. giver or receiver of affiliation/aggression). Their gaze distribution to non-conspecific individuals was systematically varied according to the viewed species and the nature of interactions, suggesting a contribution of both prior experience and innate bias in guiding social attention. Furthermore, the monkeys’ gaze behavior was qualitatively similar to that of humans, especially when viewing negative interactions. Detailed analysis revealed that both species directed more gaze at the face than the body region when inspecting individuals, and attended more to the body region in negative than in positive social interactions. Our study suggests that monkeys and humans share a similar pattern of role-sensitive, species- and context-dependent social attention, implying a homologous cognitive mechanism of social attention between rhesus macaques and humans

PERSONALITY AND SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY BULLETIN Becker et al. / MEMORY FOR ATTRACTIVENESS Concentrating on Beauty: Sexual Selection and Sociospatial Memory

In three experiments, location memory for faces was examine

Nonparametric nonlinear model predictive control

Model Predictive Control (MPC) has recently found wide acceptance in industrial applications, but its potential has been much impeded by linear models due to the lack of a similarly accepted nonlinear modeling or databased technique. Aimed at solving this problem, the paper addresses three issues: (i) extending second-order Volterra nonlinear MPC (NMPC) to higher-order for improved prediction and control; (ii) formulating NMPC directly with plant data without needing for parametric modeling, which has hindered the progress of NMPC; and (iii) incorporating an error estimator directly in the formulation and hence eliminating the need for a nonlinear state observer. Following analysis of NMPC objectives and existing solutions, nonparametric NMPC is derived in discrete-time using multidimensional convolution between plant data and Volterra kernel measurements. This approach is validated against the benchmark van de Vusse nonlinear process control problem and is applied to an industrial polymerization process by using Volterra kernels of up to the third order. Results show that the nonparametric approach is very efficient and effective and considerably outperforms existing methods, while retaining the original data-based spirit and characteristics of linear MPC

COVID-19 in corrections: Quarantine of incarcerated people

Carceral settings in the United States have been the source of many single site COVID-19 outbreaks. Quarantine is a strategy used to mitigate the spread of COVID-19 in correctional settings, and specific quarantine practices differ state to state. To better understand how states are using quarantine in prisons, we reviewed each state’s definition of quarantine and compared each state’s definition to the Centers for Disease Control’s (CDC) definition and recommendations for quarantine in jails and prisons. Most prison systems, 45 of 53, define quarantine, but definitions vary widely. No state published definitions of quarantine that align with all CDC recommendations, and only 9 states provide quarantine data. In these states, the highest recorded quarantine rate occurred in Ohio in May 2020 at 843 per 1,000. It is necessary for prison systems to standardize their definitions of quarantine and to utilize quarantine practices in accordance with CDC recommendations. In addition, data transparency is needed to better understand the use of quarantine and its effectiveness at mitigating COVID-19 outbreaks in carceral settings