High and mighty : height increases authority in professional refereeing

Throughout the animal kingdom, larger males are more likely to attain social dominance. Several lines of evidence suggest that this relationship extends to humans, as height is positively related to dominance, status and authority. We hypothesized that height is also a determinant of authority in professional refereeing. According to the International Football Association Board, FIFA, football ("soccer") referees have full authority to enforce the laws of the game and should use their body language to show authority and to help control the match. We show that height is indeed positively related to authority status: referees were taller than their assistants (who merely have an advisory role) in both a national (French League) and an international (World Cup 2010) tournament. Furthermore, using data from the German League, we found that height was positively associated with authoritative behavior. Taller referees were better able to maintain control of the game by giving fewer fouls, thereby increasing the "flow of the game". Referee height was also positively associated with perceived referee competence, as taller referees were assigned to matches in which the visiting team had a higher ranking. Thus, height appears to be positively related to authority in professional refereeing

What Can Cross-Cultural Correlations Teach Us about Human Nature?

Many recent evolutionary psychology and human behavioral ecology studies have tested hypotheses by examining correlations between variables measured at a group level (e.g., state, country, continent). In such analyses, variables collected for each aggregation are often taken to be representative of the individuals present within them, and relationships between such variables are presumed to reflect individual-level processes. There are multiple reasons to exercise caution when doing so, including: (1) the ecological fallacy, whereby relationships observed at the aggregate level do not accurately represent individual-level processes; (2) non-independence of data points, which violates assumptions of the inferential techniques used in null hypothesis testing; and (3) cross-cultural non-equivalence of measurement (differences in construct validity between groups). We provide examples of how each of these gives rise to problems in the context of testing evolutionary hypotheses about human behavior, and we offer some suggestions for future research

EXPRESS: Gender(ed) performances: women’s impression management in stand-up comedy

How do women navigate and make space for themselves in workspaces where they are not perceived to fit? Women in male dominated careers often face perceptions of role misfit, leading them to engage in impression management. Using a mixed-methods design, we investigate if women stand-up comedians present as female gendered at work in two settings - one dominated by male performers (N = 257) and one featuring more gender diverse performers (N = 843). Women, as compared to men, presented more gendered in the more gender diverse performer setting and less gendered in the male performer dominated setting. Using Lorber’s taxonomy of feminisms as a lens, assessment of how women presented their gender further implied greater constraint on women in the male dominated, compared to the diverse, setting. Our findings support Roberts’ theory of social-identity based impression management (SIM) in the novel context of stand-up comedy, refine the theory by presenting a fifth SIM strategy and demonstrate how women are able to adapt their feminism to the characteristics of the situation, thus helping secure their position in settings where they may be unwelcomed. These findings have theoretical implications for impression management and feminism, and practical implications for workplace equality initiatives

Are attitudinal and perceptual body image the same or different? Evidence from high-level adaptation

We used a high-level adaptation paradigm to distinguish between two hypotheses: i) perceptual and attitudinal body image measurements reflect conceptually different mechanisms which are statistically independent of each other; ii) attitudinal (e.g., questionnaire) and perceptual (e.g., visual yes-no) body image tasks represent two different ways of measuring exactly the same construct. Forty women, with no history of eating disorders, carried out the experiment. Each participant carried out five adaptation blocks, with adapting stimuli representing female bodies at: extreme-low body mass index (BMI), mid-low BMI, actual BMI of the observer, mid-high BMI and extreme-high BMI. Block order was randomized across participants. The main outcome variable was percentage error in participants’ self-estimates of body size, measured post-adaption. In regressions of this percentage error on the strength of the adapting stimuli together with observers’ attitudinal body image as a covariate, we found positive regression slopes and no evidence for any interaction between the fixed effects. Therefore, we conclude that perceptual and attitudinal body image mechanisms are indeed independent of each other. In the light of this evidence, we discuss how people with eating disorders, like anorexia nervosa, may come to over-estimate their body size

Partner wealth predicts self-reported orgasm frequency in a sample of Chinese women

There has been considerable speculation about the adaptive significance of the human female orgasm, with one hypothesis being that it promotes differential affiliation or conception with high-quality males. We investigated the relationship between women's self-reported orgasm frequency and the characteristics of their partners in a large representative sample from the Chinese Health and Family Life Survey. We found that women report more frequent orgasms the higher their partner's income is. This result cannot be explained by possible confounds such as women's age, health, happiness, educational attainment, relationship duration, wealth difference between the partners, difference between the partners in educational attainment, and regional location. It appears consistent with the view that female orgasm has an evolved adaptive function. (C) 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved

Age differences between U.S. Politicians and Their Spouses: Similar to the Super Rich or more like your average Joe?

Prior research has shown that a sample of super-wealthy men tended to marry (and remarry) younger women than the general U.S. population (Pollet, Pratt, Edwards, & Stulp, 2013). This relationship has been argued to fit with a notion of a mating market, whereby wealthy men offer access to resources in exchange for female youth. The present research examines whether or not a similar exchange relationship potentially also exists in a sample of U.S. politicians, as it is expected that male politicians might also offer resources in exchange for youth. Using data collected via Wikipedia and online news sources on ranking U.S. politicians, our data show that the difference in age between a male politician and his wife does not differ significantly from the current estimate of the general U.S. population. Male U.S. Politicians do show significantly smaller age gaps than the estimate for men from the Forbes 400, however. These results suggests that, at least in terms of the age-gap in marriage, U.S. politicians resemble the general population more than they do the economic elite, perhaps due to a pressure to conform to social norms

Gender Equality Probably Does Not Affect Performance at the Olympic Games: A Comment on Berdahl, Uhlmann, and Bai (2015)

In a recent article, Berdahl, Uhlmann, and Bai (2015) reported that countries with higher gender equality won more medals at the 2012 and 2014 Olympic games. This relation held for both female and male athletes. The authors, however, did not control for GDP per capita, or take into account the clustering of countries in regions. Here we show that controlling for these two factors reduces or even reverses the positive relation between gender equality and the number of Olympic medals. Gender equality was associated with fewer medals for male athletes. We argue for more careful analyses and interpretation of nation-level data

Mind the level: problems with two recent nation-level analyses in psychology

BACKGROUND