Loneliness Predicts Insensitivity to Partner Commitment

AbstractPeople attend to their partners' pro-relationship behaviors (or commitment signals) which in turn leads to a positive adjustment in perceived strength of interpersonal bonds. This bond-confirming effect is stronger when the commitment signal entails some high cost (e.g., receiving an expensive birthday present), and by contrast, it is weaker when the commitment signal entails a low cost (e.g., receiving a wish of “Happy Birthday”). The present study explored how loneliness moderates sensitivity to commitment signals as well as their absence (i.e., situations where partners fail to signal commitment despite the demands of the situation). Studies with a Japanese student sample (Study 1), a Japanese community sample (Study 2), and an American sample drawn from users of Amazon Mechanical Turk (Study 3) found that loneliness is associated with an insensitivity to commitment signals: The lonelier the participant, the less likely he or she was to positively adjust perceived bond strength in response to a commitment signal. This relative insensitivity was observed irrespective of the costliness of the signal. On the other hand, loneliness did not predict differences in sensitivity to the absence of commitment signals. Implications of these results for the loneliness literature are discussed

Effects of Cost and Benefit of Prosocial Behavior on Reputation

Prosocial behavior consists of a cost to the actor and a benefit of others. Previous studies have shown that prosocial actors generally receive positive social evaluations from observers. However, it is unknown how each component of prosocial behavior (i.e., cost and benefit) influences the two dimensions of person perception (i.e., warmth and competence). Thus, three studies investigated the independent effects of cost and benefit on the perceived warmth and competence of the actor. In Study 1, participants read a series of vignettes about a protagonist incurring a cost to benefit another individual and rated the warmth and competence of each protagonist. Although benefit enhanced both perceived warmth and competence, cost enhanced only perceived warmth. Studies 2a and 2b separately manipulated costs and benefits of prosocial behaviors in vignettes and confirmed the results of Study 1. Thus, this study demonstrated the independent effects of cost and benefit on person perception

Relationship Value Promotes Costly Apology-Making:Testing the Valuable Relationships Hypothesis from the Perpetrator’s Perspective

textabstractWe explored these two research questions on the basis of empirical data for two common diseases in the Netherlands: breast cancer and major depression. We chose these disorders for two reasons: they are both important health problems and they allow us to study the research questions from different perspectives. Breast cancer is important in particular because of the mortality it causes, while depression causes mainly morbidity. Also, for breast cancer epidemiological data are easily available and regarded as relatively reliable, whereas for major depression the data still suffer from several problems. Finally, the disease staging for breast cancer and major depression are based on different concepts. For major depression, stages were differentiated according to severity classes (e.g. mild, severe), while for breast cancer phases in the disease pathway were used (e.g. diagnosis and therapy, metastasised). The research in this thesis consists of two parts. In part A we address the first research question: the validity and usefulness of disease models. This question can best be studied using data for a disease with well-described epidemiology. As cancer incidence and mortality are registered on a regular basis in the Netherlands and are regarded as relatively reliable, such data provide a good basis for studying this question. Chapter two therefore studies the validity and usefulness of IPM models using relatively reliable and complete data sets on breast cancer and three other common types of cancer. The results of these analyses showed us that time-trends in the epidemiological frequency data bias the outcome of these models. For breast cancer many additional epidemiological data (e.g. survival, prevalence, etc.) are available, allowing us to quantify, in chapter three, the impact of data problems and trends on the model for breast cancer. The last chapter of part A, chapter four, describes an application of a disease model to the less well monitored epidemiology of major depression to obtain internally consistent estimates for the epidemiological parameters of major depression. The second part of this thesis, part B, is concerned with tailoring health status valuations to the epidemiology and assessing their impact on the resulting summary measure. Since tailoring is a problem especially in diseases that are heterogeneous and/ or have unclear case-definitions, we thought it relevant to study this problem for major depression. In the Netherlands, the Netherlands Mental Health Survey and Incidence Study (NEMESIS) provided a good database for major depression with information on both prevalence and health status by severity class. These data enabled us to use the severity classes in the tailoring of the DWs to the epidemiology. In chapter five we compare disability between the severity classes. Chapter six uses this information to derive health status values per severity class that we subsequently used in a burden of major depression calculation. A comparison of the results with studies using nontailored values gives an impression of the importance of health status values on the overall burden of disease calculation. For breast cancer the health status valuations can be tailored using a modelling approach. This approach is used in chapter seven to calculate and compare the burden of breast cancer in six European countries and to study its sensitivity to variations in health status values. Chapter eight, the general discussion, integrates and discusses the results from these studies

Perceived goal instrumentality is associated with forgiveness: A test of the valuable relationships hypothesis

Three autobiographical studies tested the valuable relationships hypothesis of forgiveness. Although previous studies revealed that relationship value predicts interpersonal forgiveness, the measure of relationship value may be conflated with affective assessments of the relationship with the transgressor, which might have caused a criterion contamination problem. Therefore, we assessed the goal-related instrumentality of the transgressor (i.e., how useful the transgressor is for helping the victim to achieve his/her goals in fitness-relevant domains). Three studies, one involving a Japanese student sample (Study 1), a second involving Japanese community sample (Study 2), and a third involving U.S. community sample (Study 3), convergently showed that perceived goal instrumentality, as well as a latent relationship value variable estimated from multiple measures of relationship value, are associated with forgiveness. Moreover, this association could be explained in part by the intermediate association of perceived goal instrumentality with empathy both in Japan and the U.S

Forgiveness takes place on an attitudinal continuum from hostility to friendliness: Toward a closer union of forgiveness theory and measurement.

Researchers commonly conceptualize forgiveness as a rich complex of psychological changes involving attitudes, emotions, and behaviors. Psychometric work with the measures developed to capture this conceptual richness, however, often points to a simpler picture of the psychological dimensions in which forgiveness takes place. In an effort to better unite forgiveness theory and measurement, we evaluate several psychometric models for common measures of forgiveness. In doing so, we study people from the United States and Japan to understand forgiveness in both nonclose and close relationships. In addition, we assess the predictive utility of these models for several behavioral outcomes that traditionally have been linked to forgiveness motives. Finally, we use the methods of item response theory, which place person abilities and item responses on the same metric and, thus, help us draw psychological inferences from the ordering of item difficulties. Our results highlight models based on correlated factors models and bifactor (S-1) models. The bifactor (S-1) model evinced particular utility: Its general factor consistently predicts variation in relevant criterion measures, including 4 different experimental economic games (when played with a transgressor), and also suffuses a second self-report measure of forgiveness. Moreover, the general factor of the bifactor (S-1) model identifies a single psychological dimension that runs from hostility to friendliness while also pointing to other sources of variance that may be conceived of as method factors. Taken together, these results suggest that forgiveness can be usefully conceptualized as prosocial change along a single attitudinal continuum that ranges from hostility to friendliness. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved)

Sampling, identification and sensory evaluation of odors of a newborn baby’s head and amniotic fluid

For baby odor analyses, noninvasive, stress-free sample collection is important. Using a simple method, we succeeded in obtaining fresh odors from the head of five newborn babies. These odors were chemically analyzed by two-dimensional gas chromatography coupled with mass spectrometry (GC x GC-MS), and compared with each other or with the odor of amniotic fluid from the baby\u27s mother. We identified 31 chemical components of the volatile odors from neonate heads and 21 from amniotic fluid. Although 15 of these components were common to both sources, there was an apparent difference in the GC x GC patterns between the head and amniotic fluid odors, so the neonate head odor might be individually distinct immediately after birth. Therefore, we made artificial mixtures of the major odor components of the neonate head and maternal amniotic fluid, and used psychological tests to examine whether or not these odors could be distinguished from each other. Our data show that the artificial odor of a neonate head could be distinguished from that of amniotic fluid, and that the odors of artificial head odor mixtures could be correctly discriminated for neonates within an hour after birth and at 2 or 3 days of age

When and why do third parties punish outside of the lab? A cross-cultural recall study

Punishment can reform uncooperative behavior and hence could have contributed to humans&rsquo; ability to live in large-scale societies. Punishment by unaffected third parties has received extensive scientific scrutiny because third parties punish transgressors in laboratory experiments on behalf of strangers that they will never interact with again. Often overlooked in this research are interactions involving people who are not strangers, which constitute many interactions beyond the laboratory. Across three samples in two countries (United States and Japan; N = 1,294), we found that third parties&rsquo; anger at transgressors, and their intervention and punishment on behalf of victims, varied in real-life conflicts as a function of how much third parties valued the welfare of the disputants. Punishment was rare (1&ndash;2%) when third parties did not value the welfare of the victim, suggesting that previous economic game results have overestimated third parties&rsquo; willingness to punish transgressors on behalf of strangers.</p

Reasons of Singles for Being Single:Evidence from Brazil, China, Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, India, Japan and the UK

The current research aimed to examine the reasons people are single, that is, not in an intimate relationship, across eight different countries—Brazil, China, Czech Republic, Greece, Hungary, India, Japan, and the UK. We asked a large cross-cultural sample of single participants (N = 6,822) to rate 92 different possible reasons for being single. These reasons were classified into 12 factors, including one’s perceived inability to find the right partner, the perception that one is not good at flirting, and the desire to focus on one’s career. Significant sex and age effects were found for most factors. The extracted factors were further classified into three separate domains: Perceived poor capacity to attract mates, desiring the freedom of choice, and currently being in between relationships. The domain structure, the relative importance of each factor and domain, as well as sex and age effects were relatively consistent across countries. There were also important differences however, including the differing effect sizes of sex and age effects between countries

Cross cultural regularities in the cognitive architecture of pride

Pride occurs in every known culture, appears early in development, is reliably triggered by achievements and formidability, and causes a characteristic display that is recognized everywhere. Here, we evaluate the theory that pride evolved to guide decisions relevant to pursuing actions that enhance valuation and respect for a person in the minds of others. By hypothesis, pride is a neurocomputational program tailored by selection to orchestrate cognition and behavior in the service of: (i) motivating the cost-effective pursuit of courses of action that would increase others' valuations and respect of the individual, (ii) motivating the advertisement of acts or characteristics whose recognition by others would lead them to enhance their evaluations of the individual, and (iii) mobilizing the individual to take advantage of the resulting enhanced social landscape. To modulate how much to invest in actions that might lead to enhanced evaluations by others, the pride system must forecast the magnitude of the evaluations the action would evoke in the audience and calibrate its activation proportionally. We tested this prediction in 16 countries across 4 continents (n = 2,085), for 25 acts and traits. As predicted, the pride intensity for a given act or trait closely tracks the valuations of audiences, local (mean r = +0.82) and foreign (mean r = +0.75). This relationship is specific to pride and does not generalize to other positive emotions that coactivate with pride but lack its audience-recalibrating function

National identity predicts public health support during a global pandemic.

Changing collective behaviour and supporting non-pharmaceutical interventions is an important component in mitigating virus transmission during a pandemic. In a large international collaboration (Study 1, N = 49,968 across 67 countries), we investigated self-reported factors associated with public health behaviours (e.g., spatial distancing and stricter hygiene) and endorsed public policy interventions (e.g., closing bars and restaurants) during the early stage of the COVID-19 pandemic (April-May 2020). Respondents who reported identifying more strongly with their nation consistently reported greater engagement in public health behaviours and support for public health policies. Results were similar for representative and non-representative national samples. Study 2 (N = 42 countries) conceptually replicated the central finding using aggregate indices of national identity (obtained using the World Values Survey) and a measure of actual behaviour change during the pandemic (obtained from Google mobility reports). Higher levels of national identification prior to the pandemic predicted lower mobility during the early stage of the pandemic (r = -0.40). We discuss the potential implications of links between national identity, leadership, and public health for managing COVID-19 and future pandemics