Pathogen disgust sensitivity:More sensitive cue detection or stronger cue avoidance?

Humans differ in their tendency to experience disgust and avoid contact with potential sources of pathogens. Pathogen disgust sensitivity has been used to explain a wide range of social phenomena, such as prejudice, conformity, and trust. Yet, its exact role in the motivational system that regulates avoidance of pathogens, the so-called behavioral immune system, remains unclear. Here, we test how individual differences in pathogen disgust sensitivity relates to the information processing structure underlying pathogen avoidance. Participants (n = 998) rated the perceived health of individuals with or without facial blemishes and indicated how comfortable they would feel about having physical contact with them. Participants with high disgust sensitivity viewed facial blemishes as more indicative of poor health. Moreover, for participants with high disgust sensitivity, perceived health was a stronger determinant of comfort with physical contact. These findings suggest that increased pathogen disgust sensitivity captures tendencies to more readily interpret stimuli as a pathogen threat and be more strongly guided by estimated infection risk when deciding who should be approached or avoided. This supports the notion that pathogen disgust sensitivity is a summary of investment in pathogen avoidance, rather than just an increased sensitivity to pathogen cues

Poor prospects-Not inequality-Motivate political violence

Despite extensive scholarly interest in the association between economic inequality and political violence, the micro-level mechanisms through which the former influences the latter are not well understood. Drawing on pioneering theories of political violence, social psychological research on relative deprivation, and prospect theory from behavioral economics, we examine individual-level processes that underpin the relationship between inequality and political violence. We present two arguments: despite being a key explanatory variable in existing research, perceived lower economic status vis-à-vis other individuals (an indicator of relative deprivation) is unlikely to motivate people to participate in violence; by contrast, although virtually unexplored, a projected decrease in one’s own economic status (prospective decremental deprivation) is likely to motivate violence. Multilevel analyses of probability samples from many African countries provide evidence to support these claims. Based on this, we posit that focusing on changes in living conditions, rather than the status quo, is key for understanding political violence

The asymmetric behavioral homeostasis hypothesis: Unidirectional flexibility of fundamental motivational processes

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Are Multiple Minimal Outgroup Males Readily Associated with Threat?

Humans might have a propensity to associate a collective of multiple outgroup males with threat, even in the context of minimally defined groups. We tested this hypothesis using a fear-conditioning paradigm (Study 1) and a signal detection paradigm (Study 2). Results of Study 1 suggest that stimuli showing ingroup males are more easily associated with threat than stimuli showing outgroup males. Results of Study 2 suggest a bias to perceive single males (both ingroup and outgroup) as more threatening than multiple outgroup males. We discuss the contrast with results of previous studies.</jats:p

Is obesity stigma based on perceptions of appearance or character? Theory, evidence, and directions for further study

Theoretical approaches to stigmatization have highlighted distinct psychological mechanisms underlying distinct instances of stigmatization. Some stigmas are based on inferences of substandard psychological character (e.g., individuals deemed untrustworthy), whereas others are based on perceptions of substandard physical appearance (e.g., individuals with physical deformities). These inferences and perceptions are associated with specific cognitive and motivational processes, which have implications for understanding specific instances of stigmatization. Recent theoretical approaches and empirical findings suggest that obesity stigma involves both inferences of substandard psychological character and perceptions of substandard physical appearance. We provide a review of the relevant evidence and discuss directions for future research

Disgust sensitivity relates to moral foundations independent of political ideology

Moral judgments seem related to the emotion disgust. Evolutionary considerations might illuminate the psychological processes underlying this relation. Several studies have noted that individuals who are more disgust sensitive condemn moral violations more strongly. However, this association could result from both disgust sensitivity and moral judgment being correlated with political ideology. To clarify the relationship between disgust sensitivity and moral judgment, we analyzed data from multiple published and unpublished datasets that included the Three-Domain Disgust Scale, the Moral Foundations Questionnaire, and a measure of ideology (total N = 2,478). Results showed that associations between disgust sensitivity and moral judgment remained when controlling for ideology. Each of the 3 types of disgust sensitivity uniquely predicted at least 1 of the 5 moral foundations. Moral disgust predicted scores for all moral foundations (largest effect for fairness/reciprocity). Sexual disgust predicted scores for all moral foundations except fairness/reciprocity (largest effect for purity/sanctity). Pathogen disgust had small predictive effects for ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, and purity/sanctity. All effects were positive (i.e., higher levels of disgust sensitivity were associated with greater moral foundation endorsement). These findings suggest specific relations between disgust sensitivity and moral judgment that are not explained by ideology, shedding further light on the functions of disgust and morality

How important are next-to-leading order models in predicting strange particle spectra in p+p collisions at STAR ?

STAR has measured a variety of strange particle species in p + p collisions at $\sqrt{s}$ = 200 GeV. These high statistics data are ideal for comparing to existing leading- and next-to-leading order perturbative QCD (pQCD) models. Next-to-leading (NLO) models have been successful in describing inclusive hadron production using parameterized fragmentation functions (FF) for quarks and gluons. However, in order to describe identied strange particle spectra at NLO, knowledge of flavor separated FF is essential. Such FF have recently been parameterized using data by the OPAL experiment and allow for the first time to perform NLO calculation for strange baryons. In fact, comparing the STAR Lambda data with these calculations allow to put a constraint on the gluon fragmentation function. We show that the Leading-order (LO) event generator PYTHIA has to be tuned significantly to reproduce the STAR identified strange particle data. In particular, it fails to describe the observed enhancement of baryon-to-meson ratio at intermediate pT (2-6 GeV/c). In heavy-ion (HI) collisions this observable has been extensively compared with models and shows a strong dependency on collision centrality or parton density. In the HI context the observed enhancement has been explained by recent approaches in terms of parton coalescense and recombination models.Comment: 5 pages, HotQuarks 2006 conference proceeding