(Mis)Perceiving Sexual Intent: A Mixed-Method Approach Investigating Sexual Overperception Across Diverse Sexual Identities.

Research on perceptions of sexual interest has documented the tendency for men to overperceive sexual interest (i.e., to perceive a social signal as indicating more sexual intent than the actor intended). However, this work has almost exclusively focused upon these dynamics among heterosexual individuals. Thus, the current set of studies aimed to understand how perceptions of sexual interest manifest among lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) women and men. In Study 1 (N = 85), LGB women and men nominated behaviors that signal sexual intent. Using an act nomination approach, LGB women and men tended to nominate behaviors similar to those nominated by heterosexual women and men. In Study 2 (N = 43), gay men reported acts that were representative of their own and other gay men's sexual interest. Consistent with previous work-by comparing perceived self-reported versus others' sexual intent when engaging in specific behaviors-we found no evidence for a sexual overperception bias in gay men, albeit in a small field study. In Study 3 (N = 307), using a gender-by-sexual orientation design, heterosexual and LGB women and men reported previous experiences in which their friendliness was sexually misperceived. Bisexual women were less likely than other groups to report their friendliness being misinterpreted as sexual by other bisexual women and/or lesbians. Additionally, across all genders and sexual orientations, participants reported feelings of indifference, awkwardness and embarrassment when being misperceived. Ultimately, the current studies' results provide broader insight into the nature of sexual overperception among LGB populations.

Experimental and cross-cultural evidence that parenthood and parental care motives increase social conservatism.

Differences in attitudes on social issues such as abortion, immigration and sex are hugely divisive, and understanding their origins is among the most important tasks facing human behavioural sciences. Despite the clear psychological importance of parenthood and the motivation to provide care for children, researchers have only recently begun investigating their influence on social and political attitudes. Because socially conservative values ostensibly prioritize safety, stability and family values, we hypothesized that being more invested in parental care might make socially conservative policies more appealing. Studies 1 (preregistered; n = 376) and 2 (n = 1924) find novel evidence of conditional experimental effects of a parenthood prime, such that people who engaged strongly with a childcare manipulation showed an increase in social conservatism. Studies 3 (n = 2610, novel data from 10 countries) and 4 (n = 426 444, World Values Survey data) find evidence that both parenthood and parental care motivation are associated with increased social conservatism around the globe. Further, most of the positive association globally between age and social conservatism is accounted for by parenthood. These findings support the hypothesis that parenthood and parental care motivation increase social conservatism.

Physical Strength Partly Explains Sex Differences in Trait Anxiety in Young Americans.

Among the most consistent sex differences to emerge from personality research is that women score higher than men on the Big Five personality trait Neuroticism. However, there are few functionally coherent explanations for this sex difference. The current studies tested whether this sex difference is due, in part, to variation in physical capital. Two preregistered studies (total N = 878 U.S. students) found that sex differences in the anxiety facet of Neuroticism were mediated by variation in physical strength and self-perceived formidability. Study 1 (N = 374) did not find a predicted mediation effect for overall Neuroticism but found a mediation effect for anxiety (the facet of Neuroticism most strongly associated with grip strength). Study 2 (N = 504) predicted and replicated this mediation effect. Further, sex differences in anxiety were serially mediated by grip strength and self-perceived formidability. These findings add to a nascent literature suggesting that differences in physical attributes may partially explain sex differences in personality.

Cultural adaptations to the differential threats posed by hot versus cold climates.

Hot and cold climates have posed differential threats to human survival throughout history. Cold temperatures can pose direct threats to survival in themselves, whereas hot temperatures may pose threats indirectly through higher prevalence of infectious disease. These differential threats yield convergent predictions for the relationship between more demanding climates and freedom of expression, but divergent predictions for freedom from discrimination.

The Holy Father (and Mother)? Multiple Tests of the Hypothesis That Parenthood and Parental Care Motivation Lead to Greater Religiosity.

Parenting is a universal element of human life. However, the motivational and attitudinal implications of parenthood remain poorly understood. Given that many major religions prescribe parent-benefiting norms restricting sexual promiscuity and socially disruptive behavior, we hypothesized that both parenthood and parental care motivation would predict higher levels of religiosity. Studies 1 to 3 (N >2,100 U.S. MTurkers; two preregistered) revealed that parental status and motivation were robustly associated with religiosity in Americans, and that age-related increases in religiosity were mediated by parenthood. Study 4a (376 students) found a moderated experimental effect, such that emotionally engaged participants showed increases in religiosity in response to a childcare manipulation. Study 4b then replicated this effect in recoded data from Studies 1 and 2. Study 5 used data from the World Values Survey (N = 89,565) and found further evidence for a relationship between parenthood and religiosity. These findings support functional accounts of the relationship between parenthood and mainstream religiosity.

Mechanisms by which parasites influence cultures, and why they matter.

At least four conceptually distinct mechanisms may mediate relations between parasite-stress and cultural outcomes: genetic evolution, developmental plasticity, neurocognitive flexibility, and cultural transmission. These mechanisms may operate independently or in conjunction with one another. Rigorous research on specific mediating mechanisms is required to more completely articulate implications of parasite stress on human psychology and human culture.

Dispositional intelligence of the Five-Factor Model as a learning outcome in an undergraduate personality course.

This pedagogical prime aimed to examine whether undergraduate education in personality psychology was associated with increases in dispositional intelligence, a key variable underlying social skills. The sample consisted of students enrolled in a small Introduction to Personality college course who completed a summative performance-based assessment of their conceptual reasoning that required a complex application of their understanding of personality. On the first day of class, the students completed a dispositional intelligence scale, demonstrating their pre-course understanding of how personal adjectives (e.g., insecure) correspond to particular personality dispositions (e.g., neuroticism). They took the same scale again on the last day of class to assess if learning about the Five-Factor Model (FFM) during the class was associated with increased dispositional intelligence scores. Results from this longitudinal study revealed that participants had an increase in dispositional intelligence from the first to last day of class (d = 0.89, p = .001), especially when perceiving the dispositions of openness (d=.59, p=.04) and agreeableness (d=.69, p=.019). In conclusion, a college personality course emphasizing the Five-Factor Model was associated with increases in a measure of personality understanding.

Psychological Science in the Wake of COVID-19: Social, Methodological, and Metascientific Considerations.

The COVID-19 pandemic has extensively changed the state of psychological science from what research questions psychologists can ask to which methodologies psychologists can use to investigate them. In this article, we offer a perspective on how to optimize new research in the pandemic's wake. Because this pandemic is inherently a social phenomenon-an event that hinges on human-to-human contact-we focus on socially relevant subfields of psychology. We highlight specific psychological phenomena that have likely shifted as a result of the pandemic and discuss theoretical, methodological, and practical considerations of conducting research on these phenomena. After this discussion, we evaluate metascientific issues that have been amplified by the pandemic. We aim to demonstrate how theoretically grounded views on the COVID-19 pandemic can help make psychological science stronger-not weaker-in its wake.

Male descendant kin promote conservative views on gender issues and conformity to traditional norms.

Political and social attitudes have been shown to differ by sex in a way that tracks individual self-interest. We propose that these attitudes also change strategically to serve the best interests of either male or female kin. To test this hypothesis, we developed a measure of gendered fitness interests (GFI) - an index which reflects the sex, relatedness and residual reproductive value of close kin. We predicted that people with male-biased GFI (i.e. people with more male kin of a reproductive age) would have more conservative attitudes towards gender-related issues (e.g. gender roles, women's rights, abortion rights). An online study using an American sample (N = 560) found support for this hypothesis. Further analyses revealed that this relationship was driven not only by people's own sex and reproductive value but also by those of their descendant kin. Exploratory analyses also found a positive association between male-biased GFI and a measure of conformity, as well as a smaller association between male-biased GFI and having voted Republican in the last election. Both of these associations were statistically mediated by gender-related conservatism. These findings are consistent with the hypothesis that GFI influences sociopolitical attitudes.

Outbreaks and Outgroups: Three Tests of the Relationship Between Disease Avoidance Motives and Xenophobia During an Emerging Pandemic.

Given the persistent threat posed by infectious disease throughout human history, people have a sophisticated suite of cognitive and behavioral strategies designed to mitigate exposure to disease vectors. Previous research suggests that one such strategy is avoidance of unfamiliar outgroup members. We thus examined the relationship between dispositional worry about disease and support for COVID-19-related travel bans across three preregistered studies (N = 764) conducted at the outset of the pandemic in the United States and Singapore. Americans higher in Perceived Infectability were more supportive of travel bans, whereas Singaporeans higher in Germ Aversion were more supportive of travel bans. In Study 2, priming saliency of the pandemic increased support for travel bans from high (but not low) pandemic-risk countries. This prime did not increase general xenophobia. These results are consistent with threat-specific perspectives of outgroup avoidance, and provide an ecologically-valid test of the implications of perceived disease threat for policy-related attitudes and decision-making. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s40806-021-00283-z.

The psychology of breakup sex: Exploring the motivational factors and affective consequences of post-breakup sexual activity.

Popular culture has recently publicized a seemingly new postbreakup behavior called breakup sex. While the media expresses the benefits of participating in breakup sex, there is no research to support these claimed benefits. The current research was designed to begin to better understand this postbreakup behavior. In the first study, we examined how past breakup sex experiences made the individuals feel and how people predict they would feel in the future (n = 212). Results suggested that men are more likely than women to have felt better about themselves, while women tend to state they felt better about the relationship after breakup sex. The second study (n = 585) investigated why men and women engage in breakup sex. Results revealed that most breakup sex appears to be motivated by three factors: relationship maintenance, hedonism, and ambivalence. Men tended to support hedonistic and ambivalent reasons for having breakup sex more often than women. The two studies revealed that breakup sex may be differentially motivated (and may have different psychological consequences) for men and women and may not be as beneficial as the media suggests.

No evidence for a relationship between MHC heterozygosity and life history strategy in a sample of North American undergraduates.

Although allelic diversity at the major histocompatibility complex (MHC) has implications for adaptive immunity, mate choice, and social signalling, how diversity at the MHC influences the calibration of life history strategies remains largely uninvestigated. The current study investigated whether greater MHC heterozygosity was associated with markers of slower life history strategies in a sample of 789 North American undergraduates. Contrary to preregistered predictions and to previously published findings, MHC heterozygosity was not related to any of the psychological life history-relevant variables measured (including short- vs. long-term sexual strategy, temporal discounting, the Arizona life history battery, past and current health, disgust sensitivity, and Big Five personality traits). Further, no meaningful effects emerged when analysing women and men separately. Possible reasons for why the current results are inconsistent with previous work are discussed.

PsychoBehavioroimmunology: Connecting the Behavioral Immune System to Its Physiological Foundations.

Although infectious disease has posed a significant and persistent threat to human survival and welfare throughout history, only recently have the psychological and behavioral implications of disease threat become a topic of research within the behavioral sciences. This growing body of work has revealed a suite of affective and cognitive processes that motivate the avoidance of disease-causing objects and situations-a cascade of processes loosely conceptualized as a "behavioral immune system (BIS)." Recent BIS research has linked disease threat to a surprisingly broad set of psychological and behavioral phenomena. However, research examining how the BIS is nested within our broader physiology is only beginning to emerge. Here, we review research that has begun to elucidate the physiological foundations of the BIS-at the levels of sensory modalities, cells, and genes. We also discuss the future of this work.

Falling in love is associated with immune system gene regulation.

Although falling in love is one of the most important and psychologically potent events in human life, the somatic implications of new romantic love remain poorly understood. Psychological, immunological, and reproductive perspectives offer competing predictions of the specific transcriptional regulatory shifts that might accompany the experience of falling in love. To characterize the impact of romantic love on human genome function, we conducted genome-wide transcriptome profiling of 115 circulating immune cell samples collected from 47 young women over the course of a 2-year longitudinal study. Analyses revealed a selective alteration in immune cell gene regulation characterized by up-regulation of Type I interferon response genes associated with CD1C+/BDCA-1+ dendritic cells (DCs) and CLEC4C+/BDCA-2+ DCs, and a reciprocal down-regulation of α-defensin-related transcripts associated with neutrophil granulocytes. These effects emerged above and beyond the effects of changes in illness, perceived social isolation, and sexual contact. These findings are consistent with a selective up-regulation of innate immune responses to viral infections (e.g., Type I interferons and DC) and with DC facilitation of sexual reproduction, and provide insight into the immunoregulatory correlates of one of the keystone experiences in human life.

Subjective social status and inflammatory gene expression.

OBJECTIVE: There exists a well-established link between low perceived social status and poorer health outcomes. However, the molecular mechanisms associated with this link remain unclear. This study begins to fill this gap by investigating the effects of low perceived subjective social status on health-related gene expression. METHOD: Participants were 47 healthy heterosexual women (mean age 20.5 years) from a large American university. Participants gave 10 mL of peripheral blood and completed questionnaires assessing subjective social status (SSS), perceived childhood socioeconomic status (SES), health, and relevant demographics. Putatively associated genes were subject to TELiS promoter-based bioinformatic analysis to assess activity of proinflammatory, anti-inflammatory, and antiviral transcription factors. RESULTS: In analyses controlling for perceived childhood socioeconomic status (SES) and other covariates, 84 transcripts showed >1.5-fold difference in average expression across the range of SSS. TELiS bioinformatics analyses implicated the proinflammatory transcription factors, NF-κB and AP-1, in driving expression of genes that were up-regulated in low-SSS individuals. Results also indicated increased activity of CREB family transcription factors but no differential activity of the anti-inflammatory glucocorticoid receptor of interferon response factors. Transcript origin analysis implicated monocytes and dendritic cells as cellular mediators. CONCLUSION: In this first study examining the molecular correlates of SSS, experiences of low social status are associated with transcriptional effects similar to those previously observed for objective adversity conditions such as low SES, social isolation, and chronic stress. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Pathogen prevalence predicts human cross-cultural variability in individualism/collectivism.

Pathogenic diseases impose selection pressures on the social behaviour of host populations. In humans (Homo sapiens), many psychological phenomena appear to serve an antipathogen defence function. One broad implication is the existence of cross-cultural differences in human cognition and behaviour contingent upon the relative presence of pathogens in the local ecology. We focus specifically on one fundamental cultural variable: differences in individualistic versus collectivist values. We suggest that specific behavioural manifestations of collectivism (e.g. ethnocentrism, conformity) can inhibit the transmission of pathogens; and so we hypothesize that collectivism (compared with individualism) will more often characterize cultures in regions that have historically had higher prevalence of pathogens. Drawing on epidemiological data and the findings of worldwide cross-national surveys of individualism/collectivism, our results support this hypothesis: the regional prevalence of pathogens has a strong positive correlation with cultural indicators of collectivism and a strong negative correlation with individualism. The correlations remain significant even when controlling for potential confounding variables. These results help to explain the origin of a paradigmatic cross-cultural difference, and reveal previously undocumented consequences of pathogenic diseases on the variable nature of human societies.

Pathogens, personality, and culture: disease prevalence predicts worldwide variability in sociosexuality, extraversion, and openness to experience.

Previous research has documented cross-cultural differences in personality traits, but the origins of those differences remain unknown. The authors investigate the possibility that these cultural differences can be traced, in part, to regional differences in the prevalence in infectious diseases. Three specific hypotheses are deduced, predicting negative relationships between disease prevalence and (a) unrestricted sociosexuality, (b) extraversion, and (c) openness to experience. These hypotheses were tested empirically with methods that employed epidemiological atlases in conjunction with personality data collected from individuals in dozens of countries worldwide. Results were consistent with all three hypotheses: In regions that have historically suffered from high levels of infectious diseases, people report lower mean levels of sociosexuality, extraversion, and openness. Alternative explanations are addressed, and possible underlying mechanisms are discussed.

Implications of the behavioural immune system for social behaviour and human health in the modern world.

The 'behavioural immune system' is composed of mechanisms that evolved as a means of facilitating behaviours that minimized infection risk and enhanced fitness. Recent empirical research on human populations suggests that these mechanisms have unique consequences for many aspects of human sociality--including sexual attitudes, gregariousness, xenophobia, conformity to majority opinion and conservative sociopolitical attitudes. Throughout much of human evolutionary history, these consequences may have had beneficial health implications; but health implications in modern human societies remain unclear. This article summarizes pertinent ways in which modern human societies are similar to and different from the ecologies within which the behavioural immune system evolved. By attending to these similarities and differences, we identify a set of plausible implications-both positive and negative-that the behavioural immune system may have on health outcomes in contemporary human contexts. We discuss both individual-level infection risk and population-level epidemiological outcomes. We also discuss a variety of additional implications, including compliance with public health policies, the adoption of novel therapeutic interventions and actual immunological functioning. Research on the behavioural immune system, and its implications in contemporary human societies, can provide unique insights into relationships between fitness, sociality and health.

Interaction between infectious diseases and personality traits: ACP1*C as a potential mediator.

In geographical regions characterized by high pathogen prevalence, it has been shown that human populations tend to be characterized by lower levels of extraversion (E) and openness to experience (OtE). According to the "behavioral immune system" hypothesis, the reduction of extraversion and openness levels represents a behavioral defense against infections. Like the 'classical' immune system, the "behavioral immune system" could also be shaped by its underlying genetic background. Previous studies have shown that the *C allele of the ACP1 gene confers increased susceptibility to infectious/parasitic diseases. We hypothesized that carriers of the ACP1*C allele should likewise be associated with reduced E and OtE. We tested this hypothesis using two samples comprised of 153 students from Southern California (Group 1), and 162 female subjects recruited from an executive health program (Group 2), genotyped for ACP1 polymorphism and evaluated by the NEO Five-Factor Inventory (NEO-FFI). ACP1 was significantly associated with E: we found that carriers of ACP1*C showed reduced scores for E (Group 1: ß=-4.263, P=0.027; Group 2: ß=-8.315, P=0.003; Group 1+Group 2: ß=-5.366, P=0.001). Across groups, ACP1 was only marginally associated with OtE. In conclusion, the present study found that the ACP1*C allele, previously associated with an increased vulnerability to infectious/parasitic diseases may also be able to shape behavioral immune defenses by interaction with the level of E.