Does Sexual Desire Fluctuate More Among Women than Men?

There is a lay assumption that women's sexual desire varies substantially over time, whereas men's is stable. This assumption is mirrored in prominent theories of desire, which posit that women are more variable than men in the extent to which they desire sex, and that women's sexual desire is more contextually sensitive than men's. We tested this assumption across three longitudinal studies. Study 1 assessed desire at 3 time points spanning 13 years (Nobservations = 5562), and Studies 2 and 3 (Nobservations = 11,282) assessed desire moment-to-moment over 7 days. When desire was measured over years, women were more variable in their sexual desire than men (Study 1). However, we found a different pattern of results when desire was measured over the short term. In Studies 2 and 3, we found no significant differences in women's and men's desire variability. The extent to which desire varied as a function of affective states (e.g., happiness) and relationship-oriented states (e.g., partner closeness) was similar for women and men, with some exceptions; women's desire was more negatively associated with tiredness and anger in Study 2. These data qualify existing assumptions about sex differences in sexual desire variability.

Individual, intergroup and nation-level influences on belief in conspiracy theories.

Conspiracy theories are part of mainstream public life, with the potential to undermine governments, promote racism, ignite extremism and threaten public health efforts. Psychological research on conspiracy theories is booming, with more than half of the academic articles on the topic published since 2019. In this Review, we synthesize the literature with an eye to understanding the psychological factors that shape willingness to believe conspiracy theories. We begin at the individual level, examining the cognitive, clinical, motivational, personality and developmental factors that predispose people to believe conspiracy theories. Drawing on insights from social and evolutionary psychology, we then review research examining conspiracy theories as an intergroup phenomenon that reflects and reinforces societal fault lines. Finally, we examine how conspiracy theories are shaped by the economic, political, cultural and socio-historical contexts at the national level. This multilevel approach offers a deep and broad insight into conspiracist thinking that increases understanding of the problem and offers potential solutions.

Is Your Accent Right for the Job? A Meta-Analysis on Accent Bias in Hiring Decisions.

Standard-accented job candidates are perceived as more hireable than non-standard-accented candidates. Two broad perspectives have emerged as to what drives this effect: (a) that it is a pragmatic response to the perception that non-standard accents can impede job-relevant communication (processing fluency explanation) and/or (b) that non-standard accents signal "otherness" and candidates are devalued as a result (prejudice explanation). This meta-analytic integration of 139 effect sizes (N = 4,576) examined these two perspectives. Standard-accented candidates were considered more hireable than non-standard-accented candidates (d = 0.47)-a bias that was stronger for high communication jobs. Other findings, however, are difficult to explain from a processing fluency explanation: candidates' relative comprehensibility was not a significant moderator of hiring bias. Moreover, the degree of accent bias was associated with perceptions of the candidates' social status, and accent bias was particularly pronounced among female candidates and for candidates who spoke in foreign (as compared with regional) accents.

A toolkit for understanding and addressing climate scepticism.

Despite over 50 years of messaging about the reality of human-caused climate change, substantial portions of the population remain sceptical. Furthermore, many sceptics remain unmoved by standard science communication strategies, such as myth busting and evidence building. To understand this, we examine psychological and structural reasons why climate change misinformation is prevalent. First, we review research on motivated reasoning: how interpretations of climate science are shaped by vested interests and ideologies. Second, we examine climate scepticism as a form of political followership. Third, we examine infrastructures of disinformation: the funding, lobbying and political operatives that lend climate scepticism its power. Guiding this Review are two principles: (1) to understand scepticism, one must account for the interplay between individual psychologies and structural forces; and (2) global data are required to understand this global problem. In the spirit of optimism, we finish by describing six strategies for reducing the destructive influence of climate scepticism.

Determinants of self-reported adherence to COVID-19 regulations in Spain: social norms, trust and risk perception.

Failure of individuals to voluntarily observe regulations and recommendations around mitigating COVID-19 (e.g. social distancing; frequent handwashing) is often cited as a reason why some countries struggled to curtail the spread of the virus. Understanding the factors that are associated with people's willingness to comply with COVID-19 regulations and recommendations is an important step in helping policy makers and health officials reduce the impact of this (and future) pandemics. In the current study we examined this question in one of the countries hardest hit by the pandemic: Spain. A large, representative survey (N = 2100) revealed that several factors were positively associated with willingness to comply to COVID-19 regulations and recommendations. In decreasing order of predictive value, these were: (i) perceptions of whether friends and family were complying (i.e. norms), (ii) trust in science as a basis for lawmaking, (iii) perceived effectiveness of regulations and (iv) perception of risk of infection. These results point to the importance of influencing social norms as the primary way to improve adherence to the health regulations of COVID-19; more important than intrapsychic considerations such as efficacy and risk.

Responding effectively to a pandemic such as COVID-19 requires citizens to voluntarily comply with certain recommendations and regulations; for example, social distancing and frequent handwashing. The current study examined a large, representative sample of over 2000 residents of Spain to find out what factors are associated with compliance (or non-compliance) with COVID-19 regulations and recommendations. The factor most closely associated with compliance was perceptions of whether friends and family were complying (i.e. the 'social norm'). The second most important factor was trust in science as a basis for lawmaking. Two psychological factors that are normally considered important in driving health behaviours­perceived effectiveness of regulations and perception of risk of infection­had a much weaker relationship with compliance behaviours. The data suggest that social norms are a more important driver of compliance behaviour than individualistic, cost-benefit analyses such as whether the recommended strategies are perceived to be effective in reducing virus spread, and whether people feel they are personally at risk of contracting SARS-CoV-2. In sum, the results point to the importance of influencing social norms as a key way to improve adherence to health regulations associated with COVID-19.

Cross-national differences in willingness to believe conspiracy theories.

Conspiracy beliefs are not just generated by "under-the-skull" individual factors, but are shaped also by cultural, economic, and institutional realities. A scan of the literature-complemented by our own secondary data analyses-suggests a reasonable convergence of evidence that conspiracy beliefs are higher in nations that are more corrupt, more collectivist, and lower in GDP per capita. There is some evidence that conspiracy beliefs may also be shaped by economic inequality, power distance, and authoritarianism, although the evidence base is thin. We also review literature that examines how individual correlates of conspiracy beliefs vary across nations. We discuss challenges associated with conducting international research on conspiracy beliefs and chart a future research agenda for creating truly global insights into conspiracist thinking.

International media coverage promotes donations to a climate disaster.

The Australian bushfires in 2019-2020 triggered massive amounts of charitable giving from the community. We applied agenda-setting theory to examine if and how disaster news coverage influenced public donations in response to the crisis. A survey of 949 Australians found that people perceived news coverage of the event to be a strong influence on the amount they donated to bushfire appeals, over and above past giving levels. Furthermore, media coverage was more influential in participants' charity selection than both peer influence and direct communication from the charities. Next, we conducted a textual analysis of international news coverage of the event (N=30,239 unique articles). Compared to a control corpus of text, news coverage of the disaster used words related to 'money' and 'support' at disproportionately high frequencies. Together, the studies suggest that the media play an agenda-setting role in determining how and to what extent people give to disaster appeals.

Pro-vaccination subjective norms moderate the relationship between conspiracy mentality and vaccination intentions.

OBJECTIVES: Increasing vaccination hesitancy threatens societies' capacity to contain pandemics and other diseases. One factor that is positively associated with vaccination intentions is a supportive subjective norm (i.e., the perception that close others approve of vaccination). On the downside, there is evidence that negative attitudes toward vaccinations are partly rooted in conspiracy mentality (i.e., the tendency to believe in conspiracies). The objective of this study is to examine the role of subjective norms in moderating the association between conspiracy mentality and vaccine hesitancy. We examined two competing predictions: Are those high in conspiracy mentality immune to subjective norms, or do subjective norms moderate the relationship between conspiracy mentality and vaccination intentions? METHODS: We conducted five studies (total N = 1,280) to test these hypotheses across several vaccination contexts (some real, some fictitious). We measured conspiracy mentality, vaccination intentions, subjective norms, attitudes toward vaccination, and perceived behavioural control. RESULTS: A merged analysis across the studies revealed an interaction effect of conspiracy mentality and subjective norm on vaccination intentions. When subjective norm was high (i.e., when participants perceived that close others approved of vaccines) conspiracy mentality no longer predicted vaccination intentions. This was consistent with the moderating hypothesis of subjective norms and inconsistent with the immunity hypothesis. CONCLUSIONS: The typical negative relationship between conspiracy mentality and vaccination intentions is eliminated among those who perceive pro-vaccination subjective norms. Although correlational, these data raise the possibility that pro-vaccination views of friends and family can be leveraged to reduce vaccine hesitancy.

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.

To what extent are conspiracy theorists concerned for self versus others? A COVID-19 test case.

We examined whether people who are prone to believe COVID-19 conspiracy theories are characterised by an especially strong concern for others or an especially strong concern for the self, and whether these orientations are associated with willingness to take a COVID-19 vaccine. We surveyed 4,245 participants from eight nations; three months later we re-contacted 1,262 participants from three nations. Belief in COVID-19 conspiracy theories was related to greater concerns about one's own safety, and lower concerns about the safety of close others. Furthermore, conspiracist ideation at Wave 1 predicted reluctance to take a COVID-19 vaccine at Wave 2, mediated through relative concern for self versus others. In sum, people who are high in conspiracy beliefs have relatively higher concern for the self relative to others, with troubling implications for public health.

Something About the Way You Speak: A Meta-analysis on Children's Linguistic-based Social Preferences.

There is growing interest in the role of linguistic cues (accents, dialects, language) in driving children's social preferences. This meta-analysis integrated 131 effect sizes involving 2,680 infants and children from 2 days old to 11 years. Overall, children prefer native-accent, native-dialect, and native-language speakers over non-native counterparts (d = 0.57). Meta-regression highlighted that bilinguals (d = 0.93) do not exhibit less native-speaker preference compared to monolinguals (d = 0.62). Children displayed stronger preferences based on accent (d = 1.04) than dialect (d = 0.44) and language (d = 0.39). Children's cultural background, exposure to non-native speech, age, and preference measure were not significant moderators. The data are discussed in light of several theoretical explanations for when and why children show linguistic-based social preferences.

Resolving the small-pockets problem helps clarify the role of education and political ideology in shaping vaccine scepticism.

Understanding the factors associated with vaccine scepticism is challenging because of the 'small-pockets' problem: The number of highly vaccine-sceptical people is low, and small subsamples such as these can be missed using traditional regression approaches. To overcome this problem, the current study (N = 5,200) used latent profile analysis to uncover six profiles, including two micro-communities of vaccine-sceptical people who have the potential to jeopardize vaccine-led herd immunity. The most vaccine-sceptical group (1.14%) was highly educated and expressed strong liberal tendencies. This group was also the most sceptical about genetically modified crops and nuclear energy, and most likely to receive news about science from the Internet. The second-most vaccine-sceptical group (3.4%) was young, poorly educated, and politically extreme (both left and right). In resolving the small-pockets problem, the current analyses also help reconcile competing theoretical perspectives about the role of education and political ideology in shaping anti-vaccination views.

Profiling adopters (and non-adopters) of a contact tracing mobile application: Insights from Australia.

OBJECTIVE: Many governments are using contact tracing mobile applications (CTMAs) yet public adoption of such systems has been relatively low. The main objective of this paper is to profile adopters (and non-adopters) of Australia's COVIDSafe CTMA. MATERIALS AND METHODS: We use latent profile analysis to examine predictors of CTMA download behaviour. Specifically, we draw on a representative Australian sample (N = 2575) to examine the interplay between age, education, income, dispositional desire for privacy and political ideology on download behaviour. We examine trust in government as a mediating mechanism between profiles and download behaviour. RESULTS: Our analysis produces seven profiles. Trust in government mediates the relationship between most profiles and download behaviour. A combination of wealth and education appear to be key explanatory factors of CTMA download behaviour. Two profiles -- comprising individuals with high income and education -- had the highest rates of download behaviour. Profiles with low download percentages comprised politically left-leaning participants with average to low income and education. CONCLUSION: Our findings clearly indicate the profiles of people who are (not) likely to download a CTMA. Practical ways to improve widespread adoption include providing structural support to the more vulnerable members of society, making clear the societal benefits of downloading CTMAs, and engaging in bipartisan promotion of such apps.

When Grades Are High but Self-Efficacy Is Low: Unpacking the Confidence Gap Between Girls and Boys in Mathematics.

Girls have much lower mathematics self-efficacy than boys, a likely contributor to the under-representation of women in STEM. To help explain this gender confidence gap, we examined predictors of mathematics self-efficacy in a sample of 1,007 9th graders aged 13-18 years (54.2% girls). Participants completed a standardized math test, after which they rated three indices of mastery: an affective component (state self-esteem), a meta-cognitive component (self-enhancement), and their prior math grade. Despite having similar grades, girls reported lower mathematics self-efficacy and state self-esteem, and were less likely than boys to self-enhance in terms of performance. Multilevel multiple-group regression analyses showed that the affective mastery component explained girls' self-efficacy while cognitive self-enhancement explained boys'. Yet, a chi-square test showed that both constructs were equally relevant in the prediction of girls' and boys' self-efficacy. Measures of interpersonal sources of self-efficacy were not predictive of self-efficacy after taking the other dimensions into account. Results suggest that boys are advantaged in their development of mathematics self-efficacy beliefs, partly due to more positive feelings and more cognitive self-enhancement following test situations.

Predictors of social identification in group therapy.

Background: Group therapy is a popular and effective format for psychological intervention, and both anecdotal and empirical data consistently point to group dynamics as a primary driver of its benefits. However, to date there has been no systematic investigation of what facilitates an engaged, cohesive group environment. We argue that this is social identification and explore the features of groups that help to build this. Method: We present two longitudinal studies of group therapy and examine the predictors of social identification. Study 1 was a sample of psychiatric outpatients (N = 103) who completed group cognitive behavior therapy. Study 2 was a sample of young women with body shape or weight concerns (N = 112) who completed an eating disorder prevention program. Results: Multilevel analyses indicated that social identification was best predicted by participant fit with the therapy group, specifically the degree to which (1) participants were and perceived themselves to be similar to other group members, and (2) participants met the group therapy eligibility criteria at baseline. Conclusions: These results show that attending to issues of client fit in group therapy can improve social identification, with implications for reducing client attrition and improving client outcomes.

Embodied remorse: Physical displays of remorse increase positive responses to public apologies, but have negligible effects on forgiveness.

Public apologies struggle to communicate genuineness. Previous studies have shown that, in response to public apologies, perceptions of remorse and levels of forgiveness are often low, while skepticism about motive is high. Furthermore, attempts to reduce mistrust of public apologies by manipulating the verbal component of the message have had limited success. Across 6 studies (combined N = 3,818), we examined whether people respond more positively to public apologies if the apologies are accompanied by nonverbal demonstrations of remorse: operationalized as kneeling (Studies 1 and 6) and crying (Studies 2-5). Overall, embodied remorse had small-to-medium effects on perceived remorse, and through this relationship had reliable effects on perceived likelihood of reoffending, empathy, positive appraisals of the transgressor, and satisfaction with the apology. Positive effects of embodiment emerged regardless of whether transgressions were committed by a collective (Studies 1, 2, and 6) or an individual (Studies 3-5), and were equally strong regardless of whether or not the transgressor issued an apology (Studies 4 and 5). Furthermore, embodied remorse appeared to lie beyond suspicion: if anything, those low in dispositional trust were more positively influenced by embodied remorse than those high in dispositional trust. Despite all these positive effects, embodied remorse did not have a significant effect on forgiveness in any of the studies, and an internal meta-analysis revealed a significant effect that was of negligible size. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2020 APA, all rights reserved).

Beliefs About Gender Predict Faking Orgasm in Heterosexual Women.

The majority of women have faked an orgasm at least once in their lives. In the current study, we assessed how women's worldviews about gender relate to their faking orgasm behavior. A survey of 462 heterosexual women from the UK (Mage=38.38 years) found that those who espoused anti-feminist values-that is, those high in hostile sexism-had faked significantly more orgasms over their lifetime. In contrast, those who espoused ostensibly positive but restrictive ideas of gender relations-that is, those high in benevolent sexism-had faked significantly fewer orgasms over their lifetime. Furthermore, the more that women believed female orgasm was necessary for men's sexual gratification, the more likely they were to have faked an orgasm at least once in their lives compared to women who had never faked an orgasm. These effects were small to moderate and emerged after controlling for demographics, sexual history, ease of orgasm, and previously established psychological correlates of faking orgasm, including suspected partner infidelity and intrasexual competition.

Why Do We Hold Mixed Emotions About Racial Out-Groups? A Case for Affect Matching.

A four-wave survey on a national probabilistic sample (N = 17,399) tested novel predictions about how positive and negative contact with racial out-groups predicts warmth and anger toward those groups. Three competing hypotheses were tested: (a) that negative contact will outweigh positive contact when predicting both emotions ("bad is stronger than good"); (b) that negative and positive contact will similarly predict each emotion; and (c) that negative contact will have a disproportionately large association with anger (a negative emotion), whereas positive contact will have a disproportionately large association with warmth (a positive emotion)-a phenomenon known as affect matching. The data revealed clear evidence for affect matching: Negative contact was associated with high levels of anger more than low levels of warmth, whereas positive contact was associated with high levels of warmth more than low levels of anger. Results suggest that positive and negative feelings about out-groups may be tied to qualitatively distinct contact experiences.

Testing potential psychological predictors of attitudes towards cultured meat.

Cultured meat is an emerging food technology that has the potential to resolve many of the social, environmental and ethical issues surrounding traditional factory farming practices. Recently, research has begun to explore consumer attitudes to the product, revealing a number of barriers and demographic predictors. However, our understanding of the psychological mechanisms that underpin attitudes to cultured meat remains limited. In the current study, we draw on an attitude roots model (Hornsey & Fielding, 2017) to explore a range of psychological mechanisms that may underpin attitudes to cultured meat. In terms of negative attitudes and intentions toward cultured meat, the most powerful predictors were food neophobia, political conservatism, and distrust of food scientists. When it comes to absolute opposition to cultured meat - defined by the unconditional belief that it should never be allowed under any circumstances - the strongest predictors were food and hygiene disgust sensitivity subscales, food neophobia, and conspiratorial ideation. A number of presumed mechanisms held no relationships to cultured meat attitudes, including social dominance orientation, speciesism, and naturalness bias. The null results on naturalness bias are of particular interest given recent research identifying concerns about naturalness as a key barrier to consumer acceptance. These results demonstrate the need for a more nuanced understanding of the psychological mechanisms that contribute to cultured meat attitudes and engagement.