Ovulatory cycle shifts in human motivational prioritisation of sex and food.

Previous research on the endogenous effects of ovarian hormones on motivational states in women has focused on sexual motivation. The Motivational Priority Shifts Hypothesis has a broader scope. It predicts a shift from somatic to reproductive motivation when fertile. In a highly powered preregistered online diary study across 40 days, we tested whether 390 women report such an ovulatory shift in sexual and eating motivation and behaviour. We compared 209 naturally cycling women to 181 women taking hormonal contraceptives (HC) to rule out non-ovulatory changes across the cycle as confounders. We found robust ovulatory decreases in food intake and increases in general sexual desire, in-pair sexual desire and initiation of dyadic sexual behaviour. Extra-pair sexual desire increased mid-cycle, but the effect did not differ significantly in HC women, questioning an ovulatory effect. Descriptively, solitary sexual desire and behaviour, dyadic sexual behaviour, appetite, and satiety showed expected mid-cycle changes that were diminished in HC women, but these failed to reach our strict preregistered significance level. Our results provide insight into current theoretical debates about ovulatory cycle shifts while calling for future research to determine motivational mechanisms behind ovulatory changes in food intake and considering romantic partners' motivational states to explain the occurrence of dyadic sexual behaviour.

Emotional (in)stability: Neuroticism is associated with increased variability in negative emotion after all.

The personality trait neuroticism is tightly linked to mental health, and neurotic people experience stronger negative emotions in everyday life. But, do their negative emotions also show greater fluctuation? This commonsensical notion was recently questioned by [Kalokerinos et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 112, 15838-15843 (2020)], who suggested that the associations found in previous studies were spurious. Less neurotic people often report very low levels of negative emotion, which is usually measured with bounded rating scales. Therefore, they often pick the lowest possible response option, which severely constrains the amount of emotional variability that can be observed in principle. Applying a multistep statistical procedure that is supposed to correct for this dependency, [Kalokerinos et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA 112, 15838-15843 (2020)] no longer found an association between neuroticism and emotional variability. However, like other common approaches for controlling for undesirable effects due to bounded scales, this method is opaque with respect to the assumed mechanism of data generation and might not result in a successful correction. We thus suggest an alternative approach that a) takes into account that emotional states outside of the scale bounds can occur and b) models associations between neuroticism and both the mean and variability of emotion in a single step with the help of Bayesian censored location-scale models. Simulations supported this model over alternative approaches. We analyzed 13 longitudinal datasets (2,518 individuals and 11,170 measurements in total) and found clear evidence that more neurotic people experience greater variability in negative emotion.

Chimpanzee and Human Risk Preferences Show Key Similarities.

Risk preference impacts how people make key life decisions related to health, wealth, and well-being. Systematic variations in risk-taking behavior can be the result of differences in fitness expectations, as predicted by life-history theory. Yet the evolutionary roots of human risk-taking behavior remain poorly understood. Here, we studied risk preferences of chimpanzees (86 Pan troglodytes; 47 females; age = 2-40 years) using a multimethod approach that combined observer ratings with behavioral choice experiments. We found that chimpanzees' willingness to take risks shared structural similarities with that of humans. First, chimpanzees' risk preference manifested as a traitlike preference that was consistent across domains and measurements. Second, chimpanzees were ambiguity averse. Third, males were more risk prone than females. Fourth, the appetite for risk showed an inverted-U-shaped relation to age and peaked in young adulthood. Our findings suggest that key dimensions of risk preference appear to emerge independently of the influence of human cultural evolution.

Not within spitting distance: Salivary immunoassays of estradiol have subpar validity for predicting cycle phase.

Salivary steroid immunoassays are widely used in psychoneuroendocrinological studies of menstrual cycle phase, puberty, and menopause. Though manufacturers advertise their assays as suitable, they have not been rigorously validated for these purposes. We collated data from eight menstrual cycle studies across > 1200 female participants and > 9500 time points. Seven studies collected saliva and one collected serum. All assayed estradiol and progesterone and had an independent measure of cycle phase (LH-surge, menstrual onset). In serum, cycle phase measures strongly predicted steroid concentrations. In saliva, cycle phase poorly predicted estradiol values, which showed an upward bias compared to expectations from serum. For salivary progesterone, predictability from cycle phase was mixed, low for enzyme-linked assays and moderate for tandem mass spectrometry. Imputing the population-average serum steroid changes from cycle phase may yield more valid values of hormonal changes for an independent person than directly assessing their hormone levels using salivary immunoassays.

"Using 26,000 diary entries to show ovulatory changes in sexual desire and behavior": Correction to Arslan et al. (2018).

Reports an error in "Using 26,000 diary entries to show ovulatory changes in sexual desire and behavior" by Ruben C. Arslan, Katharina M. Schilling, Tanja M. Gerlach and Lars Penke (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Advanced Online Publication, Aug 27, 2018, np). In the original article the number of participants available for robustness checks should have been 1,054, not 1,043; this applies to the third sentence in the abstract, the first sentence of the second paragraph in the Participants section, the first sentence of the second paragraph in the Robustness Checks section, and the subsample size of women in Table 3. The correct number of naturally cycling usable data should have been 429, not 421. The correct number of diary days should have been 26,680, not 25,948. The correct percentage of diary days in the fourth sentence in the Exclusion Criteria section should have been 5%. Figure 1 should have included guessing hypotheses (n 40) and long diary interruptions (n 41) as further reasons for exclusion, and an error in the effsize R package led to the reporting of inflated effect sizes for the differences between hormonal contraceptive users and non-users in Table 1. Figure 1, Table 1, and Table 3 have been corrected. All versions of this article have been corrected. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 2018-41799-001.) Previous research reported ovulatory changes in women's appearance, mate preferences, extra- and in-pair sexual desire, and behavior, but has been criticized for small sample sizes, inappropriate designs, and undisclosed flexibility in analyses. In the present study, we sought to address these criticisms by preregistering our hypotheses and analysis plan and by collecting a large diary sample. We gathered more than 26,000 usable online self-reports in a diary format from 1,054 women, of which 429 were naturally cycling. We inferred the fertile period from menstrual onset reports. We used hormonal contraceptive users as a quasi-control group, as they experience menstruation, but not ovulation. We probed our results for robustness to different approaches (including different fertility estimates, different exclusion criteria, adjusting for potential confounds, moderation by methodological factors). We found robust evidence supporting previously reported ovulatory increases in extra-pair desire and behavior, in-pair desire, and self-perceived desirability, as well as no unexpected associations. Yet, we did not find predicted effects on partner mate retention behavior, clothing choices, or narcissism. Contrary to some of the earlier literature, partners' sexual attractiveness did not moderate the cycle shifts. Taken together, the replicability of the existing literature on ovulatory changes was mixed. We conclude with simulation-based recommendations for reading the past literature and for designing future large-scale preregistered within-subject studies to understand ovulatory cycle changes and the effects of hormonal contraception. Interindividual differences in the size of ovulatory changes emerge as an important area for further study. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Stability and validity of steroid hormones in hair and saliva across two ovulatory cycles.

Steroid hormones are often assessed via saliva samples, as they are noninvasive and easy to collect. However, hormone levels in saliva can fluctuate from moment-to-moment, are influenced by factors such as momentary emotional states and food intake, and some vary strongly across women's ovulatory cycle. In contrast, hormone levels in hair seem to be more robust against these influences and were previously suggested to be a good alternative to obtain women's baseline hormone levels. In the current study, we investigated whether hormone levels are stable across multiple assays and whether hormone levels from saliva and hair samples correlate. We collected saliva and hair samples from N = 155 naturally cycling women across two ovulatory cycles. All samples were analyzed for progesterone, testosterone and cortisol levels via mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). Results showed that both averaged saliva and hair hormone levels were moderately stable across cycles. Hair progesterone levels showed higher stability than the respective levels from saliva. Saliva and hair levels for progesterone and testosterone were moderately correlated, whereas cortisol levels from saliva and hair were only weakly correlated. Results suggest that the type of sample from which baseline hormone levels are assessed and the cycle phase in which saliva samples are collected may have a high impact on the obtained results. Implications for future studies are suggested.

Men are not aware of and do not respond to their female partner's fertility status: Evidence from a dyadic diary study of 384 couples.

Understanding how human mating psychology is affected by changes in female cyclic fertility is informative for comprehending the evolution of human reproductive behavior. Based on differential selection pressures between the sexes, men are assumed to have evolved adaptations to notice women's within-cycle cues to fertility and show corresponding mate retention tactics to secure access to their female partners when fertile. However, previous studies suffered from methodological shortcomings and yielded inconsistent results. In a large, preregistered online dyadic diary study (384 heterosexual couples), we found no compelling evidence that men notice women's fertility status (as potentially reflected in women's attractiveness, sexual desire, or wish for contact with others) or display mid-cycle increases in mate retention tactics (jealousy, attention, wish for contact or sexual desire towards female partners). These results extend our current understanding of the evolution of women's concealed ovulation and oestrus, and suggest that both might have evolved independently.

No increased inbreeding avoidance during the ovulatory phase of the menstrual cycle.

Mate preferences and mating-related behaviours are hypothesised to change over the menstrual cycle to increase reproductive fitness. Recent large-scale studies suggest that previously reported hormone-linked behavioural changes are not robust. The proposal that women's preference for associating with male kin is down-regulated during the ovulatory (high-fertility) phase of the menstrual cycle to reduce inbreeding has not been tested in large samples. Consequently, we investigated the relationship between longitudinal changes in women's steroid hormone levels and their perceptions of faces experimentally manipulated to possess kinship cues (Study 1). Women viewed faces displaying kinship cues as more attractive and trustworthy, but this effect was not related to hormonal proxies of conception risk. Study 2 employed a daily diary approach and found no evidence that women spent less time with kin generally or with male kin specifically during the fertile phase of the menstrual cycle. Thus, neither study found evidence that inbreeding avoidance is up-regulated during the ovulatory phase of the menstrual cycle.

The evidence for good genes ovulatory shifts in Arslan et al. (2018) is mixed and uncertain.

In Arslan et al. (2018), we reported ovulatory increases in extra-pair sexual desire, in-pair sexual desire, and self-perceived desirability, as well as several moderator analyses related to the good genes ovulatory shift hypothesis, which predicts attenuated ovulatory increases in extra-pair desire for women with attractive partners. Gangestad and Dinh (2021) identified errors in how we aggregated two of the four main moderator variables. We are grateful that their scrutiny uncovered these errors. After corrections, our moderation results are more mixed than we previously reported and depend on the moderator specification. However, we disagree that the evidence for moderation is robust and compelling, as Gangestad and Dinh (2021) claim. Our data are consistent with some previously reported effect sizes, but also with negligible moderator effects. We also show that what Gangestad and Dinh (2021) call an "a priori[…]more comprehensive and valid composite" is poorly justifiable on a priori grounds, and follow-up analyses they report are not robust to a composite specification that we consider at least as reasonable. Psychologists have to become acquainted with techniques such as cross-validation or training and test sets to manage the risks of data-dependent analyses. In doing so, we might learn that we need new data more often than we intuit and should remain uncertain far more often. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Women feel more attractive before ovulation: evidence from a large-scale online diary study.

How attractive we find ourselves decides who we target as potential partners and influences our reproductive fitness. Self-perceptions on women's fertile days could be particularly important. However, results on how self-perceived attractiveness changes across women's ovulatory cycles are inconsistent and research has seldomly assessed multiple attractiveness-related constructs simultaneously. Here, we give an overview of ovulatory cycle shifts in self-perceived attractiveness, sexual desirability, grooming, self-esteem and positive mood. We addressed previous methodological shortcomings by conducting a large, preregistered online diary study of 872 women (580 naturally cycling) across 70 consecutive days, applying several robustness analyses and comparing naturally cycling women with women using hormonal contraceptives. As expected, we found robust evidence for ovulatory increases in self-perceived attractiveness and sexual desirability in naturally cycling women. Unexpectedly, we found moderately robust evidence for smaller ovulatory increases in self-esteem and positive mood. Although grooming showed an ovulatory increase descriptively, the effect was small, failed to reach our strict significance level of .01 and was not robust to model variations. We discuss how these results could follow an ovulatory increase in sexual motivation while calling for more theoretical and causally informative research to uncover the nature of ovulatory cycle shifts in the future.

Using 26,000 diary entries to show ovulatory changes in sexual desire and behavior.

[Correction Notice: An Erratum for this article was reported online in Journal of Personality and Social Psychology on Jun 3 2019 (see record 2019-34417-001). In the original article the number of participants available for robustness checks should have been 1,054, not 1,043; this applies to the third sentence in the abstract, the first sentence of the second paragraph in the Participants section, the first sentence of the second paragraph in the Robustness Checks section, and the subsample size of women in Table 3. The correct number of naturally cycling usable data should have been 429, not 421. The correct number of diary days should have been 26,680, not 25,948. The correct percentage of diary days in the fourth sentence in the Exclusion Criteria section should have been 5%. Figure 1 should have included guessing hypotheses (n 40) and long diary interruptions (n 41) as further reasons for exclusion, and an error in the effsize R package led to the reporting of inflated effect sizes for the differences between hormonal contraceptive users and non-users in Table 1. Figure 1, Table 1, and Table 3 have been corrected. All versions of this article have been corrected.] Previous research reported ovulatory changes in women's appearance, mate preferences, extra- and in-pair sexual desire, and behavior, but has been criticized for small sample sizes, inappropriate designs, and undisclosed flexibility in analyses. In the present study, we sought to address these criticisms by preregistering our hypotheses and analysis plan and by collecting a large diary sample. We gathered more than 26,000 usable online self-reports in a diary format from 1,054 women, of which 429 were naturally cycling. We inferred the fertile period from menstrual onset reports. We used hormonal contraceptive users as a quasi-control group, as they experience menstruation, but not ovulation. We probed our results for robustness to different approaches (including different fertility estimates, different exclusion criteria, adjusting for potential confounds, moderation by methodological factors). We found robust evidence supporting previously reported ovulatory increases in extra-pair desire and behavior, in-pair desire, and self-perceived desirability, as well as no unexpected associations. Yet, we did not find predicted effects on partner mate retention behavior, clothing choices, or narcissism. Contrary to some of the earlier literature, partners' sexual attractiveness did not moderate the cycle shifts. Taken together, the replicability of the existing literature on ovulatory changes was mixed. We conclude with simulation-based recommendations for reading the past literature and for designing future large-scale preregistered within-subject studies to understand ovulatory cycle changes and the effects of hormonal contraception. Interindividual differences in the size of ovulatory changes emerge as an important area for further study. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

Routinely randomize potential sources of measurement reactivity to estimate and adjust for biases in subjective reports.

With the advent of online and app-based studies, researchers in psychology are making increasing use of repeated subjective reports. The new methods open up opportunities to study behavior in the field and to map causal processes, but they also pose new challenges. Recent work has added initial elevation bias to the list of common pitfalls; here, higher negative states (i.e., thoughts and feelings) are reported on the first day of assessment than on later days. This article showcases a new approach to addressing this and other measurement reactivity biases. Specifically, we employed a planned missingness design in a daily diary study of more than 1,300 individuals who were assessed over a period of up to 70 days to estimate and adjust for measurement reactivity biases. We found that day of first item presentation, item order, and item number were associated with only negligible bias: Items were not answered differently depending on when and where they were shown. Initial elevation bias may thus be more limited than has previously been reported or it may act only at the level of the survey, not at the item level. We encourage researchers to make design choices that will allow them to routinely assess measurement reactivity biases in their studies. Specifically, we advocate the routine randomization of item display and order, as well as of the timing and frequency of measurement. Randomized planned missingness makes it possible to empirically gauge how fatigue, familiarity, and learning interact to bias responses. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved).

How people know their risk preference.

People differ in their willingness to take risks. Recent work found that revealed preference tasks (e.g., laboratory lotteries)-a dominant class of measures-are outperformed by survey-based stated preferences, which are more stable and predict real-world risk taking across different domains. How can stated preferences, often criticised as inconsequential "cheap talk," be more valid and predictive than controlled, incentivized lotteries? In our multimethod study, over 3,000 respondents from population samples answered a single widely used and predictive risk-preference question. Respondents then explained the reasoning behind their answer. They tended to recount diagnostic behaviours and experiences, focusing on voluntary, consequential acts and experiences from which they seemed to infer their risk preference. We found that third-party readers of respondents' brief memories and explanations reached similar inferences about respondents' preferences, indicating the intersubjective validity of this information. Our results help unpack the self perception behind stated risk preferences that permits people to draw upon their own understanding of what constitutes diagnostic behaviours and experiences, as revealed in high-stakes situations in the real world.

formr: A study framework allowing for automated feedback generation and complex longitudinal experience-sampling studies using R.

Open-source software improves the reproducibility of scientific research. Because existing open-source tools often do not offer dedicated support for longitudinal data collection on phones and computers, we built formr, a study framework that enables researchers to conduct both simple surveys and more intricate studies. With automated email and text message reminders that can be sent according to any schedule, longitudinal and experience-sampling studies become easy to implement. By integrating a web-based application programming interface for the statistical programming language R via OpenCPU, formr allows researchers to use a familiar programming language to enable complex features. These can range from adaptive testing, to graphical and interactive feedback, to integration with non-survey data sources such as self-trackers or online social network data. Here we showcase three studies created in formr: a study of couples with dyadic feedback; a longitudinal study over months, which included social networks and peer and partner ratings; and a diary study with daily invitations sent out by text message and email and extensive feedback on intraindividual patterns.

Predictive validity and adjustment of ideal partner preferences across the transition into romantic relationships.

Although empirical research has investigated what we ideally seek in a romantic partner for decades, the crucial question of whether ideal partner preferences actually guide our mating decisions in real life has remained largely unanswered. One reason for this is the lack of designs that assess individuals' ideal partner preferences before entering a relationship and then follow up on them over an extended period. In the Göttingen Mate Choice Study (GMCS), a preregistered, large-scale online study, we used such a naturalistic prospective design. We investigated partner preferences across 4 preference domains in a large sample of predominantly heterosexual singles (N = 763, aged 18-40 years) and tracked these individuals across a period of 5 months upon a possible transition into romantic relationships. Attesting to their predictive validity, partner preferences prospectively predicted the characteristics of later partners. This was equally true for both sexes, except for vitality-attractiveness where men's preferences were more predictive of their later partners' standing on this dimension than women's. Self-perceived mate value did not moderate the preference-partner characteristics relations. Preferences proved to be relatively stable across the 5 months interval, yet were less stable for those who entered a relationship. Subgroup analyses using a newly developed indicator of preference adjustment toward (vs. away from) partner characteristics revealed that participants adjusted their preferences downward when partners fell short of initial preferences, but showed no consistent adjustment when partners exceeded them. Results and implications are discussed against the background of ongoing controversies in mate choice and romantic relationship research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2019 APA, all rights reserved).

Genomic analysis of family data reveals additional genetic effects on intelligence and personality.

Pedigree-based analyses of intelligence have reported that genetic differences account for 50-80% of the phenotypic variation. For personality traits these effects are smaller, with 34-48% of the variance being explained by genetic differences. However, molecular genetic studies using unrelated individuals typically report a heritability estimate of around 30% for intelligence and between 0 and 15% for personality variables. Pedigree-based estimates and molecular genetic estimates may differ because current genotyping platforms are poor at tagging causal variants, variants with low minor allele frequency, copy number variants, and structural variants. Using ~20,000 individuals in the Generation Scotland family cohort genotyped for ~700,000 single-nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), we exploit the high levels of linkage disequilibrium (LD) found in members of the same family to quantify the total effect of genetic variants that are not tagged in GWAS of unrelated individuals. In our models, genetic variants in low LD with genotyped SNPs explain over half of the genetic variance in intelligence, education, and neuroticism. By capturing these additional genetic effects our models closely approximate the heritability estimates from twin studies for intelligence and education, but not for neuroticism and extraversion. We then replicated our finding using imputed molecular genetic data from unrelated individuals to show that ~50% of differences in intelligence, and ~40% of the differences in education, can be explained by genetic effects when a larger number of rare SNPs are included. From an evolutionary genetic perspective, a substantial contribution of rare genetic variants to individual differences in intelligence, and education is consistent with mutation-selection balance.

Older fathers' children have lower evolutionary fitness across four centuries and in four populations.

Higher paternal age at offspring conception increases de novo genetic mutations. Based on evolutionary genetic theory we predicted older fathers' children, all else equal, would be less likely to survive and reproduce, i.e. have lower fitness. In sibling control studies, we find support for negative paternal age effects on offspring survival and reproductive success across four large populations with an aggregate N > 1.4 million. Three populations were pre-industrial (1670-1850) Western populations and showed negative paternal age effects on infant survival and offspring reproductive success. In twentieth-century Sweden, we found minuscule paternal age effects on survival, but found negative effects on reproductive success. Effects survived tests for key competing explanations, including maternal age and parental loss, but effects varied widely over different plausible model specifications and some competing explanations such as diminishing paternal investment and epigenetic mutations could not be tested. We can use our findings to aid in predicting the effect increasingly older parents in today's society will have on their children's survival and reproductive success. To the extent that we succeeded in isolating a mutation-driven effect of paternal age, our results can be understood to show that de novo mutations reduce offspring fitness across populations and time periods.

Negative results are needed to show the specific value of a cultural explanation for g.

Burkart et al. suggest that social learning can explain the cognitive positive manifold for social animals, including humans. We caution that simpler explanations of positive trait intercorrelations exist, such as genetic load. To test the suggested explanation's specificity, we also need to examine non-social species and traits, such as health, that are distal to cognitive abilities.